Othello is a Moor, Shylock is Jewish and his daughter Jessica not only converts to Christianity but also disguises herself as a boy and thus acts like Portia and her cross-dressing performance. Katherina is a shrew who needs to be tamed in order to learn her proper place as a woman, while prince Hamlet is torn between his duties and his personal feelings and desires. These are but few examples to the wealth of intercultural encounters, disguise, cross-dressing, and the tension between the private self and the public persona that can be found in Shakespeare’s plays. This profusion indicates the importance of self-fashioning and identity issues within both Shakespeare’s work and the Elizabethan culture. The seminar focuses on these issues and the theatrical and cultural challenges they suggest. And while taking historical and modern perspectives it aims at exploring the ways through which the characters’ features, actions and images complicate matters of identity in the context of nationality, race, gender and sexuality.