Slings & Arrows, starring Susan Coyne, Paul Gross, Don McKellar, and Mark McKinney as members of the New Burbage Theatre Festival, was heralded by television critics as one of the best shows ever produced and one of the finest depictions of life in classical theatre. Shakespeare scholars, however, have been ambivalent about the series, at times even hostile.

In Shakespeare and the World of “Slings & Arrows” Gary Kuchar situates the three-season series in its cultural and intellectual contexts. More than a roman à clef about Canada’s Stratford Festival, he shows, it is a privileged window onto major debates within Shakespeare studies and a drama that raises vital questions about the role of the arts in society. Kuchar reads the television show – ever fluctuating between faith and doubt in the power of drama – as an allegory of Peter Brook’s widely renowned account of modern theatre, The Empty Space, mirroring Brook’s distinction between holy theatre, a quasi-sacred vocation, and deadly theatre, a momentary entertainment.

Combining contextualized interpretations of the series with subtle formalist readings, Kuchar explains how Slings & Arrows participates in a broader recuperation of humanist approaches to Shakespeare in contemporary scholarship. The result is a demonstration of how and why Shakespeare continues to provide not just entertainment, but equipment for living.

Gary Kuchar is professor of English at the University of Victoria.

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“Smart, dense with allusion, and beautifully written. There is something delightful about the careful attention Kuchar pays to Slings & Arrows, but the real discovery in these pages is his trenchant critique of the contexts in which we now read, study, and perform Shakespeare. In this passionate defence of an almost comically unassuming Canadian television show, Kuchar provides us with a reassessment of the power of Shakespearean mimesis.” Patricia Badir, University of British Columbia