This volume considers the linguistic complexities associated with
Shakespeare's presence in South Africa from 1801 to early
twentieth-first century televisual updatings of the texts as a means of
exploring individual and collective forms of identity. A case study
approach demonstrates how Shakespeare's texts are available for
ideologically driven linguistic programs. Seeff introduces the African
Theatre, Cape Town, in 1801, multilingual site of the first recorded
performance of a Shakespeare play in Southern Africa where rival,
amateur theatrical groups performed in turn, in English, Dutch, German,
and French. Chapter 3 offers three vectors of a broadening Shakespeare
diaspora in English, Afrikaans, and Setswana in the second half of the
nineteenth century. Chapter 4 analyses André Brink's Kinkels innie
Kabel, a transposition of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors into
Kaaps, as a radical critique of apartheid's obsession with linguistic
and ethnic purity. Chapter 5 investigates John Kani's performance of
Othello as a Xhosa warrior chief with access to the ancient tradition of
Xhosa storytellers. Shakespeare in Mzansi, a televisual miniseries
uses black actors, vernacular languages, and local settings to
Africanize Macbeth and reclaim a cross-cultural, multilingualism. An
Afterword assesses the future of Shakespeare in a post-rainbow,
decolonizing South Africa. Global Sha
Any reader interested in Shakespeare Studies, global Shakespeare,
Shakespeare in performance, Shakespeare and appropriation, Shakespeare
and language, Literacy Studies, race, and South African cultural history
will be drawn to this book.
