Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange (review)

Alexander Huang's Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange is a sophisticated discourse that explores the transnational imagery of China in Shakespeare performances and Shakespeare's place in China over the past two hundred years. Why should the Chinese concern themselves with Shakespeare, and why should Shakespeare be associated with China? How can Chinese Shakespeares contribute to the general interpretive possibilities of Shakespeare and to the global awareness of foreign Shakespeares? To what extent can the presence and absence of Shakespeare in Chinese interpretations tell us about social changes in China and in Asia? Informing much of Huang's study is the sociological theory of locality criticism, enabling him to examine the cultural interactions between Shakespeare and literature, fiction, theater, and cinema in the Sinophone world. Instead of tackling fidelity and authenticity, Huang focuses on the fluidity of "unfaithful" rewritings (31ff.) and how the process of rewriting faithfully reproduces the economic and cultural dynamics of globalization (33). Emphasizing cultural differences and shifting cultural localities, he illuminates the interstitial space and the intriguing interrelations between texts and readers, playscripts and performances, including theatrical idioms, performers, audiences, play settings, and performance venues.

To lead readers into the complexities of a Sinophone intercultural Shakespeare, Chinese Shakespeares begins with Jiao Juyin's Hamlet (1942), set during the second Sino-Japanese war and staged in a Confucian temple, and Ong Keng Sen's multilingual Lear (1997). Huang goes on to offer readers three models of Chinese Shakespeares. Using straight translations, the first type universalizes rather than localizes Shakespeare on the stage. In the second type, writers and directors blend Shakespeare into local cultures and contemporary points of view. The third trend relates Shakespeare to images of China, aiming to liberate both source and target cultures and resulting in a "'free' form (pastiche or multilingual theater)" (17).

Part 1, "Theorizing Global Localities," theorizes the critical concept of localization and critiques fidelity-derived discourse about cultural ownership. Part 2, "The Fiction of Moral Space," discusses the early period of Shakespeare in China. One of the most intriguing aspects of Shakespeare's reception in China is that the Bard's canonicity was accepted by the Chinese long before performances took place or literary translations became available. Huang teases out how Shakespeare's absent authority had an enormous impact on his construction as a foreign literary master in Chinese eyes and ultimately on the general public's notions of modernity. The focus on rewriting and adaptation gives Huang an opportunity to examine works traditionally not included in Shakespeare studies. Lao She's short story "New Hamlet," written in the mid-1930s, is one such parody. Inspired by Hamlet's complexes, Lao She creates a clown-like and overly self-confident college student who is caught between "contending values" (89) of the changing society in the newly established Republic of China.

In part 3, "Locality at Work," Huang includes six case studies, drawn from silent films, spoken drama productions, and a reading of Hamlet during the Cultural Revolution by a contemporary Shakespearean, Wu Ningkun. Huang investigates locality and the site of reading, which played important roles in the interpretation of Shakespeare and Chinese history. Part 4, "Postmodern Shakespearean Orients," discusses a Sinified Macbeth produced in the kunju style of Chinese opera and a blackface Othello played by Ma Yong'an on the Beijing Opera stage, exploring the "convergence" (237) of the visualized theater and Shakespeare's textual authority. One might expect the linguistic codes to be more precise and gestural codes more open to a wider range of interpretations. Yet Huang argues, "Ma's Othello shows that stylized Shakespeares can precisely define and express the range of emotions" (193). Such an assertion seems to contradict the author's belief in "shifting perspectives on the question of the migration of texts and representations" (24). This discussion poses additional problems: it is difficult to justify the two works as "postmodern," because the artists involved in...