In 1882, a critic of the journal Theatre noted that ‘the theatrical life of the present day might be described as a round of glorified strolling. The ‘circuits’ of Bristol, Norwich, and York of the last century are now replaced by those of the United States, South Africa, India, and Australia, and a modern actor thinks as little of a season in Melbourne or New York as his grandfather did of a week’s ‘starring’ in Edinburgh.’ Yet the story of how these Western theatre companies reached audiences in the faraway lands of the British Empire and Asia is still relatively untold. In this article Kaori Kobayashi explores in detail some itineraries around the turn of the twentieth century of these travelling companies, many of them relatively obscure, showing that the companies had a particular and significant impact on the development of Shakespearean performance and interpretation in the East. In essence, it is impossible to understand the rise of ‘Asian Shakespeare’ without also grasping how Western touring companies helped shape the East’s engagement with the West’s most canonical dramatist. Kaori Kobayashi is Professor of English at Nagoya City University, author of The Cultural History of The Taming of The Shrew (in Japanese, 2007), and editor of Shakespeare Performance Studies in Japan (in Japanese, 2010).

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“演员们都来了”：亚洲旅游公司的莎士比亚作品

1882 年，该杂志的评论家剧院他指出，“当今的戏剧生活可以被描述为一轮光荣的漫步。上个世纪的布里斯托尔、诺里奇和约克的“巡回演出”现在被美国、南非、印度和澳大利亚的巡回演出所取代，现代演员对墨尔本或纽约的一个赛季就像他的祖父在爱丁堡做了一周的“主演”。然而，这些西方剧团如何在遥远的大英帝国和亚洲吸引观众的故事仍然相对鲜为人知。在这篇文章中，小林香织详细探讨了这些旅游公司在 20 世纪之交的一些行程，其中许多相对晦涩难懂，表明这些公司对东方莎士比亚的表演和解释的发展产生了特殊而重大的影响。从本质上讲，如果不了解西方巡演公司如何帮助塑造东方与西方最典型剧作家的接触，就不可能理解“亚洲莎士比亚”的崛起。Kaori Kobayashi 是名古屋市立大学的英语教授，着有驯悍记的文化史（日文，2007），编辑日本莎士比亚表演研究（日文，2010）。