Introduction to Experiencing Shakespeare in Digital Environments

The Introduction to this special issue on Experiencing Shakespeare in Digital Environments illustrates the aim of the issue, namely the exploration of the new frontiers of textual and performative spaces opened up by digital media in Shakespeare Studies. The impact of the digital turn on the way we engage with Shakespeare has been investigated at length by recent scholarship. Introducing Shakespeare and the Digital World, Christie Carson and Peter Kirwan have remarked on the “mutual importance of the ‘digital’ as a context that influences the study of Shakespeare and, conversely, the importance of Shakespeare as a case study to understand the developing nature of the digital world” (2014, p. 1). Against the background of the ongoing scholarly debate, where the outcomes of digital culture and their far-reaching implications in Shakespearean studies have been examined from a variety of perspectives (Estill, Silva 2018; Gossett 2021; Greatley-Hirsch, Craig 2014; Jenstad 2018; Kidnie 2021; Massai 2021), this volume focuses on how Shakespeare is experienced today in the here and now of the cyberspace, with an eye to the specific cognitive, reading and learning abilities of so-called ‘digital natives’ (Prensky 2001, 2011; Thomas 2011)