Worlds Elsewhere

Worlds Elsewhere

By Andrew Dickson
Unabridged
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“Dickson’s exploration of how Shakespeare’s works were received, used, and altered in five nations worldwide is part travelogue, part cultural history. Because he details the process of searching out his material, it’s appropriate that he narrate the account himself and fortunate that he does it well. In expressiveness, skill at pacing, and ability to convey meaning, he holds his own as compared to professional narrators. He does an admirable job of acting when quoting from Shakespeare. At times, he falls into repetitive intonation patterns, understandably, but it never becomes off-putting. Rather, his ability to convey surprise, wonder, intrigue, and the like with appropriate energy and vividness brings a fair amount of charm to this interesting and enlightening book.”

AudioFile

There are 83 copies of the First Folio in a vault beneath Capitol Hill, the world's largest collection. Well over 150 Indian movies are based on Shakespeare's plays—more than in any other nation. If current trends continue, there will soon be more high school students reading The Merchant of Venice in Mandarin Chinese than in early-modern English. Why did this happen, and how? Ranging ambitiously across four continents and 400 years, Worlds Elsewhere is an eye-opening account of how Shakespeare went global. Seizing inspiration from the playwright's own fascination with travel, foreignness, and distant worlds, Dickson takes us on an extraordinary journey—from Hamlet performed by English actors tramping through Poland in the early 1600s to twenty-first-century Shanghai, where Shashibiya survived Mao's Cultural Revolution to become an honored Chinese author.

Both a cultural history and a literary travelogue, the first of its kind, Worlds Elsewhere explores how Shakespeare became the world's writer, and how his works have changed beyond all recognition during the journey.