Shakespeare the Global Playwright
From the Globe to the globe
Even during his own lifetime, Shakespeare’s works were moving around the world. In 1607-8, there is a record of a performance of Hamlet on a ship off the coast of Sierra Leone. By 1620, Hamlet had been performed in Germany, along with Romeo and Juliet and Titus Andronicus. Today, Hamlet has been translated into over 75 languages and Shakespeare’s plays overall have been translated into over 100 languages, with performances around the world. In this section of the site, we’ll give you a glimpse of Shakespeare’s global presence. We thank our partners at Everything to Everybody for sharing images from the collection at the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library.
Left: Polish edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets from the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library.
Shakespeare in Portuguese
Below you will find speeches in Portuguese from Macbeth, Act V, and from Cassandra in an adaptation of Troilus and Cressida by Jo Soares and Mauricio Guilherme. Macbeth is performed by Alberto Dwek and Cassandra is performed by Tuna Dwek.
Alberto Dwek is a multilingual generalist, who never let his Harvard MBA degree get in the way of his profound love of books, theatre, movies and, of course, Shakespeare. He currently manages an investment website while trying to write his first novel.
Tuna Dwek, 63, is a Brazilian actress, born in São Paulo, fluent in French, English, Italian. She graduated at the EAD Escola de Arte Dramática, Drama School at São Paulo University USP, I.E.D.E.S, Institut d’ Études du Développement Économique et Social Université Panthéon- Sorbonne Paris I, and studied Social Sciences at PUC São Paulo. She is a writer, an interpreter for many international festivals and events, a cinema critic for 15 years, a member of the jury of several film festivals, and has performed in over 40 plays, 30 films, and 15 soap operas and TV series. She currently plays Zulmira in the Netflix series “The Chosen One”( in Portuguese) and Ana in “Divino Amor,” directed by Gabriel Mascaro. She is the author of 3 books. As an interpreter in Brazil, she has worked with the late Luciano Pavarotti, Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, Vanessa Redgrave, Peter Brook, Roman Polanski, the late Michel Piccoli, Franco Nero, the late Gian Maria Volonté, Ariane Mnouchkine, Dominique Blanc, Philippe Decoufflé, Brillante Mendoza, Joaquin Cortes, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Daniel Barenboim, among many others.
Sonnet 29 in 2 Languages
Below you’ll find recordings of Shakespeare’s sonnet 29 in Romanian and in French, both recorded by Romanian actress Valentina Zaharia. Shakespeare’s original English text is below.
“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
Non-English editions of Shakespeare - Images from the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library
Punjabi
Tamil
Hebrew
Braille