Contextualizing the duo's work within British comedy, Shakespeare criticism, the history of sexuality, and their own historical moment, this book offers the first sustained analysis of the 20th Century's most successful double-act. Over the course of a forty-four-year career (1940-1984), Eric Morecambe & Ernie Wise appropriated snippets of verse, scenes, and other elements from seventeen of Shakespeare's plays more than one-hundred-and-fifty times. Fashioning a kinder, more inclusive world, they deployed a vast array of elements connected to Shakespeare, his life, and institutions. Rejecting claims that they offer only nostalgic escapism, Hamrick analyses their work within contemporary contexts, including their engagement with many forms and genres, including Variety, the heritage industry, journalism, and more. 'The Boys' deploy Shakespeare to work through issues of class, sexuality, and violence. Lesbianism, drag, gay marriage, and a queer aesthetics emerge, helping to normalize homosexuality and complicate masculinity in the 'permissive' 1960s.

Employs comic theory, rhetorical analysis, cognitive psychology and historical contextualization to recover the ways that Morecambe & Wise's humor communicated with its original audiences Situates Morecambe & Wise fully within their historical moments, demonstrating that their comedy engages the world in far more than a frivolous manner Provides a review of Shakespop criticism, outlining the ways scholars continue to evolve their analysis of the many and growing appropriations of Shakespeare Analyses Morecambe & Wise's career-long and widespread use of queer humor, situating their famed, but challenging, comic bed sketches within the larger body of their work

Autorentext
Professor Stephen Hamrick, Minnesota State University Moorhead, USA, teaches British literature, religion and literature, speculative literatures, history, and writing. In addition to work on the English Reformations and Tottel's Miscellany, Hamrick has published on George Gascoigne and Queen Elizabeth, Mary Tudor, and Lodowick Lloyd. He has edited two collections, George Gascoigne (2008) and Tottel's Songes and Sonettes in Context (2013). He is the author of The Catholic Imaginary and the Cults of Elizabeth, 1558-1582 (2009).

Inhalt

Introduction.- Section One: Morecambe & Wise Past and Present.- Chapter 1 - Transferring Variety to Television.- Chapter 2 - The Shrine of Morecambe & Wise.- Section Two: Morecambe & Wise and Shakespeare.- Chapter 3 - Shakespop.- Chapter 4 - Embodying the Bard.- Chapter 5 - At War with the Boys.- Chapter 6 - Hamlets (formerly the conclusion).- Section Three: Morecambe & Wise and Sexuality.- Chapter 7 - Impersonating Men.- Chapter 8 - Cross-Dressed Comedy.- Chapter 9 - In Bed with a Will.- Chapter 10 - Queer Shakespeare.- Conclusion.