Notes: China

347 | a three-day state visit | For accounts of Wen’s trip, see in particular Andrew Bounds, ‘Wen Revels in Shakespearian Drama on UK trip’, Financial Times, 26 June 2011 [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/41fa3ace-a015-11e0-a115-00144feabdc0.html#axzz49NYFQWGF]; ‘China’s Wen Jiabao Starts Trip to Britain with a Tour of William Shakespeare’s Birthplace’, The Telegraph, 26 June 2011 [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8599522/Chinas-Wen-Jiabao-starts-trip-to-Britain-with-a-tour-of-William-Shakespeares-birthplace.html]; and ‘China’s Premier Wen Jiabao Visits Stratford-upon-Avon’, BBC News, 27 June 2011 [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13919858].

326 | ‘enhancing mutual understanding’ | The phrase became a keynote of the visit, generally used as diplomatic code for disagreements over human rights. See the advance briefing given by foreign ministry Hong Lei on 17 June 2011, text at: [http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/fyrth/t832130.htm].

348 | ‘His works are not to be read’ | Quoted in numerous news stories, notably Owen Fletcher, ‘More Matter, Less Art: Wen’s Love for Shakespeare’, Wall Street Journal, 27 June 2011 [http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/06/27/more-matter-less-art-wen’s-love-for-shakespeare/], which includes the Xinhua report citing Goethe.

348 | ‘He brings sunshine to your life’ | I’m grateful to Stanley Wells for sending me an image of the relevant page in the visitors’ book, along with a translation of Wen’s inscription.

348 | ‘The literary figures of China’ | Quoted in ‘Food for Thought: Premier Wen Jiabao’s Comments in Shakespeare’s Hometown’, Shanghaiist, 27 June 2011 [http://shanghaiist.com/2011/06/27/food_for_thought_premier_wen_jiabao.php].

349 | According to the Office for National Statistics | Cited in numerous news reports, notably William James, ‘Britain Smoothes Visa Process to Tap Lucrative Chinese Tourist Trade’, Reuters, 16 June 2014 [http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-britain-visas-idUKKBN0ER29N20140616]. I’m indebted to Sarah Runnacles at Visit Britain for giving me access to the raw ONS data on visitor numbers in 2013–14 and guiding me through a series of rather terrifying spreadsheets. The most up-to-date statistics are online at: [https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/leisureandtourism].

350 | Birmingham airport … accepting direct flights from Beijing | Brett Gibbons, ‘Birmingham Airport: Beijing Flights to Bring 4,000 Chinese Tourists to Region’, Birmingham Mail, 3 March 2015 [http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/birmingham-airport-beijing-flights-bring-8756744].

350 | people had queued around the block | See Philip Brockbank, ‘Shakespeare Renaissance in China’, Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988), 195–204, 197.

350 | a report in the Shanghai Daily | Clare Wang, ‘To Be or Not to Be Shakespeare’, Shanghai Daily, 21 April 2011 [http://www.shanghaidaily.com/national/To-be-or-not-to-be-Shakespeare/shdaily.shtml].

350 | 21 million Chinese students | The figure originated in a report compiled by Tracy Irish, Shakespeare: A Worldwide Classroom (London: RSC Education/British Council report, 2012), and was extensively recycled in the media.

350 | In December 2013 | Among numerous reports, see Nicholas Watt and Rowena Mason, ‘David Cameron Calls for New EU-China Free Trade Agreement’, The Guardian, 2 December 2013 [http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/02/david-cameron-china-advocate-western-world]; Kiran Stacey, ‘David Cameron Defends Backing of China–EU Trade Deal’, Financial Times, 2 December 2013 [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d152cade-5a7f-11e3-b255-00144feabdc0.html#axzz49NYFQWGF]; and ‘China, UK to Boost Ties as Cameron Voices Stance on Tibet’, Xinhua News, 3 December 2013 [http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-12/03/c_125796174.htm].

350 | a major new announcement | The translation was announced officially in September 2014, several months after I returned from China; see ‘RSC to Translate Shakespeare for Chinese Audiences’, The Guardian [Press Association newswire report], 12 September 2014 [http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/sep/12/shakespeare-plays-translated-into-mandarin].

353 | ‘“world-class with Chinese characteristics”’ | Deng’s original formula, ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, became famous for its characteristically sly uniting of orthodox Marxism with a form of free-market economy. For a detailed explanation of the policy and its effects, see Andrew J. Nathan and Tianjian Shi, ‘Left and Right with Chinese Characteristics: Issues and Alignments in Deng Xiaoping’s China’, World Politics 48 (1996), 522–550.

353 | jokey feature in the Sun newspaper | Stig Abell, ‘Happy Bard Day’, The Sun, 23 April 2014 [http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/5584448/We-mark-450th-brithday-of-Shakespeare-with-Sun-style-front-pages.html].

354 | A blushing newcomer on the Shakespearian stage | When writing my overviews of the history of Shakespeare in China, I found three book-length studies particularly useful: Murray J. Levith, Shakespeare in China (London, 2004); Li Ruru, Shashibiya: Staging Shakespeare in China (Hong Kong, 2003); and Alexander C. Y. Huang, Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange (New York, 2009). Among other works cited in relevant locations below, I also referred to Qixin He, ‘China’s Shakespeare’, Shakespeare Quarterly 37 (1986), 149–59; Yu Weijie, ‘Topicality and Typicality: The Acceptance of Shakespeare in China’, in Erika Fischer-Lichte (ed.), The Dramatic Touch of Difference: Theatre, Own and Foreign (Tübingen, 1990); Xiao Yang Zhang, Shakespeare in China: A Comparative Study of Two Traditions and Cultures (Newark, DE, 1996); and Sun Yanna, ‘Shakespeare Reception in China’, Theory and Practice in Language Studies 2 (2012), 1931–38.

354 | ‘greedy, tough, alcoholic’ | Cited in Huang, Chinese Shakespeares, 51.

354 | ‘Shakespeare stands unrivalled’ | Hugh Murray, The Encyclopedia of Geography: Comprising a Complete Description of the Earth … (London, 1834), 304. The 1839 translation was entitled Sizhou zhi(‘Annals of the Four Continents’). Ruru Li argues for a later date of 1856, and the translation by the missionary William Muirhead of Thomas Milner’s The History of England (London, 1853), which mentions a mysterious Elizabethan writer called ‘Shekesibi’.

354 | first ever Chinese ambassador | The Qing ambassador was Gong Songtao, who recorded seeing Henry Irving’s Hamlet in London on 18 January 1879. See Levith, China, 3, and Huang, Chinese Shakespeares, 51, which reproduces the quotation.

355 | Shakespeare wrote a play | Cited in Xiaoyang Zhang, Shakespeare in China, 100–1.

355 | Tales from Shakespeare | A good recent edition is Tales from Shakespeare, ed. Marina Warner (London, 2007). For a fascinating account of the genesis of the volume (and the Lambs’ tormented private lives), see Jean I. Marsden, ‘Shakespeare for Girls: Mary Lamb and Tales from Shakespeare’, Children’s Literature 17 (1989), 47–63.

356 | First translated into Japanese | On early Japanese translation and reception of Shakespeare, see in particular Friederike von Schwerin-High, Shakespeare, Reception and Translation: Germany and Japan (London, 2004), 60–73.

356 | ‘His plays and stories’ | Cited in Qixin He, ‘China’s Shakespeare’, Shakespeare Quarterly 37 (1986), 149–59, 150.

356 | Lin Shu | On the remarkable Lin, his translators and his translations, the best account is by Li, Shashibiya, 13–17. See also Levith, Shakespeare in China, 5–6.

357 |Shashibiya | See Li, Shashibiya, 17.

357 | China’s leading theatre-makers, Lin Zhaohua | See Andrew Dickson, ‘Guitar Hero: Coriolanus Goes Rock’, The Guardian, 6 August 2013 [http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/aug/06/guitar-hero-coriolanus-edinburgh].

358 | a home-grown production … The Taming of the Shrew | For an alternative account on this production based on an earlier staging of it, see Zat Liu, ‘Shakespeare in Shanghai: “The Taming of the Shrew” Goes Local’, CNN Travel, 14 July 2010 [http://www.adg-europe.com/?p=2920].

359 | ‘I am ashamed’ | The Taming of the Shrew, 5.2.166–9.

359 | Juliet Dusinberre and Lisa Jardine | The key works are Juliet Dusinberre, Shakespeare and the Nature of Women (London, 1975), and Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (London, 1983).

360 | sheng nu | Among numerous mentions of this grim phrase, see Mary Jay Magistad, ‘China’s “Leftover Women”, Unmarried at 27’, BBC News, 21 February 2013 [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21320560]; and Ludovica Iaccino, ‘Single and Educated: the Problem of China’s “Leftover” Women’, International Business Times, 31 January 2014 [http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/single-educated-problem-chinas-leftover-women-1434671].

361–2 | Karl Marx … a model Bardolatrous German | On Marx’s Shakespearian enthusiasm, see especially R.S. White, ‘Marx and Shakespeare’, Shakespeare Survey 45 (1992), 89–100; and Sean Ledwith, ‘Marx’s Shakespeare’, Counterfire, 21 April 2016 [http://www.counterfire.org/articles/analysis/18300-marx-s-shakespeare], which helpfully includes relevant quotations from Marx’s writings.

362 | ‘Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold?’ | Timon of Athens, 4.3. 26–30.

362 | ‘Shakespeare excellently depicts’ | Cited in White, ‘Marx’, 98. The original passage – which is worth reading in full, not least because it revealingly references Goethe – is in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (London, 1975–2005), 50 vols, vol. 3, 323–4. Online at: [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/power.htm].

363 | the role of the USSR | See in particular Levith, 25–8.

363 | ‘the greatest progressive revolution’ | Friederich Engels, Dialectics of Nature (1883), chap .1. Online at: [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch01.htm].

364 | highly characteristic theatre traditions | On the history of Chinese theatre, see Tan Ye’s useful Historical Dictionary of Chinese Theater(Plymouth, 2008), to which I added William Dolby, A History of Chinese drama (London, 1976) and Tao-Ching Hsu, The Chinese Conception of the Theatre (Seattle, 1985).

364 | Chinese opera | On the artform, I found Elizabeth Halson’s Peking Opera: A Short Guide (Oxford, 1966) extremely helpful. Zha Peide and Tian Jia, ‘Shakespeare in Traditional Chinese Operas’, Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988), 204–11, draws out some fascinating examples of Shakespearian retellings.

365 | The Revenge of Prince Zi Dan | See Malcolm Moore, ‘Edinburgh festival 2011: The Revenge of Prince Zi Dan – The Secret of Hamlet in Chinese’, The Telegraph, 15 August 2011 [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/edinburgh-festival/8701649/Edinburgh-Festival-2011-The-Revenge-of-Prince-Zi-Dan-The-secret-of-Hamlet-in-Chinese.html]. A short video trailer for the show is online at: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP6I6F2DYLU]. I’m grateful to the Shanghai Peking Opera Company for showing me around their facilities, describing their work, and for giving me a copy of the full show on DVD.

365 | Jingju is an actors’ art | On this absorbing and apparently never-ending subject, see especially Jo Riley, Chinese Theatre and the Actor in Performance (Cambridge, 2000).

367 | an adaptation called Rou quan | For early performances see Li, Shashibiya, 18–22. I’m hugely grateful to Ruru Li for agreeing to meet me in Leeds and talk about her research, as well as putting me in touch with many theatrical contacts on the mainland and in Hong Kong.

367 | ‘In Britain there are theatres’ | Cited by Li, Shashibiya, 21.

367 | the dramatist Tian Han | On Tian, see especially Ruru Li’s insightful ‘Hamlet in China: Translation, Interpretation and Performance’, Shakespeare Performance in Asia[http://web.mit.edu/shakespeare/asia/essays/RuruLi.html].

368 | The Merchant of Venice | See Li, Shashibiya, 26–27; and Huang, Chinese Shakespeares, 106–8.

368 | ‘The Kuo-Tsi actors’ | Brooks Atkinson, ‘The Play’, New York Times, 18 December 1942.

368 | Yi jian mei | See Huang, Chinese Shakespeares, 118–23. Clips from the movie have since been removed from YouTube, but – wonderfully – the full version now appears to be online at: [http://www.bniao.org/BN/Films?ID=220].

369 | ‘Chinese love story’ | See Donghuan Xu, ‘Hong Kong Arts Festival Play Features a Modern Chinese Setting for Juliet and Her Romeo’, South China Morning Post, n.d. [http://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1416692/hong-kong-arts-festival-play-features-modern-chinese-setting-juliet]. See also Julie Sanders, ‘Shakespeare with Chinese Characteristics?’, Fifteen Eighty-Four, 30 April 2014 [http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2014/04/shakespeare-with-chinese-characteristics/]. I’m grateful to Tian and her assistants for making time to speak to me in Beijing, and furnishing me with DVDs of her productions.

372 | ‘bicycles, sunglasses and hip-hop dancing’ | The CCTV report is available online at: [http://english.cntv.cn/program/cultureexpress/20140228/104625.shtml].

372 | Chimerica | On the play, see Michael Billington, review in The Guardian, 29 May 2013 [http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/may/29/chimerica-review]; and Sarah Crompton, review in The Telegraph, 23 August 2013 [http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/may/29/chimerica-review]. ‘Chimerica’ is a portmanteau term describing the symbiotic relationship between China and the US. The coinage is claimed by historian Niall Ferguson in his book The Ascent of Money (London, 2008), though it should be pointed out that OED does not currently include it.

374 | Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner | See Evan Osnos, ‘China’s Censored World’, New York Times, 2 May 2014 [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/opinion/sunday/chinas-censored-world.html].

375 | a shock bestseller | See ‘Alex Ferguson’s Autobiography Becomes Bestseller in China’, Xinhua News, 6 November 2013 [http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/sports/2013-11/06/c_132864404.htm].

376 | Liang Shiqiu | The translation was indeed reissued in 2016, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. See ‘Shakespeare Fans are Spoiled for Choice in China’, China Daily, 25 April 2016 [http://www.china.org.cn/arts/2016-04/25/content_38316829.htm].

278 | two high-speed trains crashed | A white-knuckle account of the lead-up to the crash, and the corruption and corner-cutting that made it near-inevitable, is by Evan Osnos, ‘Boss Rail’, The New Yorker, 22 October 2012 [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/22/boss-rail].

378 | Zhu Shenghao | On Zhu, see the accounts in Levith, 10–13, and Tonglin Lu, ‘Zhu Shenghao: Shakespeare Translator and a Shakespearean Tragic Hero in Wartime China’, Comparative Literature Studies 49 (2012), 521–36.

379 | ‘Had I known I would not rise again’ | Cited in Meng Xianqiang, A Historical Survey of Shakespeare in China, trans. Mason Y.H. Wang and Murray J. Levith (Changchun, 1996), 23.

380 | the language in which Shakespeare wrote | One of the most approachable concise introductions is by David Crystal, ‘The Language of Shakespeare’, in Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (eds), The Complete Works, 2nd edition (Oxford, 2005), xlv–lxiv.

381 | ‘To crown my thoughts’ | Macbeth, 4.1.165.

381 | The Structure of Complex Words | William Empson, ‘Sense in Measure for Measure’, in The Structure of Complex Words, 3rd edn (London, 1995), chap. 13. The essay originally dates from 1938.

382 | ‘I did my best’ | Cited in Levith, Shakespeare in China, 11–12.

384 | Zhu Shenghao was far from alone | See Levith,  Shakespeare in China, 12–14.

384 | the challenges to effective translation | See Zhang Chong’s own ‘Translating Shakespeare across Language and Culture: a Chinese Perspective’, in Douglas A. Brooks and Lingui Yang (eds), Shakespeare and Asia (Lewiston, NY, 2010), 281–96; Yanna Sun, ‘General Problems in Chinese Translations of Shakespeare’, Asian Culture and History 2 (2010), 232–35; Yang Lingui, ‘Cultural Transformation and Linguistic Transfer: Chinese “Transplant” of Shakespeare’, Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance 2 (2005) [http://dspace.uni.lodz.pl:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11089/1484/05-yang.pdf?sequence=1]; and Ross Perlin, ‘Wherefore Art Thou Loumiou’, Foreign Policy, 19 January 2015 [http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/19/translating-shakespeare-in-china].

385 | ‘His glassy essence’ | Measure for Measure, 2.2.123–5.

386 | ‘The sun not yet thy sighs’ | Romeo and Juliet, 2.3.73–6. I’ve cross-checked the translation with Zhang Chong’s version in ‘Translating Shakespeare’, and am hugely indebted to Zhang for making time to speak to me about his work and enduring a barrage of subsequent email queries.

388 | ‘Experts should be respected’ | Mao Zedong, ‘Talks at the Yenan Forum on Art and Literature’, Selected Works 4 (1941–45) (New York, 1956), 76. On Mao and Shakespeare, the most useful source is Levith, Shakespeare in China, 24–41.

388 | as many as 300,000 copies sold | Figures from Li, Shashibiya, 47.

389 | ‘Let a hundred flowers blossom’ | The speech was entitled ‘On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People’, in Communist China, 1955–59: Policy Documents with Analysis (Cambridge, MA, 1962), 273–94.

389 | the chairman published … poetry | See Howard L. Boorman, ‘The Literary World of Mao Tse-tung’, The China Quarterly 13 (1963), 15–38.

389 | 45 million dead | The figure – which remains hugely controversial within China itself – was posited by historian Frank Dikötter in Mao’s Great Famine: The Story of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe(London, 2010).

389 | ‘that Shakespeare is some sort of god’ | Cited in Levith, Shakespeare in China, 40.

390 | ‘Just because Shakespeare’s plays | Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao’s Personal Physician, ed. Anne F. Thurston (London, 1994), 405.

390 | Jiang had been an actor | I’ve cautiously drawn biographical details from Ross Terrill, Madame Mao: The White-Boned Demon, a Biography, 3rd edn (Stanford, CA, 1999), which, although melodramatic and somewhat speculative, is currently the best available English source.

390 | Shakespeare would have found such freedoms astonishing | On censorship in the Jacobethan theatre, the most helpful works are Richard Dutton, Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama (Iowa City, IW, 1991) and Janet Clare, ‘Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority’: Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship (Manchester, 1990). E.K. Chambers’s The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford, 1923), provides context and reproduces excerpts from a huge number of relevant documents.

391 | ‘a lewd plaie’ | Cited in Chambers, Stage, vol. 4, 323.

392 | ‘all and every plaier or plaiers’ | Cited in Chambers, Stage, vol. 4, 286–7.

392 | prepared poison for him | Jonson apparently dined out on the tale of his mother and her ‘lusty strong poison’ afterwards; one is bound to speculate to what extent this is Jonsonian invention. See Ian Donaldson, Ben Jonson: A Life (Oxford, 2011), 213.

394 | Zhang Yiyi | Ma Yujia, ‘Writer Gets Plastic Surgery to Look Like Shakespeare’, China.org.cn, 2 April 2015 [http://www.china.org.cn/china/2015-04/02/content_35227791.htm].

394 | I had come to doubt the statistic | I’m grateful to Tracy Irish for talking me through Shakespeare: A Worldwide Classroom, the 2012 report she compiled, and being generous enough to discuss the methodological limitations of the data she had access to.

395 | Was it any surprise? | Shen Fan, ‘Shakespeare in China: The Merchant of Venice’, Asian Theatre Journal 5 (1988), 23–37, examines the same question, but argues that the connection has more to do with the lingering influence of Chinese Marxist criticism.

395 | Marxist critics delight in pointing out | See for example Walter Cohen, ‘The Undiscovered Country: Shakespeare and Mercantile Geography’ in Jean E. Howard and Scott Cutler Shershow (eds), Marxist Shakespeares (London, 2000), 128–158. Terry Eagleton also applies a Marxist framework to the text, particularly its treatment of legal questions. See William Shakespeare (Oxford, 1986), 35–63.

395 | the philosophical term ‘rhizomatic’ | The term was popularised by theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, IN, 1987). For its deployment in a Shakespearian context, see especially Douglas M. Lanier, ‘Shakespearean Rhizomatics: Adaptation, Ethics, Value’, in Alexander C. Y. Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin (eds), Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation (New York, 2014), 21–40. Alexander C. Y. Huang, ‘Global Shakespeares as Methodology’, Shakespeare 9 (2013), 273–90, provides an admirably crisp overview of globalisation theory when it comes to Shakespeare.

396 | ‘things that are still alive’ | C.J. Sisson, Shakespeare in India: Popular Adaptations on the Bombay Stage (London, 1926), 25–6.

396 | a director had recently set | The director was Rupert Goold, and the production was first seen at the RSC in 2011, then revived at the Almeida theatre in London in 2015. See Michael Billington, review of The Merchant of Venice, The Guardian, 20 May 2011 [http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/may/20/merchant-of-venice-review-rsc].

397 | ‘The pain caused by translation’ | Cited in Lu, ‘Zhu Shenghao’, 522. For my account of Zhu’s life, where possible I’ve corroborated information provided to me by Zhu Shanggang with printed sources. On Zhu, the most reliable account is the Chinese-language biography by Wu Jiemin and Zhu Hongdha, first published in 1989, but it is currently not available in English.

398 | ‘I am very poor’ | Cited in Lu, ‘Zhu Shenghao’, 523.

399 | ‘the players have often mentioned it’ | In Lorna Margaret Hutson (ed.), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson: Discoveries (Cambridge, 2012), 468–76. Ian Donaldson notes the ‘reserve’ in Jonson’s tone here – which seems a generous assessment, to put it mildly – but argues for Jonson’s abiding respect for Shakespeare. See Ben Jonson, 371.

401 | the Cultural Revolution | For details on the Cultural Revolution both here and elsewhere, I’ve drawn on Richard Kraus, The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2012) and dipped into Joseph Esherick, Paul Pickowicz, and Andrew Walder (eds), The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History (Stanford, CA, 2006), which offers arresting eyewitness testimony. In a specifically artistic context, the chapters on literature and creativity in Roderick MacFarquhar and John King Fairbank (eds), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 15 [Part 2: The People’s Republic, Revolutions Within the Chinese Revolution, 1966–1982] (Cambridge, 1991), are also well worth consulting.

401 | people were seeking psychotherapy | Tania Branigan, ‘It’s Good to Talk: China Opens up to Psychotherapy’, The Guardian, 3 September 2014 [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/03/china-psychiatrists-talking-therapy-counselling]. I’m hugely grateful to Tania Branigan for sharing her expertise and reporting.

403 | theatre historians Li Ruru and Alexa Huang | See Li, Shashibiya, 54–60 and Huang, Chinese Shakespeares, 146–57, for accounts of the Lipkovskaya–Hu production of Much Ado and its history.

406 | Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy | C. L. Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (Princeton, NJ, 1959), republished in 2011 with a foreword by Stephen Greenblatt. More recent accounts – which cast shadows over Barber’s summery worldview – include François Laroque’s Bakhtinian Shakespeare’s Festive World (Cambridge, 1991) and Richard Levin, Love and Society in Shakespearian Comedy (Newark, DE, 1985).

409 | critic Caroline Spurgeon | Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare’s Imagery, and What it Tells Us (Cambridge, 1935).

409 | ‘a mermaid on a dolphin’s back’ | A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2.1.150–64.

409 | an entertainment Shakespeare had seen staged | For the Kenilworth theory – which seems almost too good to be true – see Peter Holland’s fine Oxford edition of Dream (1994), 91, which suggests tempting links between Pyramus and Thisbe and the medieval cyclesperformed by amateur casts at Coventry and elsewhere.

410 | ‘put a girdle round about the earth’ | A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2.1.175–6.

410 | ‘his mind and hand went together’ | John Heminges and Henry Condell, ‘To the Great Variety of Readers’, reprinted in Wells and Taylor, Complete Works, lxxi.

411 | performances of Shakespeare … in marginal or politically charged contexts | Covered in more detail in Li Jun, ‘Popular Shakespeare in China: 1993–2008’, unpublished PhD thesis, Chinese University of Hong Kong (2013). I’m indebted to David Li for sharing his work with me and talking so engagingly about it.

411 | Shakespeare Must Die had been banned | See Lara Day, ‘Thailand Kills “Shakespeare Must Die”’, Wall Street Journal, 4 April 2012 [http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2012/04/04/thailand-kills-shakespeare-must-die/].

414 | most likely an allegory | On Macbeth and its fraught, post-Gunpowder Plot political context, the most detailed and engaging account is by James Shapiro, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear (London, 2015), 178–208.

415 | the article had come out | Andrew Dickson, ‘Thailand’s Toil and Trouble over “Divisive” Shakespeare Film’, The Guardian, 5 June 2014 [http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jun/05/thailands-toul-and-trouble-over-divisive-shakespeare-film].

418 | In Hong Kong things were different | On the history of Shakespeare in Hong Kong, the accounts I found most helpful were Levith, Shakespeare in China, 93–113; Daniel S.P. Yang, ‘Shakespeare at Hong Kong Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare in China: Performance and Perspectives (Shanghai, 1999), 75–85; Dorothy Wong, ‘“Domination by consent”: A study of Shakespeare in Hong Kong’ in Theo D’haen and Patricia Krüs (eds), Colonizer and Colonized (Amsterdam, 2000), 43–56; Kwok-kan Tam, Andrew Parkin and Terry Siu-han Yip (eds), Shakespeare Global/Local: The Hong Kong Imaginary in Transcultural Production (New York, 2002); and Adele Lee, ‘“Chop-socky Shakespeare”?!: The Bard Onscreen in Hong Kong’, Shakespeare Bulletin 28 (2010), 459–80. On more general Hong Kong history, I referred to John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2007).

419 | Hong Kong Amateur Dramatic Club | On the HKADC and its Shakespearian enthusiasms, see Michael Dobson, Shakespeare and Amateur Performance: A Cultural History (Cambridge, 2011), 242.

419 | ‘nobler work’ | ‘Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Colonisation from Ireland, Together with the Minutes of Evidence, 1847’, The Edinburgh Review 91 ( January, 1850), 1–62, 61.

419 | ‘the Chinese have no education’ | In ‘The Annual Report on the State of the Government Schools for the Year 1865’, published in The Hong Kong Blue Book/Government Gazette (Hong Kong, 1866), 138.

420 | ‘Shakespeare requires the employment’ | Cited in Wong, ‘Domination’, 45.

424 | evidence was shaky | Again, I’m grateful to Tracy Irish for describing the research behind Shakespeare: A Worldwide Classroom.

426 | a multinational brand | The ‘brand’ theory has often been repeated in studies of global Shakespeare; see for instance Dennis Kennedy, ‘Shakespeare and the Global Spectator’, Shakespeare Jahrbuch 131 (1995), 50–64; and Huang ‘Global Shakespeares as Methodology’. On globalisation and Shakespeare more generally, see Peter Donaldson, ‘“All Which it Inherit”: Shakespeare, Globes and GlobalMedia’, Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999), 183–200; Ton Hoenselaars (ed.), Shakespeare and the Language of Translation (London, 2004); Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey, ‘Arabesque: Shakespeare and Globalisation’, in S. Smith (ed.), Globalization and its Discontents: Writing the Global Culture (Cambridge, 2006), 24–46; John J. Joughin (ed), Shakespeare and National Culture (Manchester, 1997); and Tom Bishop and Alexander C. Y. Huang (eds), The Shakespeare International Yearbook 11: Special Issue, Placing Michael Neill – Issues of Place in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture (Burlington, VT, 2011).

426 | ‘not of an age, but for all time’ | Ben Jonson, ‘To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author Master William Shakespeare’, l.43, reprinted in Wells and Taylor, Complete Works, lxxi.

429 | ‘these be her very c’s, her u’s, and her t’s’ | Twelfth Night, 2.5.85.

430 | ‘I would have broke mine eye-strings’ | Cymbeline, 1.3.17–22.

432 | ‘unresisting imbecility’ | In glorious full, Johnson’s sentence reads, ‘To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste criticism on unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation’. Reprinted in Walter Raleigh (ed.), Johnson on Shakespeare (London, 1908), 183.

432 | ‘the great globe itself ’ | The Tempest, 4.1.153.

432 | ‘imaginary puissance’ | Henry V, Prologue, 25.

433–4 | ‘O never say that I was false of heart | Sonnet 109, 1–14.

434 | ‘bourn to bourn, region to region’ | Pericles, sc. 18, 4.

434 | ‘Give me a gash’ | sc. 21, 179–85.