A student sent me this story about an anthropologist in the 1960s who read Hamlet with the Tiv in West Africa. The anthropologist starts out thinking that Shakespeare's themes are universal--that they translate between all cultures--and ends with a very different idea about Hamlet.
Actually, I still DO think that Shakespeare's themes are universal--which is to say that they speak to impulses and experiences that all human beings share. But the particulars--therein lies the rub, right? 400 years later, we struggle with some of the language. This story points out some fundamental differences in cultural trappings, beyond just words on a page.
Enjoy!
Mrs. Swan