Shakespeare’s Tercentenary: Staging Nations and Performing Identities in 1916

Shakespeare’s Tercentenary brings to life the worldwide commemorations of the three-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, held amid the global upheaval of the First World War. As empires battled for world domination and nations sought self-determination, diverse communities vied to claim Shakespeare as their own, to underpin their sense of collective identity and cohesion. Unearthing previously unknown Tercentenary events in Europe, the British Empire, and the US, this book demonstrates that the 1916 Shakespeare commemorators did not speak with one, unified voice. Tributes by marginalised social, ethnic, and racial groups often challenged the homogenising narratives of the official celebrations. Shakespeare thus emerged as not just the patriotic Bard, used to support totalising versions of national or imperial identity, but rather as a site of debate and contestation, in which diverse voices – local and global, nationalist and universalist, militant and pacifist – combined and clashed in a fascinating, open-ended dialogue.