Repositioning Shakespeare offers an original assessment of a broad range of texts and cultural events that appropriate Shakespeare. Examining these materials within the context of 'the nation' in a postcolonial era, Thomas Cartelli considers essays by Walt Whitman, the nineteenth-century play, 'Jack Cade', novels by Aphra Behn, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Michelle Cliff, Tayeb Salih, Nadine Gordimer and Robert Stone, and the 1849 Astor Place Riot Cartelli places particular emphasis on redefining the 'postcolonial' in order to find a place for America. In doing so, Repositioning Shakespeare makes a considerable contribution to the continuing debate about the uses we make of Shakespeare.