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Abstract
Shakespeare’s works entered Turkish culture from many directions. Beginning in the nineteenth century, European diplomats, traveling players, and Ottoman minorities performed the plays to their own communities in their own languages. By the late-nineteenth century, the works gained popularity with Ottoman Turks, and translation began into Ottoman Turkish. In “Shakespeare in Turkey” I examine the course of early textual and performance adaptation of Shakespeare in Turkish culture at the end of the Ottoman empire through the beginning of the Republic; the cultural and political contexts in which the plays were produced; the artistic freedoms artists found and the censorships they endured; and the expressions and agendas rooted in translations of the works. Specifically, I examine the initial migration of the plays during a period of significant cultural and governmental change; Romeo and Juliet in the context of linguistic and literary reform; Othello during a rise of anti-western sentiment; and Hamlet in early stages of nation-building. I ultimately argue that, historically, Turkey’s relationship with Shakespeare evidences an ongoing political struggle between past and future, nostalgia and modernization, absolutism and democracy.