Shakespeare in Children's Literature: Gender and Cultural Capital

Hateley (children's literature, Kansas State University) is concerned about how Shakespeare is presented to children. Not the plays and sonnets in their original form, but in the culturalization of Shakespeare, the persona. She briefly discusses the nineteenth-century popularity of the "tales from Shakespeare" in which the stories are synopsized, thereby losing the richness of the language. However, her main interest is the use of Shakespeare in twentieth century historical or time-travel novels for children in which the playwright becomes a character. She feels that these reinforce a patriarchal view of society, in which boys achieve and rebellious girls learn their secondary place. Even modern works loosely based on the plays come in for the same criticism. Hateley uses as examples redactions of Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest to make her arguments. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Erica Hateley teaches children’s and adolescent literature at Kansas State University. She has published articles about Shakespeare for children in several journals, and in the recent collection of essays To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Childhood edited by Laurie Ousley.