In countries that adopt similar forms of hegemony or modes of domination, the ruling class might be expected to approach the problem of the control of taste, as part of that hegemony, in similar ways. Applying the historical ana sociological theory of Antonio Gramsci to the field of comparative literature, I will explore this proposition with respect to modern Shakespeare reception.1 The spread of finance capital in the latter years of the nineteenth century created political crises in virtually every country in the world, from which new strategies and modes of domination emerged. How many, and what sorts of domination came into existence through this process? To rephrase this question, how many ways of disguising class conflict have modern ruling classes devised? Gramsci indicated four generic hegemonic forms, spread throughout the world across different cultural and ideological divides: an English Road, based on rule by racial difference; a Russian Road, based on rule by caste; an Italian Road, based on rule by region; and an Albanian Road, based on tribal-ethnic and pronounced gender divisions.2 I have chosen to explore the reception of Shakespeare in these four different hegemonic modes because his works are important in all of them. An effect of cultural imperialism, the pervasive dissemination of Shakespeare has provoked, nonetheless, rich and varied ? sometimes subversive ? responses in the countless cultures in which his works have been adapted, staged and glossed. Neither Marx nor Gramsci wrote about Shakespeare to a great extent, but they did write about the importance of theatre for political economy. In Gramsci's theory of hegemony, theatre was important on two levels, that of the praxis of intellectuals, directors and actors, and that of hegemony itself.3 Thus, theatre has a privileged place in the study of the state's relation to aesthetics. Moreover, theatre includes the widest range of artistic expressions,