An international team of leading scholars explore the appropriation of Shakespeare's plays in film and performance around the world. In particular, the book examines the ways in which adapters and directors have put Shakespeare into dialogue with local traditions and contexts. The contributors look in turn at 'local' Shakespeares for local, national and international audiences, covering a range of English and foreign appropriations that challenge geographical and cultural oppositions between 'centre' and 'periphery', and 'big-time' and 'small-time' Shakespeares. Their specialist knowledges of local cultures and traditions make the range of appropriations newly accessible--and newly fascinating--for world-wide readers. Drawing upon debates around the global/local dimensions of cultural production and on Pierre Bourdieu's notion of the 'cultural field', the contributors together demonstrate a significant new approach to intercultural appropriations of Shakespeare. Responding to a surge of critical interest in the poetics and politics of appropriation, "World-Wide Shakespeares" represents a valuable resource for those interested in the afterlife of Shakespeare in film and performance, within and beyond Anglophone cultural centres.