Book excerpt: This study simultaneously supports and challenges Shakespeare's universality. It does this by showing that Shakespeare is not universal insofar as his poetry speaks to all people of all classes, beyond class distinctions, but by demonstrating just how deeply entrenched Shakespeare is across a spectrum of socioeconomic structures and class, gender and ethnic struggles. The subjects of these essays range from Shakespeare's own appropriation of the sonnet form from Elizabethan couriers to reinterpretations of Shakespeare's plays in 19th-century African theatre to Brecht's political reworkings of Shakespeare's plays to pedagogical uses of Shakespeare in cultural studies courses to adaptations of Shakespeare in gay porn films.