The Shakespearean International Yearbook

Book excerpt: In this issue of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, the special section surveys various means of 'Updating Shakespeare'. The section treats a variety of attempts and strategies, including by artists in Japan, China and Brazil, to adapt Shakespeare's works into local and present circumstances. The guest editor for the section is Tetsuo Kishi, Professor Emeritus in English at the University of Kyoto, co-author of Shakespeare in Japan (2006). The Shakespearean International Yearbook continues to provide an annual survey of important issues and developments in contemporary Shakespeare studies. Contributors to this issue come from the US and the UK, Poland, Japan and Brazil. In addition to the section on 'Updating', essays in this volume treat Shakespeare's poems, his narrative strategies, his relation to ideas such as tolerance and representation, and the afterlives of his work in writers such as Gay, Slowacki and Becket, and in theatrical relics.