Shakespeare's Original Stage Conditions and their Afterlives across the Globe

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.

Yu Jin Ko is Professor of English at Wellesley College, USA. His research centers on Shakespeare, with a focus on performance, and a more recent emphasis on Shakespeare in production across the globe, especially in the East. Previous publications include Mutability and Division on Shakespeare’s Stage (2004), and the co-edited collection Shakespeare’s Sense of Character: On the Page and From the Stage (2012).