Shakespeare as a new common cultural constituent in Europe: Could Shakespeare be a new intersection for European communities?

With the collapse of The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Shakespeare has been constructed as a common identity that brought Europe together. Throughout the institutes and studies carried out after the Cold War -especially in the process of integrating the Eastern Bloc countries into the Western Europe- 'European Shakespeare' studies gain momentum and come to the fore as a common cultural value in Europe. At this very point, two opposite views as 'English Shakespeare' and 'European Shakespeare' have emerged; defending Shakespeare's 'national' identity (as a national value grounding English language and culture) and reading Shakespeare on a supranational intellectual level. This thesis states that at the point where these two views overlap, Shakespeare is tried to be constructed as a common identity with a Constructivist perspective: While expressing that the perception of Shakespeare can differ with the emergence of two opposite views, the aim of the thesis is to support the view that Shakespeare's unifying identity is tried to be reconstructed with international political concerns by using descriptive analysis method. Thus, it is found that Shakespeare supported a separatist language over both the American War of Independence and The Great War; while in the EU expansions due to the dissolution of the The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1990s, Shakespeare was emphasised as a unifying element that brought Europe together, and in this sense, it is evaluated that institutions such as ESRA, supporting 'European Shakespeare' thought, carry out academic studies on Shakespeare in all Europe, East, West and North. In addition, it is seen that the fact that citizens who both supported and opposed to Brexit continue to use Shakespearean identity as a separator during the Brexit period does not change the view that Shakespeare is accepted as a common value in Europe.