ABSTRACT
“Global Shakespeare” has become a common phrase in twenty-first-century academic discourse, but its meaning remains controversial and often ill-defined. From a generic, common knowledge perspective, “global” often corresponds with a notion of “national” identities, but this kind of homogenizing label can obscure relevant complexities. As Alexa Alice Joubin reminds us, for instance, “market” forces are as dominant in “Global Shakespeare” as they are in other areas of international commodification (2017). Differences in language, ethnicity, religion, and other identifying markers also undermine efforts to categorize people according to constructed political boundaries. Contested areas can be found throughout the world, as Israel, Quebec, Cyprus, and Kashmir illustrate. Although the term “Global Shakespeare” links geographical spaces with the study and performance of these plays, conventional cartographic borders do not fully encapsulate the distinctive and evolving communities that are creating and responding to Shakespeare today. Tim Cresswell astutely recognizes a frequent tendency to suggest “that particular places have singular unitary identities – New York means this, Wales means that” (Cresswell 2014: Kindle location 2503), but he rightly cautions about the reductive understanding that often results from such restrictive perspectives.
