Shakespeare's Hamlet in Romania, 1778-2008 : A Study in Translation, Performance, and Cultural Adaptation (New ed.)

This book traces and examines "Hamlet" in translation, performance and cultural adaptation in Romania.

The book transcends national boundaries - linguistic and theatrical - and completes the understanding of Shakespeare and "Hamlet" in a global context at a time when the page and the stage life of this play has entered a new Renaissance.

It explores the symbiotic relationship between Romanian Hamlet, which has always been historically situated, and Romanian history, which has always been theatrically situated.

That "Hamlet" is the magnifying glass Romania used to explore its history is no coincidence.

Time and again, the play that places, at its centre, thought and a young hero who questions and investigates the past in order to understand what to do in the present, has been the Romanian nation's way, sometimes its only way, to investigate its past, to examine and to think about itself 'in front of itself.' (Esslin, 1976:101).

Concerned with performance and its key role in Shakespeare studies, this book reconstructs stage productions - whether from 1884 or 2008 - with the same undivided attention to theatre politics and performativity.