Liminal hypotext‐hypertext relations in selected Shakespearean prequels, sequels and gap-fillers

Abstract

Liminality is inherent in the adaptation process situated ‘in-between’. Proposing the ‘biological’ concept of symbiosis, David Cowart distinguishes between the ‘host’ and the ‘guest’ text. Symbiosis as a shape-shifting concept involves a two-directional adaptation process, an ‘epistemic dialogue’, where interest is in how the later text’s meaning is produced in relation to the earlier and how the overall production of meaning is affected by the hypertext. To obliterate the lines of influence, temporal distance, privilege and importance, it is possible to conceive of the relation between hypotext and the hypertextual ‘attachment’ as rhizomatic and thus to locate the ‘hypertext product’ in a region where historical genealogies either no longer matter or need to be seriously reconceptualized The article discusses the hypotext‐hypertext relations in a selection of modern and postmodern adaptations by Maurice Baring, Gordon Bottomley, WTG and Elaine Feinstein and Linda Bamber, as ‘symbiotic attachments’ or rhizomatic developments whose relationship with the Shakespearean text, or rather ‘aggregate’ can be variously defined in narrative terms. I argue that texts located in the position of prologues, epilogues or separately published ‘letters’ ‐ defined as prequels, sequels or gap-fillers and often pointing to an ontological or temporal elsewhere ‐ can be variously defined as elements of the main text, metatexts masquerading as paratexts or framing borders and that they function as generators of meaning.