South Africa's Shakespeare and the Drama of Language and Identity

Adele Seeff  is an independent scholar and lecturer. From 1986 to 2011, she directed the Centre for Renaissance & Baroque Studies, University of Maryland, College Park. She established the conference series, “Attending to Early Modern Women,” co-edited seven volumes of conference proceedings, and co-founded the Early Modern Women Journal. Her research on Shakespeare and performance has appeared in academic journals and anthologies. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa.

• 1. Introduction.- 2. The African Theatre, Cape Town, 1801.- 3. The Shakespeare Diaspora.- 4. André Brink's Kinkels innie Kabel: Political Vision and Linguistic Virtuosity.- 5. John Kani as Othello at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg.- 6. Shakespeare in Mzansi.- 7. Afterword.

“Seeff follows the long and complicated search for South Africa’s Shakespeare, cataloging the efforts over two centuries of a multilingual, multiethnic group of theatre-makers to use Shakespeare to articulate different competing versions of South African-ness. What she finds along the way will interest South African theatre and performance scholars, Shakespeareans, and sociolinguists alike.” (Gibson Alessandro Cima, Theatre Journal, Vol. 72 (4), 2020)