Shakespeare in Iran

Abstract

Until relatively recently, the performance-history of Shakespeare’s plays in Iran had been identified as one of the “archival silences” in the field of Global Shakespeare studies. As this chapter will demonstrate, this “silence” did not represent an absence of the plays in Iran but was rather the combination of linguistic barriers and the limited access and travel restrictions that have existed (and to varying degrees still exist) between Iran and many Anglophone countries, in particular the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The increase in scholarship on this subject in the last decade and the growing digitization of archives and recordings of theater performances has revealed not only that Iran has a history of performing Shakespeare’s plays that dates back to 1879 but that his works continue to be among the most frequently performed plays in Iran as of the time of writing. This chapter provides a chronological outline of the performance-history of Shakespeare’s plays in Iranian theatre, film, and television. A summary of performances that have been staged by theater practitioners of the Iranian diaspora is also included. Finally, the chapter concludes with an overview of the translation history of Shakespeare’s works into Farsi (Persian).