"This polemical study contends that Shakespeare films produced on both sides of the millennium respond to globalization by reflecting upon the changing circumstances of their own cultural locations. Examining art-house works as well as media representations, grass-roots creations and Hollywood statements, Burnett argues for the crucial place of Shakespeare in contemporary debates about hybridity and identity, religion and ethnicity, and spirituality and difference." "Performing more than one task simultaneously, the productions investigated here initiate and sequelize, and authenticate and demythologize, emptying out the regional as they restore local within a grammar of the global. Inside this process, film reveals itself as acutely responsive to both its own marketplace niche and to Shakespeare's status as an icon moulded according to the dictates of late capitalist modes of consumption."--BOOK JACKET.