The Spirit(s) of Time: Navigating the Present through Shakespeare’s Romances in Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet

In an attempt to make sense of post-Brexit Britain, Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet (2016–2020) refashions Shakespeare as a source that speaks to contemporary sociopolitical concerns by openly alluding to and pervasively engaging with his romances. Smith reworks the specifics of Shakespeare’s plays in terms of their staging of the workings of time; the fallout from death, guilt and violence; the intersection of the supernatural and the oneiric; and the catastrophic drifts of forms of government manipulating factual truth. In this article, I suggest that the Quartet’s multilayered Shakespearean subtext works as a paradigmatic tool to reflect on the social, political and cultural trials confronting post-2016 UK. Also due to the very nature of tragicomedy, Shakespeare’s romances invite us to recognise and play experimentally with imaginable alternatives, thus strengthening our conviction that a different kind of world could actually be envisaged.