Abstract
This chapter provides a historical survey of performances of Shakespeare in Yemen and the Arabian Gulf in the twentieth century. Among the productions considered are Yemeni adaptations of Julius Caesar and Hamlet (the former performed in 1948 as a commentary on the British colonial occupation of Aden, the latter as a reflection upon the violence of northern forces’ occupation of Aden in 1994); stagings of the Merchant of Venice in Qatar and Oman; Yemeni and Omani rewritings of Romeo and Juliet; and a Saudi appropriation of Hamlet. The author argues, among other things, that though twentieth-century Shakespeare performances are sporadic they are not random. Rather, they occur at moments of local or national transformation, often critiquing or meditating upon those moments’ significance.
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Hennessey, K. (2018). Chapter 1. “Abstract and Brief Chronicles”: Shakespeare on the Peninsula in the Twentieth Century. In: Shakespeare on the Arabian Peninsula. Global Shakespeares. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58471-7_2
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