ABSTRACT
In the most obvious sense, Shakespeare everywhere in Asia represents the importation, and possibly imposition, of a foreign, and potentially dominant, culture. Shakespeare appeared before Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Malays, Burmese, and others from the same source, a major Western military and political power, Great Britain. Shakespeare’s dramas were seen in Asia both as a representation and as a representative of English, and more broadly Western, culture. To a greater or lesser extent, the characters, the events, and the values embodied in Hamlet or A Midsummer Night’s Dream opposed indigenous culture. In the long run, one may speak of universal values in his plays, but in the short run on their fi rst encounter, every Asian spectator or reader had to feel the sheer foreignness of his plays, so different from their Asian experiences. How did Asians grapple with Shakespeare? How did they fi nd their way to appreciate and in many cases adore his dramatic worldview? How did they accommodate the outsider, Shakespeare and his fi ctional European world, into their varied Asian senses of self and society? Briefl y here I suggest that in India, Japan, China, Korea, and elsewhere in Asia, Shakespeare was faced and accommodated in several rather distinct ways, that these types of Shakespeare vary less by nationality or culture of audiences and more by the theatrical circumstances of Shakespeare’s adoption. There are remarkable similarities throughout Asia, in my opinion.
