Generative Shakespeare and the Problem of Value

Functioning as a critical afterword to the preceding collection, this essay examines ‘Shakespeare and AI’ as a scholarly formation and as a problem of value. Noting at the outset of the essay Brandi K. Adams's discovery of the phrase ‘artificiall intelligence’ in John Harvey's 1588 A discoursiue probleme, it cautions against an emerging critical narrative where generative AI is seen as the inevitable culmination of the promises of early modernity, and where ‘Shakespeare’ in particular is enlisted to authorise and institutionalise the technology. It further considers the politics of Shakespearean subfield formation, arguing that the yoking of ‘Shakespeare’ to a second term cannot be seen as a neutral or disinterested act. In doing so, it names ‘axiological incoherence’ – which I define as the absence of a shared account of the values that motivate inquiry into a common object – as a constitute feature of ‘Shakespeare and AI’ in its present form.