ABSTRACT
Shakespeare is a proper noun naming a collection of privileged signifiers, but to perform and study Shakespeare is to engage with the notion of “others within.” Historically, Shakespeare’s name and works have been integrated as the “other” within many significant world cinematic and theatrical traditions. Shakespeare has become something that is both part of a local performance tradition and at the same time a usefully alien presence to inspire new works, as evidenced by James Ivory’s 1965 film Shakespeare Wallah, which follows a traveling troupe of English actors performing Shakespeare in India. Shakespeare is both an icon that is familiar enough in local contexts for dramaturgical purposes and a stubbornly foreign presence that can be called upon for political agendas. Another example is Shakespeare in Germany. As Andreas Höfele’s latest book shows, there has been a strong identification of the German “national character” with Hamlet since the 1840s (2016: ix). Yet the vitality of this recurring motif depends crucially on the fact that Shakespeare remains a non-German voice, an other within. The “split between the official German and its discontents” constantly points to Hamlet as a foreign ghost that stalks and aids the battlements of the formation of German identity (Höfele 2016: 2).
