Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation

The 2012 London Olympics ushered in a new era of global Shakespearean appropriation. The Globe-to-Globe festival, held in conjunction with the Olympics, brought theater companies from many parts of the world to the United Kingdom to perform Shakespeare in their own languages (“37 plays in 37 languages”). Globe-to-Globe suggested the ethical aspirations of such ambitious Shakespearean events as well as their conflicts and contradictions. Self-conscious about international politics and the guilty pleasure of festive cosmopolitanism, Globe-to-Globe’s website promised that the festival “will be a carnival of stories,” including inspirational ones of the companies “who work underground and in war zones.” 1 By giving expression to marginalized, oppressed, and disenfranchised cultural voices, Shakespeare becomes a vehicle of empowerment, an agent to foster the multicultural good. Yet the global reach of this festival and others of its kind also invites pressing questions: How does Shakespeare make other cultures legible to Anglo-American audiences? What does it entail for the British media to judge touring productions of Shakespeare from around the world? What roles do non-Western identities, aesthetics, and idioms play in the rise of Shakespearean cinema and theater as global genres? To what extent do non-Western Shakespeare productions act as fetishized commodities in the global marketplace? Shakespearean celebrations on an international scale continue through the decade, tied to the landmark years of 2014 (the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth) and 2016 (the 400th