Managerial Shakespeare and TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

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Published: Jun 30, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/lincu-2023-1-0322
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Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida management value prestige

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Ángel-Luis Pujante
University of Murcia, Spain
Keith Gregor
University of Murcia, Spain

Abstract

From the 1990s a new development has taken place within the framework of ‘Shakespeare in popular culture’, and more specifically of so-called ‘Self-help Shakespeare’, namely what Douglas Lanier has termed ‘the Shakespeare corporate-management manual’. What underlies them all is the notion that, if Shakespeare is famous for portraying universal human nature, he has a good deal to teach the world of business and management. To this effect, they provide quotations and discussions of a number of plays, particularly Henry V, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice. The value and usefulness of these manuals have been contested, but they could also be objected to as regards the scant attention paid to some other Shakespearean plays, such as Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida. It is our contention that, if we were to accept and follow the logic and aims of their authors, Troilus and Cressida could be at least as relevant to business and management as those other plays. This is so not only in its implications for managerial leadership and decision-making, but also on the grounds of more abstract but applicable notions of value and marketability, which are both defended —and opposed— in the play. This paper will seek to explain these notions both in an early-modern context and in their possible relevance to modern entrepreneurial activity.

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How to Cite
Pujante, Ángel-L. ., and K. Gregor. “Managerial Shakespeare and TROILUS AND CRESSIDA”. Linguaculture, vol. 14, no. 1, June 2023, pp. 83-100, doi:10.47743/lincu-2023-1-0322.
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Vol. 14 No. 1 (2023): In Honorem Professor Michael Hattaway
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Articles
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Author Biographies

Ángel-Luis Pujante, University of Murcia, Spain

Ángel-Luis Pujante.  Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Murcia, he has written mainly on English Renaissance drama (Middleton and Shakespeare) and literary translation. He has co-edited, among others, Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe (with Ton Hoenselaars, 2003), Shakespeare in Spain. An Annotated Bilingual Bibliography (with Juan Francisco Cerdá, 2014), ‘Romeo y Julieta’ en España: las versiones neoclásicas (2017) and ‘Otelo’ en España: la versión neoclásica y las obras relacionadas (2020, both with Keith Gregor), and has published Shakespeare llega a España. Ilustración y Romanticismo (2019), a critical study of the early reception of Shakespeare in Spain. His main current area of research is the reception of Shakespeare in Spain and Europe. From 2000 to 2008 he was the head of the research Project ‘The presence of Shakespeare in Spain in the Framework of Europe Culture’, in which he still collaborates. He is honorary president of ESRA.

Keith Gregor, University of Murcia, Spain

Keith Gregor teaches English and Comparative Literature at the University of Murcia, Spain. He has published widely on Shakespeare’s reception in Europe, especially Spain, with articles in journals such as Shakespeare Quarterly, Multicutural Shakespeare, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, SEDERI, Comparative Drama, and chapters in books such as Shakespeare's History Plays: Translation and Adaptation in Britain and Abroad (CUP, 2004), Shakespeare and European Politics (U. Delaware P., 2008), Shakespeare in Cold War Europe: Conflict, Commemoration, Celebration (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and Migrating Shakespeare: First European Encounters, Routes, and Networks (Arden Shakespeare, 2021). With Ángel-Luis Pujante he has edited the first Spanish versions of Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Othello, and with Juan F. Cerdá and Dirk Delabastita, Romeo and Juliet in European Culture (2017) for the ‘Shakespeare in European Culture’ series, published by John Benjamins. He has also published the monograph Shakespeare in the Spanish Theatre, 1772 to the Present (Continuum, 2010) and edited the collection Shakespeare and Tyranny: Regimes of Reading in Europe and Beyond (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). For the last two decades he has been a member and sometime head of the ‘The Reception of Shakespeare’s Work in Spanish and European Culture’ project at the University of Murcia.

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