Shakespeare in Ireland Adaptations and Appropriations reviewed by Madeleine Saidenberg
Published in Shakespeare Quarterly, January 2026.
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Abstract

Anything Henry Crawford says should be taken with a pinch of salt. He is, after all, one of the many Jane Austen creations who delights in hyperbole and winking satire. Nevertheless, his take on Shakespeare recorded in Mansfield Park is often quoted without irony: “Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is part of an Englishman’s constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by instinct.” In recent decades, Global Shakespeare studies has focused on the tension hidden in Crawford’s arch statement. From the eighteenth century onward, Shakespeare’s works represented a quintessential Englishness while being “spread abroad.” At the same time, Shakespeare became a symbol of Englishness beyond the plays themselves. Without needing to have read or seen a performance of a Shakespeare play, one could come into a kind of osmotic contact with Shakespeare all over the world. The contributions to Shakespeare in Ireland: Adaptations and Appropriations, expertly edited by Andrew Murphy, argue that Shakespeare not only was an English cultural icon, but also a crucial, contested symbol in Ireland from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century—one that operated differently from its English counterpart.