Aimed at newcomers to literature and film, this book is a guide for the analysis of Shakespeare on film. Starting with an introduction to the main challenge faced by any director--the early-modern language--there follows exemplars for examining how that challenge is met using as case studies twelve films most often used in classroom teaching, including
Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth
, and
The Tempest
.
The first chapter explores how a director can tell the story in a setting that embraces the expectations of realism in cinema, but still pays homage to the theatrical origins of the work. The second chapter discusses films in which the setting provides a visual analogy with the preoccupations of the story, but not at the expense of Shakespeare's language. The third chapter extends this to show how some films use recent history as a setting, adding a further layer of meaning to the story from the cultural resonances associated with that historical past. These films also rely on an assumption that Shakespeare is so well-known as to form a distinctive, easily recognized brand in the cinema marketplace. Thus, his work can be reimagined in completely different genres such as those films that are the subject of the final chapter.