Long before the global pandemic of COVID-19, digital videos have helped Shakespeare gone viral around the world. The outbreak of the global pandemic of COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in early 2020 closed live theatre events worldwide, but the crisis – during which global travel and national borders were shut down – also ushered in a new phase of globalization fuelled by digital videos as at-home audiences took to streaming to engage with Shakespeare. The pandemic has led to a proliferation of born-digital and digitized archival videos of Shakespeare in Western Europe, Canada, the UK, and the US.

Read the essay on Theatre Times website.