Sokolova, Boika and Valls-Russell, Janice, eds, Shakespeare’s Others in 21st-century European Performance: The Merchant of Venice and Othello, The Arden Shakespeare, London, Bloomsbury, 2022, xii+395pp.

“Shakespeare’s Others in 21st-century European Performance”, a collection of essays edited by Boika Sokolova and Janice Valls-Russell, delves deeply into the adaptations of “The Merchant of Venice” and “Othello”, showcasing how the staging of these plays is intricately entwined with Europe’s colonial, anti-Semitic, and racist history. This anthology confronts the tumultuous societal landscape in the 21st century marked by nationalisms, migrations, racial violence, and various forms of oppression through nuanced exploration of stagings of Othello and Shylock. However, as the volume demonstrates, there are many ‘others’ in these plays, and they have different ethical, racial, gendered and cultural features across Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Hungary, France, the Netherlands, Serbia, Germany, France, Portugal and Poland.