This book chapter traces the use of Shakespeare in the works of Eyvind Johnson (1900-1976) from the 1920s until the 1940s. Its main argument is that the role of Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular change in accordance with Johnson's own changing political, ideological and aesthetic outlook. In the earlier novels, the Hamlet figure stands for the general sense of rootlessness and lack of initiative following the First World War, whereas later novel represent deliberate attempts at overcoming this impasse. Subsequently, if Shakespeare in the later 1930s could raise the question of the general relevance of literature and culture in an age of fascism, the Bard would later be aligned with the healing and reconciliation needed in the wake of the Second World War.

The protagonist of Jenny Andreasson's autobiographical novel Teatern (2022) is a young female director whose feminist production of Hamlet at the Swedish national stage fails to have its planned premiere. While the novel makes a point of describing the misogynist structures behind this failure, the present article suggests that class structures and precarity are the main reasons behind it. The financial difficulties of the theatre generate a clear discrepancy between cultural capital – embodied by Shakespeare's canonical play – and economic. The resulting precarious work situation is reflected in the protagonist's yearning for stability, in her recurring assertions of class privileges vis-à-vis her co-workers and in her increasing sense of alienation from both them and her own work. While not strictly paraphrasing Shakespeare's play, the protagonist invokes parallels to both Hamlet and Ophelia, and Teatern, instead of locating these parallels in an ‘existential’ reading of Shakespeare's play, anchors the theme of alienation in the economic and social strictures of the theatre institution.

An introduction to the volume that outlines the history of Shakespeare reception in the Nordic countries in the period approximately 1870 - 1940.

The story of Shakespeare's Nordic play is also, inevitably, one of cultural exchanges before, during and after the early modern period. From its origins in Nordic tradition to its re-introduction in the Nordic countries through Shakespeare's play, the story of Hamlet from the Middle Ages to the present is inextricably bound up with Nordic history and culture. In tracing some of these links, this special issue develops our recent work on the early dissemination of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries, focusing here on that most Nordic of plays, Hamlet. Although there is already a great deal of criticism on Hamlet in various national or regional contexts, very little of this has focused on the Nordic countries.1 It is therefore fitting, we believe, to provide a necessarily brief outline of the rich and varied history that Shakespeare's play has had in Northern Europe.

A thematic issue of the journal Critical Survey in which we explore the receptioni history of Hamlet in the Nordic countries.

Examining the changing reception of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries between 1870 and 1940, this follow-up volume to Disseminating Shakespeare in the Nordic Countries focuses on the broad movements of national revivalism that took place around the turn of the century as Finland and Norway, and later Iceland, were gaining their independence. A number of contributions demonstrate how translations and productions of Shakespeare were key in such movements, as Shakespeare was appropriated for national and political purposes. Other contributions discuss how the role of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries was partly transformed in the 1920s and 1930s as a new social system emerged, and then as the rise of fascism meant that European politics cast a long shadow on the Nordic countries and substantially affected the reception of Shakespeare.

This article argues that three Swedish translators of Shakespeare, Olof Bjurbäck (1750–1829), Johan Henrik Thomander (1798–1865) and Carl August Hagberg (1810–1864), understood their tasks in relation to what they saw as fundamental religious, specifically Protestant, precepts. All three were either bishops in the state church or came from a family of clerics (Hagberg). While Bjurbäck's prose translation of Hamlet (1820) owes its religious background to Rousseau and Luther, the later Thomander insisted on faithfulness to the original yet also emphasising the centrality of secular works in Christian instruction, and Hagberg owes a debt to the Protestant notion of going ad fontes. In short, rather than constructing a narrative of secularisation around the three translators, this article concludes that Protestant ideology, while itself changing, remained important to understand their work.

This book chapter examines the reception of the African-American actor Ira Aldridge’s visit to Stockholm in 1857, during which he performed Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and the title role of Othello at the Royal Theatre. The event caused a very lively debate in the press, revealing a wide range of responses, from the openly racist to the equally openly anti-racist, as well as a conflict between aesthetic norms concerning realism in acting. While reviewers often brought up the question of Aldridge’s blackness, they were deeply divided as to his acting. Moreover, the lines of division cannot be neatly categorized in terms of aesthetically conservative and racist versus aesthetically radical and anti-racist. Instead, some of the most positive responses to Aldridge’s performances are also the most deeply entrenched in racial categorization whereas some of the more hostile ones reject or play down race. Thus, the discussion of aesthetics in the reviews has a complex relation to the sometimes casual, sometimes elaborate referencing of race. In order to discuss this connection, the chapter contextualizes the production from the perspective of changes in theatrical practice, and in particular in debates over the nature of acting in the middle of the nineteenth century.

This edited collection brings together literary scholars and art historians, and maps how satire became a less genre-driven and increasingly visual medium in the seventeenth through the early nineteenth century. Changing satire demonstrates how satire proliferated in various formats, and discusses a wide range of material from canonical authors like Swift to little known manuscript sources and prints. As the book emphasises, satire was a frame of reference for well-known authors and artists ranging from Milton to Bernini and Goya. It was moreover a broad European phenomenon: while the book focuses on English satire, it also considers France, Italy, The Netherlands and Spain, and discusses how satirical texts and artwork could move between countries and languages. In its wide sweep across time and formats, Changing satire brings out the importance that satire had as a transgressor of borders.

Charting the early dissemination of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries in the 19th century, this opens up an area of global Shakespeare studies that has received little attention to date. With case studies exploring the earliest translations of Hamlet into Danish; the first translation of Macbeth and the differing translations of Hamlet into Swedish; adaptations into Finnish; Kierkegaard's re-working of King Lear, and the reception of the African-American actor Ira Aldridge's performances in Stockholm as Othello and Shylock, it will appeal to all those interested in the reception of Shakespeare and its relationship to political and social conditions.

The volume intervenes in the current discussion of global Shakespeare and more recent concepts like 'rhizome', which challenge the notion of an Anglocentric model of 'centre' versus 'periphery'. It offers a new assessment of these notions, revealing how the dissemination of Shakespeare is determined by a series of local and frequently interlocking centres and peripheries, such as the Finnish relation to Russia or the Norwegian relation with Sweden, rather than a matter of influence from the English cultural sphere.