The Merchant of Venice and Othello are the two Shakespeare plays which serve as touchstones for contemporary understandings and responses to notions of 'the stranger' and 'the other'. This groundbreaking collection explores the dissemination of the two plays through Europe during the 20th and 21st centuries, tracing how productions and interpretations have reflected the changing conditions and attitudes locally and nationally.Packed with case studies of productions of each play in different countries, the volume opens vistas on the continent’s turbulent history marked by the instability of allegiances and boundaries, and shifting senses of identity in a context of war, decolonization and migration. Chapters examine productions in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Italy, France, Portugal, Catalonia and Germany to shed light on wide-scale European developments for the first time in English.In a final section, chapters consider the work of European stage directors who have had an influence across the continent: constructions of race are explored in stage performances of Othello directed by Ivo Van Hove (2003), Thomas Ostermeier (2011), and Suren Shahverdyan (2016), and depictions of Shylock and Othello in the production of the African Tales after Shakespeare based on King Lear, The Merchant of Venice and Othello produced by Krzysztof Warlikowski in 2011. Performance insights are offered by contributions from Karin Coonrod on directing The Merchant in Venice at the Venetian Ghetto in 2016, and by Hammudi Al-Rahmoun Font and Youcef Allaoui, director and leading actor of the Catalan-language film Otel.lo (2012).In drawing attention to the ways in which historical circumstances and collective memory shape and refashion performance, Shakespeare’s Others in 21st-century European Performance offers a rich review of European theatrical engagements with Otherness in the productions of these two plays.Series: Global Shakespeare Inverted