Non-English Shakespeare

Content Group

Overview

Exploring the recreation of Shakespeare in other languages and cultures is a very rewarding experience, offering radically different perspectives and detailed re-interpretations. The transpositions begin with the challenges of translation, which have been well met in several European languages, such as German and Russian. On the other hand, creating Chinese versions is a relatively recent enterprise, complicated by a very sharply contrasting tradition of performance visible in Chinese opera, as also in Japan with the kabuki and the Noh plays. There are also severe cultural tensions such as the divergent view of the role of women, particularly as actresses, which arose in a recent production of Love’s Labour’s Lost in Afghanistan.

Some illustration of the nature of productions abroad can be captured from accessible films in electronic formats, such as those of Kozintsev in Russian and Kurosawa in Japanese. M.I.T. has recently undertaken to accumulate recordings of Asian performances of Shakespeare, available on the Internet, and YouTube offers less structured material. The national websites devoted to Shakespeare of countries such as Germany also give useful information about current productions. There have also been serious efforts world-wide to recreate performance spaces approximating to Shakespeare’s original Globe Playhouse, analogous to the that recreated in London near the theatre’s original site at Bankside, Southwark. Examples of such recreations can be found in Rome, Tokyo, Gdansk, San Diego, and Midland (Texas). Even more meaningful is the recognition or restoration of original Renaissance theatres surviving in such locations as that at Almagro, on the outskirts of Madrid, for which there are analogies in other Spanish cities such as Valencia.

Images
The Taming of the Shrew, Wolker Theatre in Prague, 1978

Pages

Bibliography

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