Bloomsbury: dramaonlinelibrary.com

CONTENT Shakespeare’s Globe to Globe Festival is the newest addition to the multitude of filmed William Shakespeare performances hosted on Bloomsbury’s Drama Online platform. The Globe to Globe Festival is unique in that it features companies from all over the world performing Shakespeare in their native languages and bringing their cultures’ distinctive sensibilities and styles to these centuries-old English plays. Performances are given in more than 30 languages, ranging from major Western tongues (Spanish; French) to those rarely heard in Western playhouses (Yoruba; Shona). Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London hosted these performances in summer 2012 as part of the London Olympic Games’ Cultural Olympiad and its World Shakespeare Festival.

This review covers 10 performances released by Bloomsbury in 2022. Bloomsbury calls this set the Globe to Globe Festival on Screen 1 and plans to release another 10 performances in 2023, and the final collection of 10 in 2024.This first collection of performances includes Antony and Cleopatra (Turkish), Coriolanus (Japanese), Hamlet (Lithuanian), Henry VIII (Castilian Spanish), The Merchant of Venice (Hebrew), Much Ado About Nothing (French), Richard II (Palestinian Arabic), The Tempest (Bangla), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Zimbabwean Shona), and The Winter’s Tale (Nigerian Yoruba). All the recordings feature audio entirely in the languages in which the plays were performed, along with complete subtitles and transcripts in English. These videos provide significant value for teaching and learning Shakespeare, studying intercultural production, and exploring themes such as gender and relationships globally across cultures.

USABILITY These videos are hosted on Bloomsbury’s Drama Online platform, which hosts more than 30 collections of audiovisual and textual materials in the field of dramatic arts; libraries can acquire the Globe to Globe Festival as a stand-alone collection. Patrons can search with precision across all the collections to which their library subscribes (unsubscribed content is hidden by default), and they can create free personal accounts to make and save clips. Patrons can browse content by the historical period in which it was first performed (Elizabethan; Jacobean), genre and form (comedy, tragicomedy; tragedy), theme (death; freedom; love), and setting (Denmark; Egypt; Italy). The platform is mobile responsive, visually appealing, and straightforward for novice users to navigate. Each video comes with a digital object identifier (DOI) and basic metadata, including descriptions of the theater companies and names of the actors and directors.

All the videos come with subtitles and auto-scroll transcripts that make the dialogue easy to follow and ensure a high degree of accessibility. However, the subtitles sometimes lag behind the action and fall short of true closed captions, which should capture sounds as well as speech. Per Bloomsbury, the subtitles will be “improved and updated in due course.” The quality of the video and audio is excellent, considering that these are recordings of live stage performances.

PRICING Globe to Globe on Screen 1 is available by annual subscription ($625–$2,501) or purchase of perpetual access ($3,750–$15,000). A hosting fee of $200–$600 begins one year after the initial purchase. Pricing is based on size and type of institution. Discounts may be available.

VERDICT The Globe to Globe Festival collection is sure to inspire scholars, performers, and students of Shakespeare as well as anyone who values or teaches intercultural theater. Recommended for any schools with drama programs or courses on Shakespeare.