World-Wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance

215 Pages·2006·5.37 MB·English

by  Sonia Massai

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‘A very significant contribution to the growing body
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of critical literature on Shakespeare appropriations
within specific theatrical and critical traditions around R
the globe.’ Jill Levenson,University of Toronto L
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‘Massai's definition and focus on the importance of -
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'locality' in world-wide Shakespeare appropriations
challenges, even as it extends, other recent scholar- I
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ship tracing Shakespeare's 'afterlife'.’
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Robert Sawyer, East Tennessee State University

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World-wide Shakespearesbrings together an interna- H
tional team of leading scholars in order to explore the A
appropriation of Shakespeare’s plays in film and K
performance around the world. In particular, the book E
considers the ways in which adapters and main S
directors have put Shakespeare into dialogue with coBrit P
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time’ and ‘small-time’ Shakespeares. Their specialist E
knowledge of local cultures and traditions make the d
range of appropriations newly accessible to world- i
t Edited by Sonia Massai
wide readers. Drawing upon debates about the e
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contributors together demonstrate significant new

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approaches to intercultural appropriations of
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Shakespeare. Responding to a surge of critical
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interest in the poetics and politics of appropriation,
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World-wide Shakespearesrepresents a valuable

resource for those interested in the afterlife of M
Shakespeare in film and performance, within and a
beyond Anglophone cultural centres. s
s
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Sonia Massai is a Lecturer at King’s College London. i
She has published on Shakespeare and adaptation
and is editor of Titus Andronicusfor the New Penguin
Shakespeare series and of Thomas Heywood’s The
Wise Woman of Hoxtonin the Globe Quartos.
Shakespeare / Theatre Studies / Literature
World-wide Shakespeares
World-wide Shakespeares brings together an international team of leading scholars in order
to explore the appropriation of Shakespeare’s plays in film and performance around the
world. In particular, the book considers the ways in which adapters and directors have
put Shakespeare into dialogue with local traditions and contexts.
The contributors look in turn at ‘local’Shakespeares for local,national and international
audiences, covering a range of English and foreign appropriations that challenge
geographical and cultural oppositions between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, big-time’ and
‘small-time’ Shakespeares. Their specialist knowledges of local cultures and traditions
make the range of appropriations newly accessible to world-wide readers. Drawing
upon debates about the global/local dimensions of cultural production and on Pierre
Bourdieu’s notion of the ‘cultural field’,the contributors together demonstrate significant
new approaches to intercultural appropriations of Shakespeare.
Responding to a surge of critical interest in the poetics and politics of appropriation,
World-wide Shakespeares represents a valuable resource for those interested in the afterlife
of Shakespeare in film and performance, within and beyond Anglophone cultural
centres.
Sonia Massai is a Lecturer at King’s College London. She has published on
Shakespeare and adaptation and is editor of Titus Andronicus for the New Penguin
Shakespeare series and of Thomas Heywood’s The Wise Woman of Hoxtonin the Globe
Quartos.

World-wide Shakespeares
Local appropriations in film
and performance
Edited by Sonia Massai
First published 2005 by Routledge
2 Park Square,Milton Park,Abingdon,Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge
270 Madison Ave,New York,NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
2005 Edited by Sonia Massai
Typeset in Baskerville by Keyword Group
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd,Bodmin,Cornwall
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
World-wide Shakespeares:local appropriations in film and performance/edited by Sonia Massai.
p.cm.
1.Shakespeare,William,1564-1616—Adaptations—History and criticism.2.Shakespeare,William,1564-
1616—Film and video adaptations.3.Shakespeare,William,1564-1616—Stage history—Foreign countries.
4.Shakespeare,William,1564-1616—Appreciation—Foreign countries.I.Massai,Sonia.
PR2880.AlW67 2005
822.3′3—dc22
2004028867
ISBN 0-415-324556 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-32456-4 (pbk)
For Jill

Contents
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction
1 Defining local Shakespeares 3
Sonia Massai
Part One:Local Shakespeares for local audiences
2 A Branch of the Blue Nile:Derek Walcott and the tropic
of Shakespeare 15
Tobias Döring
3 Political Pericles 23
Suzanne Gossett
4 Shylock as crypto-Jew:A new Mexican adaptation of
The Merchant of Venice 31
Elizabeth Klein and Michael Shapiro
5 Negotiating intercultural spaces:Much Ado About Nothing
and Romeo and Juliet on the Chinese stage 40
Ruru Li
6 ‘It is the bloody business which informs thus … ’:
Local politics and performative praxis,Macbeth in India 47
Poonam Trivedi
Part Two:Local Shakespeares for national audiences
7 Relocating and dislocating Shakespeare in Robert Sturua’s
Twelfth Night and Alexander Morfov’s The Tempest 57
Boika Sokolova
8 ‘I am not bound to please thee with my answers’:
The Merchant of Venice on the post-war German stage 65
Sabine Schülting
9 Katherina ‘humanized’:Abusing the Shrew on the Prague stage 72
Marcela Kostihová
viii Contents
10 ShootingtheHero:The cinematic career of Henry Vfrom
Laurence Olivier to Philip Purser 80
Ton Hoenselaars
11 Lamentable tragedy or black comedy?:Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s
adaptation of Titus Andronicus 88
Lukas Erne
12 Subjection and redemption in Pasolini’s Othello 95
Sonia Massai
13 ‘Meaning by Shakespeare’south of the border 104
Alfredo Michel Modenessi
14 Dreams of England 112
Robert Shaughnessy
15 The cultural logic of ‘correcting’The Merchant of Venice 122
Maria Jones
Part Three:Local Shakespeares for international audiences
16 Dancing with art:Robert Lepage’s Elsinore 133
Margaret Jane Kidnie
17 Hekepia? The Manaof the Maori Merchant 141
Mark Houlahan
18 The Haiku Macbeth:Shakespearean antithetical
minimalism in Kurosawa’s Kumonosu-jo 149
Saviour Catania
19 Afterword 157
Barbara Hodgdon
Notes 161
Bibliography 175
Index 193
Contributors
Saviour Cataniais a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the Centre for Communication
Technology at the University of Malta. His post-doctoral research includes screen
adaptations of Victorian and Gothic fiction, Shakespearean drama and ancient
Greek theatre. He has published in Literature/Film Quarterly, Entertext and Studia
Filmoznawcze. Forthcoming publications include articles on Arthurian legend and
classical myth on film.He is currently researching foreign film versions of Wuthering
Heightsand KingLear.
Tobias Döringis Professor of English at the University of Munich.His research fields
are early modern and post-colonial studies. He has published on Shakespearean
drama and on African and Caribbean literature. Most recent is his book on
Caribbean–English Passagesand a collection of essays which he co-edited,Performances of
the Sacred in Medieval and Early Modern England.He is review editor of the yearbook of the
German Shakespeare Association.
Lukas Erne,Professor of English Literature at the University of Geneva,Switzerland,is
the author of Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist(Cambridge University Press,2003) and
Beyond ‘The Spanish Tragedy’:A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd(Manchester University
Press, 2001), and the editor, with M. J. Kidnie, of Textual Performances: The Modern
Reproduction of Shakespeare’s Drama(Cambridge University Press,2004).He is currently
editing the first quarto of Romeo and Julietfor the New Cambridge Shakespeare.
Suzanne Gossett is Professor of English at Loyola University, Chicago. She is a
general editor of Arden Early Modern Drama and has most recently edited Pericles
for the Arden Shakespeare,third series (Thomson Learning,2004) and Eastward Ho!
for the Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson (forthcoming). Her other editions include Ben
Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, the Second Part of Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania, Thomas
Middleton’s A Fair Quarrel,Jacobean Academic Playsand Plays from the English College,Rome.
She has published many articles on early modern drama,on topics as varied as feminist
editing,masques,collaboration,and family structure in Shakespeare’s romances.
Barbara Hodgdon, Adjunct Professor of English at the University of Michigan, is
the author of The End Crowns All: Closure and Contradiction in Shakespeare’s History
(Princeton, 1991), The First Part of King Henry the Fourth: Texts and Contexts (Bedford-
St.Martin’s,1997) and The Shakespeare Trade:Performances and Appropriations (University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). She was guest editor for a special issue of Shakespeare