Shakespeare and Ballet - Review

In Shakespeare and Ballet: Gender, Sexuality, Race and Politics on Stage, David Fuller offers a comprehensive examination of how Shakespeare’s works have been reinterpreted through the medium of ballet. Focusing on adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and The Tempest, the study investigates the complex interplay between choreography, music, staging, and dramatic narrative. Fuller argues that ballet functions not merely as a derivative form of adaptation but as an interpretative medium capable of revealing new dimensions of Shakespearean texts through embodied performance. A central contribution of the volume is its sustained attention to the role of music as the structural and expressive foundation of Shakespearean ballet. By analysing choreographic responses to specific musical scores, Fuller demonstrates how movement and music collaboratively generate meaning, often replacing verbal language with physical and emotional expression. The book further explores how ballet adaptations engage with questions of gender, sexuality, race, identity, and political representation, showing how contemporary productions reinterpret Shakespeare in response to changing cultural contexts. Through detailed case studies, Fuller highlights the ways in which ballet translates psychological conflict, emotional intensity, fantasy, and poetic ambiguity into visual and kinetic forms. The volume ultimately presents ballet as a powerful mode of Shakespearean criticism and adaptation, one that preserves the openness of Shakespeare’s works while continually reinventing them for new audiences. Combining insights from Shakespeare studies, performance studies, dance scholarship, and musicology, the book makes a significant contribution to interdisciplinary research on adaptation and performance.