Who we are, and why we’re here
Welcome to ‘Action is eloquence’: (Re)thinking Shakespeare. We’re Gemma and Ben, two Early Career Researchers (ECRs) with an interest in how Shakespeare is performed, adapted and appropriated in the modern day. Below you’ll find brief biographies for us both. But, before that, we wanted to use this opening entry to set out our ‘Mission Statement’ for this blog. That way you, our reader, will know what to expect to read here, and what we hope to achieve by writing it.
Shakespeare is clearly going to be the major linking thread through the entries in this blog. We’re both fans of Shakespeare, but we’re not interested in one-dimensional bardolatry. Whilst Shakespeare’s texts remain incredibly rich and valuable, they are not sacrosanct. What ‘Shakespeare’ means in the twenty-first century goes far beyond the Shakespearean canon. Our shared research interests cover contemporary theatre, marketing, film and television, and the Shakespearean echoes which can be traced beyond direct adaptations and appropriations of the playwright’s work. As the Coriolanus quote in our title says, ‘Action is eloquence’ (3.2.77) — it’s only by being innovative with Shakespeare that his place in, and relevance to, the modern world becomes clear. You can expect the pieces published here to both think about and rethink Shakespeare, as well as considering how others are thinking about and rethinking Shakespeare today.
As ECRs, the content we write here will largely stem from our experiences researching, attending conferences and navigating the beginnings of our respective careers. This blog will be a way for us to crystallise initial thoughts, test out ideas, capture streams of consciousness and have somewhere to write anything that doesn’t necessarily fit into our formal research. So expect reviews, opinion pieces, notes, personal insights, and maybe even the beginnings of what might turn into future conference papers, essays or articles. Returning to Volumnia’s words from Coriolanus once again: by putting our thoughts and ideas into action, we hope to give them clarity and precision.
Gemma Kate Allred is a doctoral researcher at the University of Neuchâtel. Her PhD considers how Shakespeare is sold, and how paratexts enhance (or detract from) meaning, focussing particularly on 1960–2020 in conversation with 1660–1720.
Balancing research with motherhood, Gemma has a side interest in Shakespeare for young people. She has a forthcoming article in Shakespeare Survey 73, titled ‘Who’s there?’: Britain’s 21st Century Obsession with Celebrity Hamlet (2008–2018).
Ben Broadribb is a doctoral researcher at The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. His thesis is focussed upon twenty-first century screen adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare, and how they create cultural artefacts of the times in which they were made.
Ben is more widely interested in the moving image — film, television, and online — and the broader social and cultural sensibility of the twenty-first century, particularly metamodernism. He has presented papers at the British Shakespeare Association Conference in Belfast in 2018, the Association of Adaptation Studies Conference in Brno in 2019, and the Shakespeare On Screen Congress in Montpellier in 2019.
