First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Throughout his career, from the early play Love's Labour's Lost to one of his last romances, The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare was intrigued by Russia. Reciprocating that intrigue over the last few centuries, Russia, as so many other countries, has claimed Shakespeare as its own. The essays in this book represent the work of Russian and Ukrainian scholars from three different perspectives: explaining the plays to Russian audiences, discussing Russian theater for Western audiences, and dealing with contemporary criticism.

The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance is a wide-ranging, authoritative guide to research on Shakespeare and performance studies by an international team of leading scholars. It contains chapters on the key methods and questions surrounding the performance event, the audience, and the archive – the primary sources on which performance studies draws. It identifies the recurring trends and fruitful lines of inquiry that are generating the most urgent work in the field, but also contextualises these within the histories and methods on which researchers build. A central section of research-focused essays offers case studies of present areas of enquiry, from new approaches to space, bodies and language to work on the technologies of remediation and original practices, from consideration of fandoms and the cultural capital invested in Shakespeare and his contemporaries to political and ethical interventions in performance practice. A distinctive feature of the volume is a curated section focusing on practitioners, in which leading directors, writers, actors, producers, and other theatre professionals comment on Shakespeare in performance and what they see as the key areas, challenges and provocations for researchers to explore. In addition, the Handbook contains various sections that provide non-specialists with practical help: an A-Z of key terms and concepts, a guide to research methods and problems, a chronology of major publications and events, an introduction to resources for study of the field, and a substantial annotated bibliography. The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance is a reference work aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars and libraries, a guide to beginning or developing research in the field, and an essential companion for all those interested in Shakespeare and performance.

A concise guide to global performances of Shakespeare, this volume combines methodologies of dramaturgy, film and performance studies, critical race and gender studies and anthropological thick description. This companion guides students from critical methodologies through big pictures of global Shakespeare to case studies that employ these methodologies. It uses a site-specific lens to examine global performances of Shakespeare on stage, on radio and on screen. As well as featuring methodological chapters on modernist adaptations, global cinema, multilingual productions and Shakespeare in translation, the volume includes short histories of adaptations of Shakespeare in Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Arab world, India, the Slavic world, Iran, Afghanistan and the Farsi-speaking diaspora. It uses these micro-historical narratives to demonstrate the value of local knowledge by analysing the relationships between Shakespeare and his modern interlocutors. Finally, thematically organized case studies apply the methodologies to analyse key productions in Brazil, Korea, Yemen, Kuwait, China and elsewhere. The final chapter considers pedagogical strategies in a global setting. These chapters showcase the how of global Shakespeare studies: how do minoritized artists and audiences engage with Shakespeare? And how do we analyse the diverse and polyphonic performances with an eye towards equity and social justice?

Why have contemporary playwrights been obsessed by Shakespeare’s plays to such an extent that most of the canon has been rewritten by one rising dramatist or another over the last half century? Among other key figures, Edward Bond, Heiner Müller, Carmelo Bene, Arnold Wesker, Tom Stoppard, Howard Barker, Botho Strauss, Tim Crouch, Bernard Marie Koltès, and Normand Chaurette have all put their radical originality into the service of adapting four-century-old classics. The resulting works provide food for thought on issues such as Shakespearean role-playing, narrative and structural re-shuffling. Across the world, new writers have questioned the political implications and cultural stakes of repeating Shakespeare with and without a difference, finding inspiration in their own national experiences and in the different ordeals they have undergone. How have our contemporaries carried out their rewritings, and with what aims? Can we still play Hamlet, for instance, as Dieter Lesage asks in his book bearing this title, or do we have to “kill Shakespeare” as Normand Chaurette implies in a work where his own creative process is detailed? What do these rewritings really share with their sources? Are they meaningful only because of Shakespeare’s shadow haunting them? Where do we draw the lines between “interpretation,” “adaptation” and “rewriting”? The contributors to this collection of essays examine modern rewritings of Shakespeare from both theoretical and pragmatic standpoints. Key questions include: can a rewriting be meaningful without the reader’s or spectator’s already knowing Shakespeare? Do modern rewritings supplant Shakespeare’s texts or curate them? Does the survival of Shakespeare in the theatrical repertory actually depend on the continued dramatization of our difficult encounters with these potentially obsolete scripts represented by rewriting?

Studying Shakespeare’s Contemporaries is an accessible guide to non-Shakespearian English drama of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Featuring works of prestigious playwrights such as Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, and Middleton, Lars Engle describes the conditions under which Renaissance plays were commissioned, written, licensed, staged, and published. Plays are organized by theme and explored individually, creating a text that can be read as a complete overview of English Renaissance drama or used as an indexed reference resource.