Fanfic: the 21st century afterlives of Shakespeare’s works

In the [fair] Italian city of Verona, where William Shakespeare sets his scene for Romeo and Juliet, is a little house with a balcony. The Via Cappello house boasts a bronze Juliet statue in the compound, whose right breast is touched by tourists so they can get lucky in love. One can enter the house, see the bedrooms, and stand in the balcony that Juliet would have stood in as she spoke with Romeo. The house is a testament to Shakespeare’s clout in the English speaking world. The afterlives of his works are what keep the playwright alive — apart from the colonial imposition of the language and the literature over a large part of the world by the British. The house is one example of something made by fans of Shakespeare, for fans of Shakespeare.

Another example? Fan fiction. Also called fanfic, this genre of writing is essentially people rewriting published works in ways that excite their imagination. A Taming of the Shrew fanfic might be set in the present day, with the two couples — Kate and Petruchio, Bianca and Lucentio — going on a road trip and chaos ensuing. A Hamlet fanfic might couple up Hamlet and Horatio. A King Lear fanfic might feature the same plot but with all rats instead of humans. And a Romeo and Juliet fanfic might pair up Tybalt and Mercutio as lovers, or rewrite the ending to keep the two protagonists alive. Essentially, fanfic writers are letting their imagination run wild and responding to Shakespeare’s works by treating them as prompts. By entering into this literary dialogue with the plays, these writers are interpreting and understanding Shakespeare in a way that’s unique to their contemporary time and place.

That sounds a lot like someone adapting one of the plays. How then is fanfic different from an adaptation? Works like Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 Throne of Blood (Macbeth), Gil Junger 1999 10 Things I Hate About You (Taming of the Shrew) and Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2006 Omkara (Othello), respond to Shakespeare’s works by giving the plays new settings and time periods, giving different names and contexts to the characters and changing the plot as needed. “An adaptation to Shakespeare’s works is typically seen as a formal, often commercial, reworking of his plays. Adaptations can involve shifting the time period, changing the setting or even reinterpreting the characters while still retaining a recognisable link to the original,” explains Dr Lucy Bennett, lecturer in Media Audiences at Cardiff University and cofounder of the global community Fan Studies Network.

Compared to this formal, professional treatment, fanfic is often created by amateur writers for fellow fans. This means there’s more room for experimenting and being personal and intimate with the source text. There are several communities, like Archive of Our Own (AO3) and fanficiton.net where readers can browse through thousands of works and find fanfic about the characters they love. “Online fanfic offers a way to share writing with an appreciative audience without the limitations of the publishing industry,” says Tumblr user searching4sarahtonin, who writes fanfic related to Shakespeare, among other fictional worlds. “Writers are not constrained by copyright laws regarding source material or inspiration. And we don’t have to self-censor when it comes to sexuality or avoid niche topics that might put off a wider audience,” she adds.

In this sense, fanfic allows for more artistic exploration than an official adaptation. The informality around it also allows just about anyone to start writing fanfic and become part of the community. Importantly, a study shows about AO3 demographics, more than half the fanfic community is women, and 43 per cent of the users are between ages 25 and 34. So fanfic isn’t just offering another perspective. It’s a world where young women are making their voices and opinions about Shakespeare heard. Understanding this demographic’s perspective is key to understanding how Shakespeare is perceived today, and how his legend is being shaped. For this reason, the line between fanfic and adaptations needs to be blurred more, essentially since the two are doing the same thing, except that the former doesn’t get the same formal recognition that the latter does. “Embracing fan fiction more openly could expand literary conversations and challenge the idea that only formal adaptations are legitimate creative responses to Shakespeare’s works,” says Bennett.

Fanfic is often deeply evocative and well written enough that it could just as well be published. It can be well thought out, structured and insightful, highlighting new ideas and perspectives about the existing world and its characters. It also makes space for marginalised communities to make themselves heard, since writers can change or highlight a character’s gender, sexuality and identity. Among other themes, they write about identity, mental health, social justice and the current political climate. In this sense, fanfic can be deeply important, since it often represents alternate experiences. “It’s [fanfic] a very interesting, 21st century development. It has grown with the world wide web. And it’s worth following up on,” says Dr Poonam Trivedi, retired Delhi University professor of English Literature and vice chair of The Asian Shakespeare Association. All these experiments, when amalgamated with Shakespeare, makes him more accessible to the young reader. While his language can make him intimidating and put people off, engaging with Shakespeare fanfic can breathe new life into his works and make him accessible to today’s young and discerning audiences.

“It's hard to articulate what it is about Shakespeare's plays that speaks to my heart. I love how humour and tragedy are interwoven and counterbalanced. I love how witty and clever they are, the wordplay and layered meanings. I love how the stories feel familiar, but still manage to evade and upend our expectations. I also love how imperfect they are. There are problems with all of the plays, either from a sloppy-writing perspective or from a staging or pacing perspective. There are things that are clearly just pandering to the audience and don't contribute to the story, and characters who are inconsistent. But in spite of — and I think sometimes because of their flaws, the plays are some of the most widely beloved works in all of English literature. Their imperfection makes them more human, I think, than the overly-polished standards we hold for publication today,” says searching4sarahtonin about her love for Shakespeare.

In the sense that young people use fanfic to critically engage with Shakespeare, fanfic is deserving of closer inspection by Shakespeare Studies scholars, as something worth discussing in classrooms, alongside formal adaptations. This might seem like an extreme stance to take, since Shakespeare is often considered a lone genius and fanfic a low brow, inferior form of art. But while a purist might think that these ideas would make Shakespeare turn in his grave, one can confidently guess that that would not be the case. For one, Shakespeare was the popular culture of his time. Plays were entertainment for the masses, and stood alongside other recreational options like bear baiting, a gruesome form of entertainment where a chained bear was forced to fight with one or more dogs. And while Shakespeare eventually grew in popularity, he was still very much writing for the masses.

And importantly, good writing during the period was writing that engaged with other popular literature of the time. “Most of Shakespeare’s own works are adaptations from existing stories or histories. The intellectual culture of the time encouraged people to rewrite the classics,” says Trivedi. For this reason, many scholars look at Shakespeare’s source works, recognising it as an important part of the study of Shakespeare. For instance, Romeo and Juliet was inspired by The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Iuliet, written first in Italian by Bandell, and nowe in Englishe by Ar. Br., written by Matteo Bandello and translated by Arthur Brooke. Taming of the Shrew comes from A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called The Taming of a Shrew whose authorship is unknown. And just one more example among many, Henry V comes from The famous victories of Henry the fifth: containing the honourable Battell of Agin-court: as it was plaide by thc [sic] the Queenes Maiesties Players, also by an unknown author.

“By acknowledging Shakespeare’s work as part of a long tradition of literary adaptation and transformation, we can demystify his status and situate him within the broader context of creative dialogue. Fan fiction continues this tradition by engaging in a similar process of textual poaching, expanding on and transforming pre-existing stories,” says Bennett. “Recognising this can open up a more inclusive literary conversation, where creativity is seen not as the domain of isolated "geniuses" but as something that emerges from communities of writers, both past and present,” she adds.

So Shakespeare was responding to the literature around him. He was writing to entertain the masses. And he was brilliant enough that today, he has become a symbol of elitism to many. Over time, slowly but surely, Shakespeare was put on a pedestal, marked a sole genius, disconnected from his context and made inaccessible. But fanfic is in the spirit of Shakespeare in the sense that it’s responding to the literature around it. It’s by the people, for the people. It’s aligning Shakespeare with contemporary settings and issues. It’s addressing the issues of the day. And in this way, it’s making Shakespeare accessible again.