The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen

Lively and up-to-date critical introductions to a rich range of Shakespeare adaptations for film, video and television.

Russell Jackson (Edited by)

9781108421164, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 December 2020

320 pages
24 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 5.4 kg

'… extensive and immensely useful' Sarah Carter, Cahiers Elisabethains

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen provides a lively guide to film and television productions adapted from Shakespeare's plays. Offering an essential resource for students of Shakespeare, the companion considers topics such as the early history of Shakespeare films, the development of 'live' broadcasts from theatre to cinema, the influence of promotion and marketing, and the range of versions available in 'world cinema'. Chapters on the contexts, genres and critical issues of Shakespeare on screen offer a diverse range of close analyses, from 'Classical Hollywood' films to the BBC's Hollow Crown series. The companion also features sections on the work of individual directors Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Franco Zeffirelli, Kenneth Branagh, and Vishal Bhardwaj, and is supplemented by a guide to further reading and a filmography.

Introduction
Part I. Adaptation and its Contexts: 1. Shakespeare and the film industry of the pre-sound era Judith Buchanan
2. Adaptation and the marketing of Shakespeare in classical Hollywood Deborah Cartmell
3. Shakespeare 'live' Peter Holland
4. Shakespearean cinemas/global directions Mark Thornton Burnett
Part II. Genres and Plays: 5. The comedies on screen Ramona Wray
6. The environments of tragedy on screen: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth Peter Kirwan
7. Two tragedies of love: Romeo and Juliet and Othello Victoria Bladen
8. 'Sad stories of the death of kings': The Hollow Crown and the Shakespearean history play on screen Kinga Földváry
9. The Roman plays on film Peter J. Smith
10. Screening Shakespearean fantasy and romance in A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest Antony Guy Patricia
Part III. Critical Issues: 11. Questions of racism: The Merchant of Venice and Othello Russell Jackson
12. 'A wail in the silence': feminism, sexuality, and final meanings in King Lear films by Grigorii Kozintsev, Peter Brook, and Akira Kurosawa Courtney Lehmann
13. Violence, tragic and comic, in Coriolanus and The Taming of the Shrew Patricia Lennox
Part IV. Directors: 14. The Shakespeare films of Orson Welles Emma Smith
15. Kurosawa's Shakespeare: mute heavens, merging worlds, or the metaphors of cruelty Anne-Marie Costantini-Cornède
16. Zeffirelli's Shakespearean motion pictures: living monuments Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin
17. Kenneth Branagh: mainstreaming Shakespeare in movie theatres Sarah Hatchuel
18. Remaking Shakespeare in India: Vishal Bhardwaj's films Poonam Trivedi
Further reading
Filmography
Index.

Subject Areas: Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Shakespeare plays [DDS], Individual film directors, film-makers [APFB], Films, cinema [APF], Performance art [AFKP]