Shakespeare and Ballet: Gender, Sexuality, Race and Politics on Stage

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Professor David Fuller (University of Durham, UK) Professor Mark Thornton Burnett (Queen's University Belfast, UK)

Shakespeare and Ballet

Gender, Sexuality, Race and Politics on Stage

Professor David Fuller (University of Durham, UK), Professor Mark Thornton Burnett (Queen's University Belfast, UK)

$170

Hardback

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English

The Arden Shakespeare
19 March 2026

Ballet

Series: Shakespeare and Adaptation

This new and comprehensive study of Shakespearean ballets and their unique interpretive possibilities is also the first to foreground the importance of music to the aesthetics and meanings of Shakespeare dance-works.

""A fascinating and highly readable account."" - Sir Stanley Wells

""An outstanding, remarkable book."" - Lisa S. Starks, University of South Florida, USA

Organised around adaptations of key plays, each chapter offers close study of the contrasting interpretations and styles of a number of choreographers and illuminates issues of gender, sexuality, race and politics.

While Shakespeare’s work is recreated in diverse forms in theatres all over the world, ballet is potentially one of the most international and inclusive forms of theatrical expression, based in the fundamental expressive potential of the body. Since it moved into the avant-garde more than a century ago, it has been in the forefront of invention and experiment in the theatrical arts and yet the hundreds of ballets which have been based on Shakespeare’s work have received scant attention in Shakespearean scholarship and criticism.

David Fuller explores a wide range of Shakespeare’s oeuvre as it has been recreated in this form, with studies of ballets based on some of his most famous works, including The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and The Tempest. With analysis of productions from the 1940s to the present by British, American and European choreographers, it reads these as forms of creative criticism which reflect wider developments in society and in so doing show Shakespeare as perpetually contemporary.

By: Professor David Fuller (University of Durham UK)
Series edited by: Professor Mark Thornton Burnett (Queen's University Belfast UK)
Imprint: The Arden Shakespeare
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781350302532
ISBN 10: 1350302538
Series: Shakespeare and Adaptation
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 19 March 2026
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

David Fuller is Professor Emeritus of English at Durham University, UK. Among his many publications are The Life in the Sonnets, (Bloomsbury, 2011) and Shakespeare and the Romantics (2021), besides writings on Shakespeare ballets, on King Lear and on ballet and music.

Reviews for Shakespeare and Ballet: Gender, Sexuality, Race and Politics on Stage

David Fuller’s wide-ranging and authoritative study provides a fascinating and highly readable account of the full international range of ballets inspired by Shakespeare. * Sir Stanley Wells * Shakespeare and Ballet is an outstanding, remarkable book — comprehensive, extremely well researched, detailed. It fills a much-needed gap in Shakespeare and adaptation studies, so its positive contribution to the field will be profound and will have long-lasting implications. * Lisa S. Starks, University of South Florida, USA *