Global Shakespeares – serie

Many people today first encounter staged Shakespeare in an open-air setting. This book traces the history of open-air Shakespeares in Australia to investigate why the anomaly of adapting 400-year old plays under Australian skies exerts such a strong appeal.

This essay collection examines the Shakespearian culture of Cold War Europe - Germany, France, UK, USSR, Poland, Spain and Hungary - from 1947/8 to the end of the 1970s. Written by international Shakespearians who are also scholars of the Cold War, the essays assembled here consider representative events, productions and performances as cultural politics, international diplomacy and sites of memory, and show how they inform our understanding of the political, economic, even military, dynamics of the post-war global order. The volume explores the political and cultural function of Shakespearian celebration and commemoration, but it also acknowledges the conflicts they generated across the European Cold War ‘theatre’, examining the impact of Cold War politics on Shakespearian performance, criticism and scholarship. Drawing on archival material, and presenting its sources both in their original language and in translation, it offers historically and theoretically nuanced accounts of Shakespeare’s international significance in the divided world of Cold War Europe, and its legacy today.

Since the turn of the millennium, the Arabian Peninsula has produced a remarkable series of adaptations of Shakespeare. These include a 2007 production of Much Ado About Nothing, set in Kuwait in 1898; a 2011 performance in Sharjah of Macbeth, set in 9th-century Arabia; a 2013 Yemeni adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, in which the Shylock figure is not Jewish; and Hamlet, Get Out of My Head, a one-man show about an actor’s fraught response to the Danish prince, which has been touring the cities of Saudi Arabia since 2014.This groundbreaking study surveys the surprising history of Shakespeare on the Arabian Peninsula, situating the current flourishing of Shakespearean performance and adaptation within the region’s complex, cosmopolitan, and rapidly changing socio-political contexts. Through first-hand performance reviews, interviews, and analysis of resources in Arabic and English, this volume brings to light the ways in which local theatremakers, students, and scholars use Shakespeare to address urgent regional issues like authoritarianism, censorship, racial discrimination and gender inequality.

This volume considers the linguistic complexities associated with Shakespeare’s presence in South Africa from 1801 to early twentieth-first century televisual updatings of the texts as a means of exploring individual and collective forms of identity. A case study approach demonstrates how Shakespeare’s texts are available for ideologically driven linguistic programs. Seeff introduces the African Theatre, Cape Town, in 1801, multilingual site of the first recorded performance of a Shakespeare play in Southern Africa where rival, amateur theatrical groups performed in turn, in English, Dutch, German, and French. Chapter 3 offers three vectors of a broadening Shakespeare diaspora in English, Afrikaans, and Setswana in the second half of the nineteenth century. Chapter 4 analyses André Brink’s Kinkels innie Kabel, a transposition of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors into Kaaps, as a radical critique of apartheid’s obsession with linguistic and ethnic purity. Chapter 5 investigates John Kani’s performance of Othello as a Xhosa warrior chief with access to the ancient tradition of Xhosa storytellers. Shakespeare in Mzansi, a televisual miniseries uses black actors, vernacular languages, and local settings to Africanize Macbeth and reclaim a cross-cultural, multilingualism. An Afterword assesses the future of Shakespeare in a post-rainbow, decolonizing South Africa.  Global ShaAny reader interested in Shakespeare Studies, global Shakespeare, Shakespeare in performance, Shakespeare and appropriation, Shakespeare and language, Literacy Studies, race, and South African cultural history will be drawn to this book.

This book offers fresh, critical insights into Shakespeare in Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. It recognises that Shakespeare in East Asian education is not confined to the classroom or lecture hall but occurs on diverse stages. It covers multiple aspects of education: policy, pedagogy, practice, and performance. Beyond researchers in these areas, this book is for those teaching and learning Shakespeare in the region, those teaching and learning English as an Additional Language anywhere in the world, and those making educational policies, resources, or theatre productions with young people in East Asia.

This book offers fresh, critical insights into Shakespeare in Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. It recognises that Shakespeare in East Asian education is not confined to the classroom or lecture hall but occurs on diverse stages. It covers multiple aspects of education: policy, pedagogy, practice, and performance. Beyond researchers in these areas, this book is for those teaching and learning Shakespeare in the region, those teaching and learning English as an Additional Language anywhere in the world, and those making educational policies, resources, or theatre productions with young people in East Asia.

Shakespeare in Cuba: Caliban’s Books explores how Shakespeare is consumed and appropriated in Cuba. It contributes to the underrepresented field of Latin American Shakespeares by applying the lens of cultural anthropophagy, a theory with Latin American roots, to explore how Cuban artists ingest and transform Shakespeare’s plays. By consuming these works and incorporating them into Cuban culture and literature, Cuban writers make the plays their own while also nourishing the source texts and giving Shakespeare a new afterlife.

Shakespeare in Cuba: Caliban’s Books explores how Shakespeare is consumed and appropriated in Cuba. It contributes to the underrepresented field of Latin American Shakespeares by applying the lens of cultural anthropophagy, a theory with Latin American roots, to explore how Cuban artists ingest and transform Shakespeare’s plays. By consuming these works and incorporating them into Cuban culture and literature, Cuban writers make the plays their own while also nourishing the source texts and giving Shakespeare a new afterlife.

Shakespeare’s tragedies have been performed in the Sinophone world for over two centuries. Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear are three of the most frequently adapted plays. They have been re-imagined as political theatre, comedic parody, Chinese opera, avant-garde theatre, and experimental theatre in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan. This ground-breaking anthology features the first English translations of seven influential adaptations from 1987 to 2007 across a number of traditional and modern performance genres in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei. Each of the book's three sections offers a pair of two contrasting versions of each tragedy - in two distinct genres - for comparative analysis. This anthology is an indispensable tool for the teaching and research of Sinophone theatre's engagement with Western classics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Shakespeare’s tragedies have been performed in the Sinophone world for over two centuries. Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear are three of the most frequently adapted plays. They have been re-imagined as political theatre, comedic parody, Chinese opera, avant-garde theatre, and experimental theatre in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan. This ground-breaking anthology features the first English translations of seven influential adaptations from 1987 to 2007 across a number of traditional and modern performance genres in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei. Each of the book's three sections offers a pair of two contrasting versions of each tragedy - in two distinct genres - for comparative analysis. This anthology is an indispensable tool for the teaching and research of Sinophone theatre's engagement with Western classics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Allusions to Shakespeare haunt our contemporary culture in a myriad of ways, whether through brief references or sustained intertextual engagements. Shakespeare’s plays and motifs have been appropriated in fragmentary forms onstage and onscreen since motion pictures were invented in 1893. This collection of essays extends beyond a US-UK axis to bring together an international group of scholars to explore Shakespearean appropriations in unexpected contexts in lesser-known films and television shows in India, Brazil, Russia, France, Australia, South Africa, East-Central Europe and Italy, with reference to some filmed stage works.

Allusions to Shakespeare haunt our contemporary culture in a myriad of ways, whether through brief references or sustained intertextual engagements. Shakespeare’s plays and motifs have been appropriated in fragmentary forms onstage and onscreen since motion pictures were invented in 1893. This collection of essays extends beyond a US-UK axis to bring together an international group of scholars to explore Shakespearean appropriations in unexpected contexts in lesser-known films and television shows in India, Brazil, Russia, France, Australia, South Africa, East-Central Europe and Italy, with reference to some filmed stage works.

Digital Shakespeares from the Global South re-directs current conversations on digital appropriations of Shakespeare away from its Anglo-American bias. The individual essays examine digital Shakespeares from South Africa, India, and Latin America, addressing questions of accessibility and the digital divide. This book will be of interest to students and academics working on Shakespeare, adaptation studies, digital humanities, and media studies.Included in this volume, the chapter on “Finding and Accessing Shakespeare Scholarship in the Global South: Digital Research and Bibliography” by Heidi Craig and Laura Estill is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This edited collection brings together scholars from across the world, including France, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Japan, the USA and India, to offer a truly international perspective on the global reception of Shakespeare’s Sonnets from the 18th century to the present. Global Shakespeare has never been so local and familiar as it is today. The translation, appropriation and teaching of Shakespeare’s plays across the world have been the subject of much important recent work in Shakespeare studies, as have the ethics of Shakespeare’s globalization. Within this discussion, however, the Sonnets are often overlooked. This book offers a new global history of the Sonnets, including the first substantial study of their translation and of their performance in theatre, music and film. It will appeal to anyone interested in the reception of the Sonnets, and of Shakespeare across the world.

This edited collection brings together scholars from across the world, including France, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Japan, the USA and India, to offer a truly international perspective on the global reception of Shakespeare’s Sonnets from the 18th century to the present. Global Shakespeare has never been so local and familiar as it is today. The translation, appropriation and teaching of Shakespeare’s plays across the world have been the subject of much important recent work in Shakespeare studies, as have the ethics of Shakespeare’s globalization. Within this discussion, however, the Sonnets are often overlooked. This book offers a new global history of the Sonnets, including the first substantial study of their translation and of their performance in theatre, music and film. It will appeal to anyone interested in the reception of the Sonnets, and of Shakespeare across the world.

This book brings together two separate fields by combining a study of Shakespeare's original stage conditions with an exploration of his plays in performance across the globe. The book contributes new insights into how early-modern stage conditions shaped the writing, production, and reception of Shakespeare's plays, but takes the further step of examining how original stage conditions re-emerge, not only in Globe replicas like the London Globe, but in unexpected and sometimes unconscious reconfigurations in adaptations and productions from around the world: film versions of Othello from Mexico to India that take dancing cues and anxieties about dance from the play and centralize dance; Korean adaptations for the madang (or yard) that reimagine Shakespeare's theatrical spaces and their relationships to audiences; Noh re-imaginings on film and onstage that foreground the theatrical; a teen film remake of Othello that raises questions about how blackness is figured today and on Shakespeare's stage, among others. By studying original stage conditions and their global afterlives, the book illuminates how global productions negotiate historical and cultural differences and thereby, paradoxically, engage with the cultural specificities of the present.

This book brings together two separate fields by combining a study of Shakespeare's original stage conditions with an exploration of his plays in performance across the globe. The book contributes new insights into how early-modern stage conditions shaped the writing, production, and reception of Shakespeare's plays, but takes the further step of examining how original stage conditions re-emerge, not only in Globe replicas like the London Globe, but in unexpected and sometimes unconscious reconfigurations in adaptations and productions from around the world: film versions of Othello from Mexico to India that take dancing cues and anxieties about dance from the play and centralize dance; Korean adaptations for the madang (or yard) that reimagine Shakespeare's theatrical spaces and their relationships to audiences; Noh re-imaginings on film and onstage that foreground the theatrical; a teen film remake of Othello that raises questions about how blackness is figured today and on Shakespeare's stage, among others. By studying original stage conditions and their global afterlives, the book illuminates how global productions negotiate historical and cultural differences and thereby, paradoxically, engage with the cultural specificities of the present.

This book critically examines the forces and events that led to Shakespeare performance becoming an important part of the contemporary Malawian cultural and educational landscape. It brings together archive material, interviews, existing literature and practice as research to understand, examine and interrogate theories of ‘intercultural theatre’ and post-colonial theories, to highlight the unique practice of Shakespeare production in Malawi. A timeline of Shakespeare productions in Malawi is included, spanning the colonialist period through to the present day. The book explores local adaptations of As You Like It and Macbeth and the translation into Chichewa of Romeo and Juliet, providing a unique insight into the practice and methodologies of Malawian Shakespeare translation, including the role of women as performers and artists. It looks at the current state of drama and theatre in Malawi and what the future of Shakespeare in Malawi might look like.

This book critically examines the forces and events that led to Shakespeare performance becoming an important part of the contemporary Malawian cultural and educational landscape. It brings together archive material, interviews, existing literature and practice as research to understand, examine and interrogate theories of ‘intercultural theatre’ and post-colonial theories, to highlight the unique practice of Shakespeare production in Malawi. A timeline of Shakespeare productions in Malawi is included, spanning the colonialist period through to the present day. The book explores local adaptations of As You Like It and Macbeth and the translation into Chichewa of Romeo and Juliet, providing a unique insight into the practice and methodologies of Malawian Shakespeare translation, including the role of women as performers and artists. It looks at the current state of drama and theatre in Malawi and what the future of Shakespeare in Malawi might look like.

This edited collection explores the mediation between languages, cultures and people that occurs when Shakespeare is translated - in multiple senses - and who is included and excluded in the process. It features contributions from emerging and established critical and creative writers, who offer analysis of a wide range of global cases, spanning Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, as well as Europe and North America. The collection covers numerous languages, both spoken and written (including Dutch, Mandarin, Spanish, Tamil and Welsh), and visual (American Sign Language), and their uses across various multimodal contexts, from page and stage to film dubbing, radio plays and Netflix shows, and from classrooms to refugee camps.

This edited collection gathers contributions by Shakespeare scholars from a wide range of countries, both European and non-European, representing many different cultures. It is divided into three sections: Asia, Europe, and the Americas, which explore the challenges involved in rendering Macbeth interesting and relevant in diverse cultural conditions and some of the ways in which these challenges are faced. The collection demonstrates the extraordinarily wide appeal of the play and the way in which its core elements continuously lend themselves to new interpretation.

Adopting a cultural materialist reading in the post-colonial context of Hong Kong, this book examines post-1997 Hong Kong Shakespeare that comments on the identity of the city through staging sinicized, aestheticized and socio-politicised versions of the plays. The introduction contextualizes Hong Kong’s position on the current intellectual map of Asian Shakespeare, arguing that Hong Kong Shakespeare has quite distinctive characteristics compared with those in mainland China and Taiwan. The book highlights six Shakespearean adaptations in Hong Kong staged after 1997, which include Richard Ho’s Hamlet: Sword of Vengeance, Tang Shu-wing’s Titus Andronicus 2.0 and Macbeth, Hardy Tsoi’s Julius Caesar and Shamshuipo Lear, and Jimmy Lee’s Post-The Taming of the Shrew. Sandwiched between the colonial and the postcolonial, Hong Kong Shakespeare generates an independent narrative through struggle and cultural negotiation.

Shakespeare was a vital rallying point for the 4,500 British internees held at the Ruhleben Camp (near Berlin) for the duration of World War I. This book now makes the internees speak through their engagement with Shakespeare. To do so, it examines in detail the collection of plays and poems in the camp library, analyses the surviving Shakespeare lectures at the camp school, and studies the multiple ways in which he was actively read, performed, cited, and rewritten by the internees.Shakespeare Behind Barbed Wire reconstructs the first Shakespeare production of As You Like It in 1915 as a window on the camp theatre, its day-to-day practices, its directors, and their artistic views, as well as the divergent tastes of the audiences. The premiere of As You Like It started a theatre war bringing to the fore the internees’ deepest ambitions and frustrations, but the men’s differences did not affect the success of their Shakespeare Tercentenary festival in 1916. The men now displayed a great sense of unity, but as Hoenselaars argues, this attractive image fashioned by the sources should be recognized as part of a complex bilateral propaganda campaign. Exhaustively drawing on formal camp archives, the internees’ diaries, their letters and creative writing, as well as the Ruhleben story that was fashioned in the camp’s numerous magazines and in the press worldwide, Shakespeare Behind Barbed Wire for the first time reconstructs the profoundly individual side to Ruhleben’s Shakespearean culture in both its local and global contexts, and grants the internees a unique voice that had remained silent for over a century.

Shakespeare was vital to the survival of the 4,500 British internees at the Ruhleben Camp (near Berlin), for the duration of World War I. Shakespeare Behind Barbed Wire, Volume II, studies the activity at Ruhleben following the Tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death in 1916. Its focus remains on group behaviour, but it also devotes ample attention to personal engagement and a number of notable individual achievements involving Shakespeare and early modern drama. In 1916, Michael Pease directed Francis Beaumont’s Knight of the Burning Pestle. Cecil Duncan Jones experimented with scenes from Shakespeare in modern dress, but also staged Everyman. In 1917, Archibald Welland mounted The Merry Wives of Windsor, which offers us new insights into four years of drag performances at Ruhleben. This second volume also takes a detailed look at the prominent Shakespearean Alois Brandl, whose unflattering relations with Ruhleben – his treatment of British staff at Berlin’s Humboldt University, and his linguistic research on the camp’s internees – have been ignored. For the first time it also studies the internees’ transfer from Ruhleben to The Hague in 1918, where they founded a British Theatre for Shakespeare and other canonical drama. The men’s intense engagement with Shakespeare, which formed part of their imagined community spirit at Ruhleben, generally declined on their return to Britain. Exhaustively drawing on camp archives, the internees’ diaries, their letters and creative writing, as well as the Ruhleben story as it was fashioned in its numerous magazines and in the press worldwide, Shakespeare Behind Barbed Wire reconstructs the profoundly individual side to Ruhleben’s rich Shakespearean life. In both its local and global contexts, this work grants the internees a unique voice that had remained silent for over a century.