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영어

As a long-term project to draw analogies between past and present, this paper aims to explore the resonances between Shakespeare’s political plays and real politics in Korea. In addition, this paper will try to answer the question, “Why should Korean people read Shakespeare today?” through the lens of presentism. Korea has recently witnessed presidential impeachment twice, and the reverberations are currently underway. Under these circumstances, plays like Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Hamlet, and some histories may reflect the ongoing conflict between democratic republicanism and autocratic elitism in Korea in that the power struggles among the powerful and the images of the populace on stage may remind the Korean audience of their own history since the establishment of the Republic of Korea in 1948. In other words, they can find a relationship with stories in Shakespearean political plays more than with others, even though they are set in a totally different background. Therefore, Shakespeare may offer Koreans an ample opportunity to discuss the value of democratic republicanism, and the present in Korea is not an obstacle to understanding Shakespeare but a critically enabling factor in making meanings with his plays.