Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle

259 Pages·2000·28.07 MB·English

by  Mark Thornton Burnett

Shakespeare, Film, Fin de SiE~cle
Also by Mark Thornton Burnett
THE COMPLETE PLAYS OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (editor)
NEW ESSAYS ON HAMLET (co-editor with John Manning)
* MASTERS AND SERVANTS IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE DRAMA AND
CULTURE: Authority and Obedience
* SHAKESPEARE AND IRELAND: History, Politics, Culture (co-editor with Ramona
Wray)
Also by Ramona Wray
* SHAKESPEARE AND IRELAND: History, Politics, Culture (co-editor with Mark
Thornton Burnett)
* From the same publishers
Shakespeare, Film,
Fin de Siecle
Edited by
Mark Thornton Burnett
Reader in English
The Queen's University of Belfast
and
Ramona Wray
Lecturer in English
The Queen's University of Belfast
Foreword by Peter Holland
First published in Great Britain 2000 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A cataloguc record for this hook is availahle from thc British Lihrary,
ISBN 978-0-333-77664-3 ISBN 978-0-230-28679-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230286795
First published in the United States of America 2000 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N,Y 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-23148-2
Librar)'978-0-312-23148-2 ing-in-Publication Data
Shakespeare, tilm, tm de siecle 1 edited hy Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona
Wray,
p, cm,
Includes bibliographical rcfcrcnccs and index,
ISBN 978-0-312-23148-2
], Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616-Film and video adaptations, 2, English
drama-Film and video adaptations, L Burnett, Mark Thornton, IL Wray, Ramona,
1971-
PR3093 ,S485 2000
79L43'6-dc21
99--059390
Sclcction and editorial matter © Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray 2000
Text © Macmillan Press Ltd 2000
Foreword © Peter Holland 2000
Ali rights reservcd, No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may bc made
without writtcn permission,
No paragraph of this publication may he reproduced, copicd or transmitted sa ve with written
permission or in accordancc with the provisions of thc Copyright, Designs and Patcnts Act
1988, or undcr the terms of any liccnce permitting limitcd copying issued by the Copyright
Liccnsing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W 1P OLP
Any pcrson who does any unauthoriscd act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damagcs,
The authors ha ve assertcd their rights to he identified as the authors of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
This book is printed on paper sui table for recycling and madc from fully managcd and sustained
forest sources, Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the
environmental regulations of the country of origin.
T ransferred to digital printing 2002
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on the Contributors viii
Foreword
Peter Holland xii
Introduction
Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray 1
1. The Book on the Screen: Shakespeare Films and Textual
Culture
Andrew Murphy 10
2. The Postmodern Theatre of Paul Mazursky's Tempest
Douglas Bruster 26
3. Camp Richard III and the Burdens of (Stage/Film) History
Stephen M. Buhler 40
4. Shakespeare Meets The Godfather: The Postmodern
Populism of Al Pacino's Looking for Richard
Neil Sinyard 58
5. Urban Dystopias: Re-approaching Christine Edzard's As
You Like It
Amelia Marriette 73
6. Impressions of Fantasy: Adrian Noble's A Midsummer
Night's Dream
Mark Thornton Burnett 89
7. 'The Way the World is Now': Love in the Troma Zone
Margaret Jane Kidnie 102
8. 'These Violent Delights have Violent Ends': Baz
Luhrmann's Millennia! Shakespeare
James N. Loehlin 121
9. 'Either for tragedy, comedy': Attitudes to Hamlet in
Kenneth Branagh's In the Bleak Midwinter and Hamlet
Emma Smith 137
v
vi Contents
10. The End of History and the Last Man: Kenneth Branagh's
Hamlet
Julie Sanders 147
11. From the Horse's Mouth: Branagh on the Bard
Ramona Wray and Mark Thornton Burnett 165
12. Virgin and Ape, Venetian and Infidel: Labellings of
Otherness in Oliver Parker's Othello
Judith Buchanan 179
13. Shakespeare in Love and the End of the Shakespearean:
Academic and Mass Culture Constructions of Literary
Authorship
Richard Burt 203
Index 232
Acknowledgements
We are immeasurably grateful to Charmian Hearne, publisher at
Macmillan, for supporting this project and encouraging its progress.
As always, Charmian has been a model editor. We would also like to
thank Kenneth Branagh for being able to squeeze in an interview
during his busy shooting schedule. Thanks must go to Tamar Thomas
for helping to set up the interview and to Phillip Rose for making
available pre-shooting details of Kenneth Branagh's film version of
Love's Labour's Lost. Sharon Lignier at Castle Rock negotiated the cover
photograph, and Kenneth Branagh kindly allowed the image to be
reproduced: to them both, thanks. At the Queen's University of
Belfast, Jim McCluskey, Joan Rahilly and Tony Sheehan provided
invaluable technical assistance - revealing the mysteries of audio
equipment and translating seemingly unreadable computer disks.
Finally, we thank the contributors for their efficiency in meeting
deadlines and, when (sometimes copious!) rewritings and revisions
were required, responding with brio and enthusiasm.
vii
Notes on the Contributors
Douglas Bruster is an Assistant Professor of English at the
University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Drama and the Market
in the Age of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), the inaugural title in the Cambridge University Press Studies in
Renaissance Literature and Culture series. He is textual editor of The
Changeling for The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton (Oxford
University Press, forthcoming) and has published widely on
Renaissance drama in such journals as Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare
Quarterly and Studies in English Literature.
Judith Buchanan is a Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College,
Oxford and lectures in Film Studies in the English Faculty at the
University of Oxford. Since completing her doctorate on Shakespeare
on film, she has published articles on Michael Powell's unmade film
version of The Tempest (Film Studies, 1999) and on silent Shakespeare
films for the journal of the Maison Franr,;aise in Oxford (1999). She is
currently writing two books - a general introduction to Shakespeare
on film for the Longman/Pearson Inside Film Series and a historicized
account of silent Shakespeare films.
Stephen M. Buhler is an Associate Professor of English at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research interests range across
philosophical backgrounds, performance histories and pedagogical
practices. Recent publications include 'Counterpoint and
Controversy: Milton and the Critiques of Polyphonic Music' (Milton
Studies, 1998), 'Double Takes: Branagh Gets to Hamlet' (Post Script,
1997), 'No Spectre, No Sceptre: The Agon of Materialist Thought in
Julius Caesar' (English Literary Renaissance, 1996, and Shakespearean
Criticism, 1997), and 'Pre-Christian Apologetics in Spenser and Sidney'
(Spenser Studies, 1999). He is completing a book about strategies of
adaptation in Shakespeare films.
Mark Thornton Burnett is a Reader in English at the Queen's
University of Belfast. He is the author of Masters and Servants in English
Renaissance Drama and Culture: Authority and Obedience (London:
Macmillan, 1997), the editor of The Complete Plays of Christopher
viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
Marlowe (London: Everyman, 1999) and the co-editor of New Essays on
'Hamlet' (New York: AMS, 1994). He is currently editing the poems of
Christopher Marlowe for Everyman and writing Constructing 'Monsters'
in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modem Culture for the Macmillan
Early Modern Literature in History series.
Richard Burt is Professor of English at the University of
Massachusetts. He is the author of Licensed by Authority: Ben Jonson and
the Discourses of Censorship (Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press, 1993), the co-editor of Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property, and
Culture in Early Modem England (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1994), the editor of The Administration of Aesthetics:
Censorship, Political Criticism, and the Public Sphere (Minneapolis and
London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), the co-editor of
Shakespeare, the Movie: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV, and Video
(London and New York: Routledge, 1997) and the author of
Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares: Queer Theory and American Kiddie Culture
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998).
Peter Holland is Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford
upon-Avon, and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of
Birmingham. Among his Shakespeare studies are an edition of A
Midsummer Night's Dream for the Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1994) and English Shakespeares (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997). He is currently writing his own study of
Shakespeare and film.
Margaret Jane Kidnie is a Lecturer in English at South Bank
University, London. She has published articles in the fields of gender
performance and textual editing, and is currently publishing an old
spelling edition of Phillip Stubbes' Anatomie of Abuses with the
Renaissance English Text Society. She is also completing an edition of
four Ben Jonson plays for the World's Classics series (Oxford
University Press).
James N. Loehlin is an Associate Professor of English and the
Associate Director of the Shakespeare at Winedale Programme at the
University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Henry V (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1996) in the Shakespeare in Performance
series, as well as articles on teaching Shakespeare and Shakespeare and
film. He is also a director and actor.