Shakespeare In Cold War Europe

This essay collection examines the Shakespearian culture of Cold War Europe - Germany, France, UK, USSR, Poland, Spain and Hungary - from 1947/8 to the end of the 1970s. Written by international Shakespearians who are also scholars of the Cold War, the essays assembled here consider representative events, productions and performances as cultural politics, international diplomacy and sites of memory, and show how they inform our understanding of the political, economic, even military, dynamics of the post-war global order. The volume explores the political and cultural function of Shakespearian celebration and commemoration, but it also acknowledges the conflicts they generated across the European Cold War ‘theatre’, examining the impact of Cold War politics on Shakespearian performance, criticism and scholarship. Drawing on archival material, and presenting its sources both in their original language and in translation, it offers historically and theoretically nuanced accounts of Shakespeare’s international significance in the divided world of Cold War Europe, and its legacy today.

This essay collection examines the Shakespearian culture of Cold War Europe - Germany, France, UK, USSR, Poland, Spain and Hungary - from 1947/8 to the end of the 1970s. Written by international Shakespearians who are also scholars of the Cold War, the essays assembled here consider representative events, productions and performances as cultural politics, international diplomacy and sites of memory, and show how they inform our understanding of the political, economic, even military, dynamics of the post-war global order. The volume explores the political and cultural function of Shakespearian celebration and commemoration, but it also acknowledges the conflicts they generated across the European Cold War ‘theatre’, examining the impact of Cold War politics on Shakespearian performance, criticism and scholarship. Drawing on archival material, and presenting its sources both in their original language and in translation, it offers historically and theoretically nuanced accounts of Shakespeare’s international significance in the divided world of Cold War Europe, and its legacy today.

A lively collection of essays from scholars from across Europe, North America and Australia. The book ranges from Shakespeare's use of manuals on war written for the sixteenth-century English public by an English mercenary, to reflections on the ways in which Shakespeare has been represented in Nazi Germany, wartime Denmark, or cold war Romania.

Geopolitical Shakespeare: Western Entanglements from Internationalism to Cold War examines the entanglement of Shakespearean culture in the geopolitical dynamics of the post-war West. Taking its cue from a speech given by Albert Einstein in London in 1933, in which Shakespeare is cited as an example of the Western value of personal and intellectual freedom, this book explores a series of events between 1945 and 1955 featuring key historical figures--scientists, international lawyers, diplomats and politicians, writers, actors, and filmmakers--who experienced the tensions of the early Cold War through Shakespeare, or called on him to articulate this new post-war world. Erica Sheen examines political, diplomatic, cultural, and economic interactions within 'core' Western power relations--the USA, UK, and Europe, with particular reference to Germany--in which Shakespeare, or the idea of Shakespeare, was entangled in the struggle for new ideas and social structures. The subjects of this book include John Humphrey and the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Nuremberg Trials and the foundation of West Germany; Noel Annan and the Berlin Elizabethan Festival; an American production of Hamlet in Elsinore; Laurence Olivier, David Selznick, and the Shakespeare film in post-war Hollywood; Graham Greene and The Third Man; and Carl Schmitt and Salvador de Madariaga on Hamlet in post-war Europe. In each of these case studies, Sheen discovers a Shakespeare for our time: engaged in contestations of territoriality in cultures of international law and human rights, theatre, film, and literature.

Shakespeare, Dissent and the Cold War is the first book to read Shakespeare's drama through the lens of Cold War politics. The book uses the Cold War experience of dissenting artists in theatre and film to highlight the coded religio-political subtexts in Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth and The Winter's Tale.

Shakespeare and Crisis: One hundred years of Italian narratives explores how Shakespeare intervened in the Italian socio-political and cultural scene between his third and fourth centenaries, at times which were manifestly perceived as ‘critical’. It asks which complex mythopoietic processes contributed to shaping regimes of reading Shakespeare in response to those times of crisis. Crises of national identity during the Great War and the Fascist regime, crises of history in the 1970s, and crises of representation in the second half of the twentieth century extending into the new millennium constitute the three main areas of a discussion that ultimately aims at probing into the role of literature at times of crisis. The volume situates itself at the juncture of European Shakespeare studies and studies of Shakespeare and Italy. It addresses essential questions about the position of literature in society, offering at different levels new insights for scholars, students, and the general reader.

Shakespeare is the national poet of many nations besides his own, though a peculiarly subversive one in both east and west. This volume contains a score of essays by scholars from Britain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Poland, Romania, Spain, Ukraine and the USA, written to show how the momentous changes of 1989 were mirrored in the way Shakespeare has been interpreted and produced. The collection offers a valuable record of what Shakespeare has meant in the modern world and some pointers to what he may mean in the future.

From the aftermath of World War II to the convulsions of Brexit, festivals have deployed Shakespeare as a model of inclusive and progressive theatre to seek cultural solutions to Europe's multi-faceted crises. Shakespeare on European Festival Stages is the first book to chart Shakespeare's presence at continental European festivals. It examines the role these festivals play in European socio-cultural exchanges, and the impact festivals make on the wider production and circulation of staged Shakespeare across the continent. This collection offers authoritative, lively and informed accounts of the production of Shakespeare at the following festivals: the Avignon Festival and Le Printemps des comédiens in Montpellier (France), the Almagro festival (Spain), Shakespeare at Four Castles (Czech Republic and Slovakia), the International Shakespeare Festival in Craiova (Romania), the Shakespeare festivals in Elsinore (Denmark), Gdansk (Poland), Gyula (Hungary), Itaka (Serbia), Neuss (Germany), Patalenitsa (Bulgaria), Rome and Verona (Italy). Shakespeare on European Festival Stages is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners interested in Shakespeare in performance, in translation and in a post-national Shakespeare that knows no borders and belongs to all of Europe.