Nationalizing Shakespeare in Québec

Theorizing Post-/Neo-/Colonial Adaptation

Authors

Jennifer Drouin Allegheny College

Abstract

Québec's political situation and multiple identities as a colonial, postcolonial, and neo-colonial nation make its adaptations of Shakespeare unique. By appropriating the canonical authority of Shakespeare's texts, Québecois adapters legitimize their local struggle for national liberation; however, this appropriation requires that they negotiate a fine line between the enrichment of Québecois culture and its possible contamination, assimilation, or effacement by Shakespeare's influence. This article proposes three reasons why Québecois playwrights choose to adapt Shakespeare more often than Molière: the indeterminacy of Shakespeare's texts; his "big time" status; and Québec's cultural distance from the British canon. These factors result in Québeccois playwrights' irreverent, and hence liberating, approach to "le grand Will." Québec's overlapping post-/neo-/colonial identities make its relationship to Shakespeare distinct from that of English Canada. While Mark Fortier claims that Canadians are "undead" due to their ambivalence as settler-colonizers "from elsewhere," I argue that in Québecc the national question eclipses forms of alterity in these adaptations of Shakespeare. Québecois adaptations tend to be oriented towards the creation of one multiethnic, national identity to which "others" must assimilate as the nation strives collectively for political sovereignty and legitimacy.

Author Biography

Jennifer Drouin, Allegheny College

Jennifer Drouin is Assistant Professor of English and Women's Studies at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. She recently held a postdoctoral fellowship in humanities computing with the SSHRC Major Collaborative Research Initiatives "Making Publics" project at McGill University. She has published articles in the journal Theatre Research in Canada, the volume Shakespeare Re-Dressed: Cross-Gender Casting in Contemporary Performance, and on the website of the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project. Her latest piece is forthcoming in the volume Queer Renaissance Historiography: Backward Gaze, and she is currently working on a book entitled Shakespeare in Québec: Nation, Gender, and Adaptation.