ABSTRACT
The “Year of Shakespeare” website documents productions of Shakespeare’s plays and Shakespeare related shows from across the globe. Click on a continent on the map – Asia, Africa, Oceania, Europe, North and South America – and you can check out any of the more than seventy productions staged in the U.K. in 2012, in what was billed as “the biggest intercultural Shakespeare festival the world has ever seen” (“Year of Shakespeare” n.d.). So, for example, Henry VI, Part I , came from Serbia, Part II from Albania, and Part III from Macedonia. There was an Argentinian Henry IV, Part II , a Brazilian Romeo and Juliet. A Midsummer Night’s Dream from South Korea and a Richard II from Palestine further illustrated the extent of the penetration of Global Shakespeare. Each country appropriated the plays as they related to their own culture. Among the European nations, however, one was significantly missing: there was no production from Ireland. English-speaking Ireland, Britain’s oldest colony and nearest neighbor, has had an uneasy relationship with Shakespeare in modern times. The aim of this chapter is to examine the history of that relationship in the century since 1916, when Ireland’s definitive movement towards independence began. How have Irish theater practitioners negotiated with Shakespeare and how far have Irish productions succeeded in making the plays their own? To understand this story, it is necessary to look at the initial colonial context and then a number of productions in successive periods since the establishment of the Free State in 1922.
