The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Interface

The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Interface provides a ground-breaking investigation into media-specific spaces where Shakespeare is experienced. While such operations may be largely invisible to the average reader or viewer, the interface properties of books, screens, and stages profoundly mediate our cognitive engagement with Shakespeare.

This volume considers contemporary debates and questions including how mobile devices mediate the experience of Shakespeare; the impact of rapidly evolving virtual reality technologies and the interface architectures which condition Shakespearean plays; and how design elements of hypertext, menus, and screen navigation operate within internet Shakespeare spaces. Charting new frontiers, this diverse collection delivers fresh insight into human–computer interaction and user-experience theory, cognitive ecology, and critical approaches such as historical phenomenology. This volume also highlights the application of media and interface design theory to questions related to the medium of the play and its crucial interface with the body and mind.

Clifford Werier is Professor of English at Mount Royal University, Canada. His recent publications investigate time across media in Shakespearean jokes and the application of meme theory to the spread of contagious ideas in Coriolanus. He is the co-editor of Shakespeare and Consciousness (2016) and is the interface team leader on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online project.

Paul Budra is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He has published six books and numerous articles on early modern drama and contemporary popular culture. He is the director of SFU Publications and a past president of the Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society.