A Concise Companion to Shakespeare on Screen

This Concise Companion presents a multidisciplinary range of approaches to a vast multimedia subject, Shakespeare on screen. The book’s contributors use the latest thinking from cultural studies, communications, and comparative media, in dialogue with literary, theatrical, and filmic approaches, in order to push the field forward. They consider Shakespeare on screen not only as a set of finished products but also as a process. For this reason, the volume is organized around topics such as authorship and collaboration, theatricality, sex and violence, globalization, and history. The Concise Companion offers readers a variety of accessible routes into Shakespeare on screen and supports further study of the subject through the inclusion of a bibliography, a chronological chart, and a thorough index. At the same time, it serves as a focal point for exploring fundamental issues in the study of literature and culture more broadly, such as the relationships between elite and popular culture, art and the marketplace, text, image, and performance.

Acknowledgements. Notes on Contributors. Bibliographical Note. Chronology. Introduction: Through a Camera, Darkly (Diana E. Henderson). 1. Authorship: Getting Back to Shakespeare: Whose Film is it Anyway (Elsie Walker). 2. Cinema Studies: "Thou Dost Usurp Authority": Beerbohm Tree, Reinhardt, Olivier, Welles, and the Politics of Adapting Shakespeare (Anthony R. Guneratne). 3. Theatricality: Stage, Screen, and Nation: Hamlet and the Space of History (Robert Shaughnessy). 4. The Artistic Process: Learning from Campbell Scott′s Hamlet (Diana E. Henderson). 5. Cinematic Performance: Spectacular Bodies: Acting + Cinema + Shakespeare (Barbara Hodgdon). 6. Gender Studies: Shakespeare, Sex, and Violence: Negotiating Masculinities in Branagh′s Henry V and Taymor′s Titus (Pascale Aebischer). 7. Globalization: Figuring the Global/Historical in Filmic Shakespearean Tragedy (Mark Thornton Burnett). 8. Cross–Cultural Interpretation: reading Kurosawa Reading Shakespeare(Anthony Dawson). 9. Popular Culture: Will of the People: Recent Shakespeare Film Parody and the Politics of Popularization (Douglas Lanier). 10. Television Studies: Brushing Up Shakespeare: Relevance and Televise Form (Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio). 11. Remediation: Hamlet among the Pixelvisionaries: Video Art, Authenticity, and "Wisdom" in Almereyda′s Hamlet (Peter S. Donaldson). Afterword: Unending Revels: Visual Pleasure and Compulsory Shakespeare (Kathleen McLuskie). Select Bibliography. Index.

Diana E. Henderson is Associate Professor of Literature at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of Passion Made Public: Elizabethan Lyric, Gender and Performance (1995) and Collaborations with the Past: Reshaping Shakespeare Across Time and Media (2006).

"With this collection, Henderson...and her fellow contributors rocket Shakespearian studies into the 21st Century...the collection offers a variety of ways to study Shakespearian screen adaptations, thus providing an exciting new avenue of critical study for those looking to break free of the more staid critical analysis of old. Highly recommended" Choice <!––end––> “This superb collection of essays takes the study of Shakespeare on film to a whole new level, telling us where the discipline has reached and where we can go from here. From problems of film–acting and gender to cross–culturalism and pixelvision, the book covers an enormous range of approaches as it considers the full gamut of Shakespeare films (old and new; good, bad and indifferent). It may be a ‘Concise Companion’ but there is nothing skimped here; instead, the collection is as rich and provocative as one could imagine and as exhilarating as the films themselves.” Peter Holland, University of Notre Dame “The essays are superbly interwoven with the overall structure of the volume. The work presented in this volume is really impressive. It covers every necessary aspect needed to understand the discipline and completes what has been published so far opening new avenues for research. All that rethinking done in the past years has been appropriately summarized and expanded in this magnificent volume. It presents enough material to “keep making sense of our subject, and await the next viewing”. What more could one ask for? The careful reading of the essays included in this companion will elicit from us the wish to “continue to discern something meaningful”.” Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso, University of Vigo, Sederi "A serious and penetrating series of articles that supply dimensions we may not have been aware of and that enhance our understanding of the different Shakespeares we see on the screen … All libraries connected with cultural and media studies should have this book on their shelves." Reference Reviews