Abstract
Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear stand out as the most frequently and creatively adapted tragedies in more than two centuries of Sinophone performances of Western classics. Between 1987 (when Deng Xiaoping reaffirmed “socialist market economy” as the guiding principle of China’s development and when Taiwan’s martial law was lifted) and 2007 (when the first competitive Chief Executive election changed Hong Kong’s political culture), these three tragedies were staged in multiple traditional and modern performance genres in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Examining how circulations of these texts reach into performance forms and change their meanings from the inside, the introductory chapter reveals the connections between distinctive and often conflicting interpretations of these plays.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Jason McGrath, Postsocialist Modernity Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in the Market Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 25.
- 2.
Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, Literary Culture in Taiwan: Martial Law to Market Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); David Blundell, ed., Taiwan since Martial Law: Society, Culture, Politics, Economy (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2012).
- 3.
Alexa Alice Joubin, “Afterword: Towards a Regional Methodology of Culture,” Disseminating Shakespeare in the Nordic Countries: Shifting Centres and Peripheries in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Nely Keinänen and Per Sivefors (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2022), 291–296.
- 4.
Rita Felski and Susan Stanford Friedman, Introduction. Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses, ed. Rita Felski and Susan Stanford Friedman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 1–12.
- 5.
Marissa Greenberg, “Critically Regional Shakespeare,” Shakespeare Bulletin 37.3 (Fall 2019): 341–363; 342.
- 6.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989: 139–167; 140.
- 7.
Judith Buchanan, Shakespeare on Film (Harlow, 2005), 10.
- 8.
Bryan S. Turner and Robert Holton, “Theories of Globalization: Issues and Origins,” The Routledge International Handbook of Globalization Studies, 2nd edition, ed. Bryan S. Turner and Robert J. Holton (New York, 2016), 3–23; 5.
- 9.
Alexa Alice Joubin, Shakespeare and East Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 1–21.
- 10.
Tetsuhito Motoyama, Rosalind Fielding, and Fumiaki Konno, eds., Re-imagining Shakespeare in Contemporary Japan: A Selection of Japanese Theatrical Adaptations of Shakespeare (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).
- 11.
Rossella Ferrari, Transnational Chinese Theatres: Intercultural Performance Networks in East Asia (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave, 2020), 10.
- 12.
Aaron Nyerges and Thomas Adams, “Introduction: Regionalizing American Studies Within and Beyond the Nation.” Australasian Journal of American Studies 36.2 (2017): 3–10; 6. See also Marjorie Pryse, “Afterword: Regional Modernism and Transnational Regionalism,” Modern Fiction Studies 55.1 (Spring 2009): 189–192.
- 13.
Chen Kuan-hsing, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 216.
- 14.
Shu-mei Shih, “The Concept of the Sinophone,” PMLA 126.3 (2011): 709–718.
- 15.
Victor H. Mair, “What Is a Chinese ‘Dialect/Topolet’? Reflections on Some Key Sino-English Linguistic Terms,” Sino-Platonic Papers 29 (September 1991): 1–31.
- 16.
Shu-mei Shih, “Introduction: What Is Sinophone Studies?” Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, ed. Shu-mei Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 1–16; 8.
- 17.
Siyuan Liu, Performing Hybridity in Colonial-Modern China (New York: Palgrave, 2013).
- 18.
Rebecca E. Karl, Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: A Concise History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 56.
- 19.
Saffron Vickers Walkling, Hamlet and the Legacy of 1989: Politicising the Mise-en-Scène in Lin Zhaohua’s Hamlet (1990/1995), Jan Klata’s H. (2004/2006) and Sulayman Al Bassam’s The Al-Hamlet Summit (2002/2004). PhD thesis, University of York, 2020.
- 20.
Arif Dirlik, “Postsocialism? Reflections on ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. 21.1 (1989): 33–44; 34 and 43.
- 21.
Cecilia Liu, Joseph C. Murphy, Joseph C., and Llyn Scott, “An Interview with Lü Po-shen.” Fu Jen Studies: Literature and Linguistics 38 (2005), https://www.thefreelibrary.com/An+interview+with+Lu+Po-Shen.-a0165939816, accessed August 20, 2021.
- 22.
Elizabeth Wichmann-Walczak read it as an allegory concerning Mao Zedong and his self-indulgent “dream” of Cultural Revolution, Wichmann-Walczak, “‘Reform’ at the Shanghai Jingju Company and Its Impact on Creative Authority and Repertory,” TDR 44.4 (Winter, 2000): 96–119; 109.
- 23.
The jingju studies term is yiren yishi (lit. one character, one event). See Chen Fang, “Yuyan, biaoyan, kua wenhua: Li’er wang and Sha xiqu (Language, Performance, and Cross-culture: King Lear and Shake-xiqu),” Xiju yanjiu (Journal of Theatre Studies) 18 (June, 2016): 113–144; 134.
- 24.
Andrew Dickson, “Guitar hero: Coriolanus goes rock,” The Guardian August 6, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/aug/06/guitar-hero-coriolanus-edinburgh
- 25.
Quoted in Lee, Shamuleite, 119.
- 26.
Xia Yang, “Li’er wang hua Qiwang meng: Yanzhiyuan lun de yu shi” (Transforming King Lear into King Qi’s Dream: Advantages and Disadvantages), Zhongguo dianshi xiqu (Chinese Television and Xiqu) 1 (1996): 12–13; 12.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Joubin, A.A. (2022). Sinophone Shakespeare: A Critical Introduction. In: Joubin, A.A. (eds) Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare. Global Shakespeares. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92993-0_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92993-0_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-92992-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-92993-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)