From the Stage of the Globe .sx I TAKE OUT my bankcard .sx In the bottom right-hand corner is a picture of Shakespeare over-printed with the words " Cheque guarantee " .sx But hold the card up to the light and something strange happens .sx The colour , form and angle of Shakespeare's face alters :sx in profile he seems to be a beaming Bard , head-on he is a sombre sage .sx The picture is a kitsch symbol of a basic truth .sx Shakespeare stands for order , security , reliability .sx At the same time , he is shifting , elusive , infinitely variable .sx It is a duality which lies at the heart of the modern Shakespeare industry .sx Others have written eloquently about Shakespeare's double role as a national icon and pluralistic dramatist .sx Terence Hawkes in That Shakespeherian Rag shows how modern critics - Bradley , Raleigh , Dover Wilson - all accommodated Shakespeare to their own world view .sx For the aptly-named Walter Raleigh in 1907 Shakespeare indeed became a symbol of maleness , Englishness and even linguistic imperialism .sx As Hawkes remarks , " Shakespeare is always a powerful ideological weapon available in times of crisis .sx " For politicians he is constantly a handy source of quotation :sx on the day of the Gulf ceasefire , Sir Julian Amery remarked of Saddam Hussein , " We have scotched the snake , not killed it " ( apparently forgetting these words are spoken by , and not about , Macbeth) .sx For business enterprises , Shakespeare is a potent commercial weapon .sx In a recent Stratford programme , British Telecom had an advert telling us that " Poor communication was the death of those star-crossed lovers , Romeo and Juliet .sx While the speed and clarity of today's communication might well have saved them .sx " Though , personally , I wouldn't bank on it .sx So , on the one hand , we have the Stratford lad as symbol of national pride and quality goods ; and , before we sneer at cultural imperialism , I should add that there is something moving about watching British companies , as I can testify , playing Shakespeare to large , attentive , Bard-hungry throngs in places as diverse as Athens and Tbilisi .sx But , on the other hand , there is the infinitely more mysterious Shakespeare :sx the dramatist of no fixed abode whose work takes on new resonances in different cultures .sx In Europe he seems European :sx in Asia , Asian .sx And of his booming popularity , there is no doubt .sx The sold-out productions in Paris this spring have been Peter Zadek's Mesure pour Mesure and Peter Brook's La Temp e-grave te .sx In Hamburg on a recent Sunday night , I found there was a choice at the two major theatres between J u rgen Flimm's Was Ihr Wollt ( Twelfth Night ) and Michael Bodganov's Romeo und Julia .sx No wonder the Germans call him " unser Shakespeare " .sx Sampling recent Euro-Shakespeare productions , I discovered several facts .sx One is that the current Bard-boom is not just a testament to his genius but a direct comment on the universal dearth of new dramatists .sx Another is that he reverses the old adage that poetry is what gets lost in translation :sx in fact , it is Shakespeare's prose that is curiously untranslatable .sx And , most crucially of all , that there is gain as well as loss in freeing Shakespeare from the rigorous explicitness of the English tongue .sx There is a mythical quality in his work which transcends language and may even be liberated by a foreign perspective .sx As a classic example I would take J u rgen Flimm's stunning production of Was Ihr Wollt at Hamburg's Thalia Theater which I saw three days after Peter Hall's fine version at the Playhouse .sx LIKE HALL , Flimm recognises that this is a play dominated by the sea :sx the Hamburg setting is a tilted circular greensward behind which is a cut-out cave leading on to a shimmering marine perspective .sx But Flimm enjoys certain practical advantages not found in England :sx one is the luxury of 12 weeks' rehearsal ( Hall had six) .sx Another is a continental philosophy of lighting which creates mystery by casting the forestage in shadow .sx What is most striking , however , is the way Teutonic intellectualism , which we casually deride , turns Twelfth Night into an exploration of the Platonic idea of love as a link between the sensible and the eternal world .sx Eros is the guiding spirit of Flimm's production , which pushes the play's sexual confusion further than any version I have seen :sx Claudia Kaske's bosomy Olivia finds in Annette Paulmann's Cesario an image of perfection which leads her to unbutton her bodice and hitch up her skirts in a direct attempt at seduction .sx Jan Josef Liefers' self-loving Orsino looks curiously like Cesario whom he clasps to his bosom and cradles lovingly in his lap .sx And Sebastian and Antonio embrace not only each other but the Platonic idea that truth and beauty may be achieved by mutual affection between persons of the same sex .sx Released from English inhibitions , the play becomes a study in the varieties of Platonic love .sx What you lose in German , even in Reinhard Palm's good , Schlegel-based translation , is the pun-filled richness of the comedy .sx Feste , the emotional key to Hall's production , is here a mere cipher :sx it is fascinating to note that a line like " I live by the church " loses its double-meaning in German .sx If the production is still very funny , it is because Flimm compensates physically for what is lost verbally .sx His Sir Toby , for instance , is a balletic , balloon-panted drunk who , at the prospect of Malvolio's yellow stockings , hurls himself thrice to the ground with a ferocity unseen since the heyday of Norman Wisdom .sx And the Maria , at the same point , actually wets her knickers with excitement .sx But , for all the comic excess , the mythical power of the play still emerges and there are two moments of pure mastery :sx Viola vehemently stripping off her tunic on " Disguise , I see thou art wickedness " and the vengeful , anguished cries of Malvolio reverberating offstage during Feste's plangent final song .sx As Flimm's production shows , something strange happens when you lose the English language and context :sx you release the play's metaphorical power .sx It is an issue which directors Peter Brook and Peter Stein recently debated at Braunschweig .sx Stein , who despatched his Berlin actors to Warwickshire before even attempting As You Like It , believes you can research your way into Shakespeare's truth .sx Brook argued that you inevitably lose 70 per cent of Shakespeare in translation but that some mysterious quiddity remains .sx I would go even further and say that foreign Shakespeare , because it is a kind of analogue to the original , sometimes uncovers aspects of the work we have forgotten .sx The case of Peter Zadek is especially fascinating .sx He was born in Berlin , came to England as a child in 1933 and returned to Germany in 1958 to become one of the country's most controversial directors .sx His two most recent Shakespeare productions - Der Kaufmann von Venedig ( The Merchant Of Venice ) for the Vienna Burgtheater and Mesure pour Mesure for the Od e on in Paris - are particularly fascinating :sx both offer partial visions of the play concerned while , at the same time , forcing you to rethink its meaning .sx Zadek's Merchant was certainly bold and radical in that it subordinated questions of anti-Semitism to an examination of capitalist morality .sx He set the action in contemporary Wall Street and cast as Shylock a blond , indisputably Aryan actor , Gert Voss , who could , as Zadek said , play Siegfried or an SS officer .sx This led to a totally assimilated Shylock whose hatred of Antonio was financial rather than racial .sx It also produced one richly comic moment when Eva Mattes' Portia , arriving in court , turned to the Homburg-hatted Antonio and asked " Ist Ihr Name Shylock ?sx " at which point Voss tetchily interposed , " Shylock ist mein Name .sx " .sx By underplaying the racial aspect , Zadek reminded us that the real protagonist of The Merchant is money :sx money lent , borrowed , sought and invested .sx Solario and Solanio became a couple of small-time brokers busily reading the financial papers .sx Bassanio turned up in Belmont with his business cronies who offered shrewd market advice about which casket to plump for .sx And Shylock in the trial became less an heroic victim than a cool capitalist :sx advised to have a surgeon standing by , he spent a good couple of minutes scanning the contract and , at the end , far from being devastated by his losses he wrote out promissory-notes and made a dignified exit presumably to ring up his Swiss bank manager .sx In one sense , Zadek's reading works against the text .sx If you deprive Shylock of any overt sense of alienation or persecution , you simply make him a bloodthirsty version of Michael Douglas's Gekko rather than an historically tormented figure seeking a legitimate revenge .sx But you also highlight another aspect of the play :sx the fact that Venice is , in Sigurd Burckhardt's words , " a closed world , inherently conservative , because it knows that it stands or falls with the sacredness of contracts .sx " Just , in fact , like Wall Street .sx I felt much the same ambivalence recently while watching Zadek's French production of Mesure pour Mesure at the Od e on in Paris .sx What one gained , largely because of an astounding performance by Isabelle Huppert , was fresh insight into the character of Isabella as well as into the cynicism of a Catholic culture about religious dissembling .sx What one lost was that peculiarly Shakespearian juxtaposition of the earthy and the sublime , the prosaic and the poetic .sx Shakespeare's comedy simply doesn't travel well .sx Huppert , however , reminded us that great acting is something that almost transcends language .sx In Britain the tencency is to play Isabella ( " More than our brother is our chastity " ) as a figure of righteous moral fervour :sx Huppert made her a woman constantly torn between the call of the cloister and the demands of the flesh .sx Preparing to enter the order of St Clare , she was all tremulous uncertainty as she gazed wistfully in a vanity-mirror while wiping off her lipstick .sx In her great confrontations with Angelo she was , to borrow a phrase of Arnold Bennett's , " flushed and thrilling with virginity " :sx she also took seriously on board Angelo's arguments about female fragility , readily admitting " nous sommes tendres comme l'est notre complexion .sx " But Huppert also made Isabella sufficiently worldly to whip off her wimple and share a glass of bubbly with the Duke , to win Mariana round to the bed-trick with insouciant gaiety and , at the last , nervously to slip her hand into the Duke's .sx What you lose in French is the leprous comedy of the Viennese gaol-scenes here translated by Mr Zadek into a crude Galgenhumor .sx Pompey's great speech about the prison-inmates ( " wild Half-can that stabbed Pots " ) here became the excuse for him to enter with a female corpse whose leg he proceeded to saw off like a bungling conjurer .sx All this in spite of a superb translation by Jean-Michel Deprats that made one question Jean-Louis Barrault's assertion that Shakespeare's entry on the French stage begins with a crime in that " in order to cross the Channel he has to be shorn of his poetic garb .sx " .sx Well does he ?sx Deprats wrote a fascinating article in the Paris programme describing how the simplest phrases are often the most untranslatable .sx How , he asked , do you render Claudio's definition of death :sx " This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod .sx " In fact , he does it very well :sx " .sx .. Ce corps sensible , chaud , mobile devenir/ Un motte de terre glaise .sx " .sx That at least has the right balance and sense of metamorphosing decay .sx IT ALSO seems preferable to Jean-Claude Carri e-grave re's prose paraphrase , for Peter Brook's 1978 Paris production , which renders the same passage as :sx " .sx .. cette chaleur sensible qui bouge devenir une p a-circ te boueuse .sx " Carri e-grave re gives you the sense while Deprats gives you a hint of the Shakespearean rhythm .sx But , given that translation is always a bare approximate , the fundamental truth is that foreign Shakespeare is both necessary and instructive .sx Transpose the language and the plays take on new colours and meanings :sx the further you get geographically from England , the more chameleon-like they become .sx Hamlet in Romanian , as we discovered from Alexandra Tocilescu's Bulandra Theatre production at the National , actually seems to become an East European play about a decaying tyranny .sx An even more extreme example was Yukio Ninagawa's unforgettable Japanese Macbeth , seen in Edinburgh and London , which shifted the action to a world of 16th century Samurai warriors , blood-red sunsets and cascading cherry-blossom symbolising death and human transience .sx Like Kurosawa's films , Throne Of Blood and Ran , Ninagawa's production suggested that Shakespeare was , mysteriously , a Japanese dramatist .sx