Shakespeare’s Legacy. The Appropriation of the Plays in Post-Colonial Drama. Ed. Norbert Schaffeld

• Pascal Nicklas

Counter-discourse is not the only reaction to the colonial canon. This is in nuce the argument illustrated by Norbert Schaffeld’s edition of essays on the post-colonial Shakespeare. The appropriation of Shakespeare in a post-colonial context occurs mainly along three avenues: Shakespeare may be rejected as the author of the former colonial suppressor, his works may be embraced as the cultural standard or they may be used for one’s own purposes. The latter case as a kind of productive reception appears to be aesthetically the most interesting of the three. In terms of the political and cultural contexts, however, any of the three ways of dealing with the Bard in the post-colonial era will be an area of fruitful research. Norbert Schaffeld has been pioneering in this field of research by selecting essays which cover almost the entire post-colonial world. Whereas former studies have concentrated on dealing with the situation in an individual country, Schaffeld’s edition gives an overview and allows for comparison. Shakespeare’s legacy – covering the spectrum between the extremes of a fatal and rich legacy – is looked at in countries and areas as diverse as Ghana, Malawi, Eritrea, South Africa, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. “Appropriation” in these cases means a wide variety of ways of rewriting or staging Shakespeare and permits an equally wide variety of methodological approaches for interpretation. But in any case, “appropriation” stresses agency.

Seiten 429 - 431

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