The Merchant of Everywhere: religion, cosmopolitanism, and the internationalizing of Shakespeare

Michael Dobson is Director of The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Birmingham, UK. He has previously taught at institutions including Oxford, Harvard, and the University of London, and he has held fellowships and visiting appointments at UCLA, PKU, the University of Lodz in Poland, and the Sorbonne. He holds honorary doctorates from Lund (Sweden) and Craiova (Romania), and he is an honorary governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He consults extensively with actors and directors, from Singapore to the Moscow Arts Theatre, contributes regularly to the London Review of Books, and has written programme notes for theatre companies including: the RSC; Sam Mendes’ Bridge Project; the Sheffield Crucible; Chichester Festival Theatre; the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre; Shakespeare’s Globe; TR Warszawa; Mokwha Repertory, Seoul; The Beijing People’s Arts Theatre; Teatro Nacional São João, Porto; and Peter Stein. His publications include The Making of the National Poet (1992), The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (with Stanley Wells, 2001-), England’s Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy (with Nicola Watson, 2002), Performing Shakespeare's Tragedies Today (2006), and Shakespeare and Amateur Performance (2011). He is General Editor, with Sir Simon Russell Beale and Dr Abigail Rokison-Woodall, of the Arden Performance Editions of Shakespeare series, and, with Professor Dympna Callaghan, of the Palgrave Shakespeare Studies series. Together with Dr Nan Yuan of Yilin Press and Professor Cong Cong of Nanjing University, he is a co-director of the Shakespeare Centre, China. He is currently finishing a book about the roles played by the Shakespeare canon in national theatre repertories worldwide.