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1616: SHAKESPEARE AND TANG XIANZU'S CHINA. Edited by Tian Yuan Tan, Paul Edmondson, and Shih-pe Wang. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. 326 + xvii pp. Cloth, $102.60; Paper, $26.96; eBook, $19.79.
in the post-imperial and post-colonial age, the rise of the modern nation depends all the more on soft power and cultural diplomacy. The opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing and London Olympics in 2008 and 2012 are recent examples of how nation states construct and market national cultures to international communities. in this context, the rediscovery and marketing of national poets becomes culturally urgent and politically expedient. Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare have recently become the vehicles for British and Chinese cultural diplomacy and exchange. 2016 is a landmark year, because it marks the quartercentenary of Tang and Shakespeare. Multiple projects in the field of comparative drama emerged in this context.
1616 is an ambitious collection of twenty wide-ranging essays on Tang, Ming-dynasty theatre, early modern English theatre, and Shakespeare and his times. While it is published by Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, an imprint of Bloomsbury that is known for titles that attract a large, general readership, 1616 packs the latest scholarly apparatus and is a collection of pioneering, rigorous scholarship from late Ming Chinese and early modern English studies. Names of dynasties and individuals, both Chinese and English, are followed by years to give readers a clear sense of chronology, and Chinese names written in pinyin transliteration are followed by the original script, making the volume a useful tool for students and researchers.
In fact, in comparison to Bloomsbury's other relevant titles such as Shakespeare on the Global Stage: Performance and Festivity in the Olympic Year (2015), 1616 is not for the faint of heart or casual reading. The target audience seems to be graduate students and researchers in early modern and Ming-China studies. The book pairs essays in what the co-editors call a "dialogic" structure (p. 3). The twenty chapters in ten thematically organized...