ABSTRACT
Shakespearean tourism is a global phenomenon that encompasses a wide range of activities. For decades, people have spent their leisure hours watching summertime Shakespeare at such venues as the Delacorte Theatre in New York’s Central Park, tents at Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach, and street-theatre performances by companies like Brazil’s Grupo Galpão. Tourists flock in their thousands to what is often called “Shakespeare Country,” which now incorporates not just Stratford-upon-Avon but greater Warwickshire and, by extension, locales associated with the plays: Juliet’s Balcony in Verona, Denmark’s Kronborg Castle, and Scotland’s Glamis Castle. Such sites include rebuilt early modern theatres – in Argentina, Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, and the United States – that purport to replicate or evoke the spirit of Elizabethan performance spaces. Of course, tourists travel to seasonal theatre festivals in (among other countries) the Czech Republic, South Africa, Spain, Hong Kong, Belgium, Mexico, India, and Hungary that frequently stage or are dedicated to Shakespeare’s work. At larger festivals (for example, Shakespeare’s Globe; Stratford-upon-Avon; Ashland, Oregon; and Stratford, Ontario), visitors from across the globe watch performances, view exhibits of Shakespearean paraphernalia, take backstage and costume-shop tours, purchase a vast array of souvenirs, hear lectures and readings, and participate in seminars and workshops. Like most tourism, the Shakespearean variety spawns myriad secondary industries that come with travel to a destination geographically separate and experientially distinct from the visitors’ everyday home life: restaurant and spa services, accommodation, interpretation and tour guidance, advertising of further tourist opportunities, gift shops, and transportation.
