The Complex Panorama of “Shakespeare” in Turkish Theatre Historiography

Abstract

In Turkish theatre history, the name “Shakespeare” reflects a long-surviving “anxiety of influence,” embodying a continual aspiration for Western dramatic traditions that have extensively shaped theatrical conventions in the late Ottoman Era and Republican Türkiye. Following the late nineteenth century in particular, the means of access to and engagement with Shakespeare’s work were closely linked to theatre’s role as a political agent in the projects of modernism and nation-state building. In contrast to the legitimating authority that Shakespeare provides theatre practitioners today, Shakespeare’s incipient legacy in the late Ottoman period flourished via a fragmented, changing pattern of dramatic texts and performances in various languages. Borrowing Margaret Litvin’s theory of Shakespeare appropriation in the Arab world, we see that Shakespeare entered the Ottoman theatrical scene through a “global kaleidoscope of indirect experiences”. Whereas the name Shakespeare wavered around different connotations such as a canonical playwright who influenced non-Muslim dramatic literature, a marker of knowledge, or an influential dramatist whose works were paraphrased or adapted in the late Ottoman Era, the playwright acquired a preserved, authorial status in modern Turkish theatre. In my article, I evaluate Shakespeare’s complex entry to the theatre scene in the late Ottoman Era and Republican Türkiye by looking at the critical work of the playwright by prominent figures such as İnci Enginün and Muhsin Ertuğrul and address the need for a new vocabulary and methodology with which to evaluate the ambivalent place that Shakespeare has occupied within this complex historical panorama. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.