LST 544 - Shakespeare Goes to the Movies

William Shakespeare and his works enjoy a double status. They are canonical icons in the theater and academy even as they are part of our ongoing popular culture. Shakespeare himself and his place in the Elizabethan theater have been the subject of a recent highly successful movie. And since the 1930s his plays have received many cinematic interpretations, each reflecting the values of the time in which it was produced. For example, in the 1940s Laurence Olivier’s film portrays Henry V as the embodiment of England’s imperial destiny, whereas in the 1990s  Kenneth Branagh depicts the same figure rather as a workaday man of the people, a rough-and-ready fellow soldier. This course will have two main goals. First, the class will discuss a selection of plays as examples of Shakespeare dramatic art. Then the same plays will be viewed and assessed as movie scripts, viable or maybe problematic. We will also consider one play as the inspiration for an American musical and another as the source for an Italian grand opera. Such is Shakespeare’s universal appeal that any full understanding of his achievement and its aftermath becomes inevitably multi-cultural.

Credits: 3