ABSTRACT
It was April 1964. In many parts of the world, various events were being held to celebrate the Bard’s quadricentenary anniversary. You happened to walk in a medium-sized theater in Taipei showing a production of Hamlet, dubbed as The Prince’s Revenge.1 The visuals and tech were rather simple, with a largely bare stage, suggestively historical costumes, and no special effects. Actors spoke in Mandarin Chinese, but the lines were recognizably Shakespeare’s, with minor cuts and few edits, making it a longish performance. You could tell that many of the actors were not even twenty years old, though some of them wore a gray wig and a beard to look older. The design and directing were effective but did not call attention to themselves. A seasoned British or American spectator would immediately assume that it was just another student work, a “faithful” and conventional production with little intention to reinterpret or re-create the source material, or to localize, modernize, or stylize it. Although the acting was not bad, this did not seem like anything worth writing home about.
