The translation, interpretation and performance of Shakespeare in the South Slav lands have passed through two phases and are now in the third. The first began in the forties of last century and lasted until the first World War, a period when only a minority of the South Slavs had an independent State, the majority being under Austria-Hungary or Turkey. The second phase covers the period between the two World Wars, after the South Slav peoples had attained political independence, and were united in the sovereign state of Yugoslavia. The third phase begins after the second World War, in the new, socialist Yugoslavia (a federation of the republics of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro). The quality of translation, acting and staging has improved in the course of time; in the second phase they reached a fairly high level, and have touched a still higher one in the third.

Before 1914 twenty-one of Shakespeare's plays had been performed in Croatia, in translation from the German, except in the case of two which were possibly from the English and of one from the French. Of the printed translations of nine of Shakespeare's plays, only one was from the English original.1 In the Serbian lands, six of Shakespeare's plays were acted in translations from the English and five from the German, while altogether thirteen translations were printed, ten of which were from the original English. The principal translators of Shakespeare during this period were: in Croatia, the novelist A. Šenoa and the poets A. Harambašić, H. Badalic and V. Nazor; in the Serbian lands, the poets L. Kostic and S. Stefanović; in Slovenia, the shortstory writer I. Cankar and the poets A. Funtek and O. Župančič.