Shakespeare's Globe, Global Shakespeares

In this valuable study, Cecile Sandten examines a selection of transnational Shakespearean adaptations in the genres of prose, poetry and drama that have emerged within and from a postcolonial context. Scrutinising Shakespeare's appeal as a cultural phenomenon and a mainstay of the British literary canon, Sandten insightfully surveys how rewrites from Africa, the Caribbean, India and Canada engage and transform Shakespeare's plays to tackle issues of race and ethnicity, class and caste, colonial history, gender and language in their respective culturally-specific contexts. As counter-narratives that seek to redress and re-configure historical and contemporary power structures and imbalances, these adaptations rework and re-inscribe the dominant narratives of western modernity, especially with respect to the binaries of colonised/coloniser, margin/centre, servant/master, them/us. Broadly dividing these rewrites into four interlinked categories or strategic modes of Shakespearean adaptations – the "affirmation rewrite", the "writing back rewrite", the "individual rewrite" and the "mutilation rewrite", – this critical study focuses on the second and third approaches to convincingly illustrate how postcolonial writers have gradually transitioned from a "writing back" method of literary redress to a more transnational and syncretic form of literary adaptation. In this respect, Sandten perceptively elucidates how the process, and not merely product, of literary adaptation is less a one-way than a two-way exchange and of intercultural dialogue, syncretism and transformation. Offering a critically nuanced take on the issue of Shakespeare as a "global" playwright, this study of transcultural adaptations of the bard's plays in postcolonial literatures will be indispensible to students and scholars of Elizabethan and postcolonial literatures alike.