Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism. Ed. Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph J. Price

• Marcela Kostihová

Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism presents a formidable collection of scholarship that seeks to chart a chronological progress of Shakespearean interpretation – in great majority represented by theatrical production – in the Eastern Bloc from the rise of state communism in 1917, to its 1989 fall in Europe, to its various iterations in Cuba and China. Far from seeking an exhaustive, unified view of Shakespeare’s incarnation in communist-ruled states, the anthology marks communist Shakespeare as “deeply ambivalent,” arguing that “no simple models of containment-subversion suffice to explain and unfold the complexities of the necessarily multilayered responses of artists and spectators to the desires and dictates of the party” (p. 6). Accordingly, the collection seeks to showcase a vast diversity of Shakespeares that resulted from various blends of state, party, and ideology-sponsored approaches to art and the individual as well as collective aims of directors and their production teams.

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