A Shakespeare Film Primer
for the Summer 2012 Class
English 252
David Cope
Grand Rapids Community College
Contents:
Some Film Adaptations: approaches to the plays
Casts and credits
1
3
Example: Adapting Twelfth Night to film
7
Example: The Globe Theatre As You Like It
Shakespeare in Love Course Notes
9
12
Internet Sources for Shakespeare in Love
16
Shakespeare in Love Intertextual References
17
Letter to Henry Seaton: Dividing up Lear 20
Internet Links for Ran and King Lear 21
Some Notes on Our Viewing of Ran
Julie Taymor’s The Tempest
22
23
Ladies’ Day on the magical island: Taymor’s Tempest
24
Some Internet Sources for Julie Taymor’s The Tempest
30
Film Study Assignments
30
Some Resources for Writing about Shakespeare and Film
31
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Some Film Adaptations
Please note: these lists explore the varieties of Shakespearean adaptations, and this selection cannot possibly
reflect the vast range of films based on Shakespeare’s plays.
1.
Filming a stage play
<Conditions of stage/venue (dictating approach to filming)
<Blocking of actors and placement of cameras
<Sound quality and audience responses
Examples:
a. Richard Burton’s Hamlet (1964, 1995) Final rehearsal at Lunt-Fontaine Theatre.
b. The Taming of the Shrew (1976) American Conservatory Theatre of San Francisco.
c. The Winter’s Tale (1998/99) The Royal Shakespeare Company
d. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) (2001) The Reduced
Shakespeare Company
e. Globe Theatre As You Like It (2010) The Royal Shakespeare Company.
f. Greenwich Theatre Volpone (Jonson, 2011)
2. Film involving genesis or production of play with inset Shakespeare text
<Assumption that the audience knows the Shakespeare play
<Implicit irony in relation of primary plot to play plot
<Play text enacted as points to which primary plot was leading or as emphasis
Examples:
a. Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman / Hamlet, 1982)
b. Looking for Richard (1Richard III, 1996). Al Pacino, Winona Ryder, Kevin Spacey,
Alec Baldwin, etc.
c. Shakespeare in Love (Norman and Stoppard / Romeo and Juliet, 1998)
d. Kiss Me, Kate (2003) The Performance Company. Cole Porter’s adaptation of The
Taming of the Shrew, live with audience.
e. Stage Beauty (with Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, 2005)
f. Slings and Arrows (Three season TV production with the “New Burbage Theatre” /
Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, 2003-2006, released on DVD in 2008)
3. Adaptation of plot and characters imported into another cultural setting
<Some awareness of the culture and time period being represented
<Assumption that the audience knows the Shakespeare (source) play
<Necessary adaptations of cultural representations with “rereading of the original play
Examples:
a. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa / Macbeth 1957)
b. The Bad Sleep Well (Kurosawa / Hamlet 1963)
c. Korol Lear /King Lear. (1971) Dir. Grigori Kosintsev. Mosfilms. Marxist Social
realist portrayal. Russian, with subtitles.
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d. Ran (Kurosawa / King Lear 1984)
e. William Shakespeare’s As You Like It (2006) Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Attempt to
implant the play into 19th century English colony in Japan.
Film Adaptation with attempt to recreate a Shakespearean setting /costumes, etc.
<script often stripped to between 40-60% of original text.
<natural landscapes and interior settings as indicated in stage directions or notes.
Examples:
a. Julius Caesar (1953) Dir. Joseph Mankiewicz. Marlon Brando, John Gielgud, James
Mason. Features Brando’s “method acting” and Hollywood “blue coats and Indians”
treatment of final battle.
b. The Taming of the Shrew (1971). Dir. Franco Zeffirelli. Richard Burton, Elizabeth
Taylor.
c. The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971). Dir. Roman Polanski. Jon Finch, Francesca Annis.
d. King Lear (1983). Dir. Michael Elliot. Laurence Olivier, Colin Blakely, Anna
Calder-Marshall. TV production.
e. Henry V (1989) Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench,
Emma Thompson.
f. Othello. (1995) Dir. Oliver Parker. Kenneth Branagh, Lawrence Fishburne.
Film Adapted from Stage Production
<use of staged sets and interiors
<often a declamatory (stage) approach to acting, not fully cognizant of the possibilities
available on screen. Still, some great performances.
Examples:
a. Antony & Cleopatra. (1974) Dir. John Scofield. Janet Suzman, Richard Johnson,
Patrick Stewart. TV production.
b. King Lear (1974). Dir. Edwin Sherwin. James Earl Jones, Raul Julia, Rosalind Cash.
WNET TV, adapted from Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival Production.
c. Macbeth (1979). Dir. Philip Casson. Ian McKellan, Judi Dench.
d. BBC Television Shakespeare (37 plays, 1978-1985). Multiple directors.
Contemporary Film Adaptation
<Full use of technology and contemporary century filmic techniques and special effects.
<Playscript sometimes stripped to tell a leaner version of the story.
<Chance-taking in some cases, reinterpreting motifs to suit contemporary audiences.
Examples:
a. Richard III. (1995) Dir. Richard Loncraine. Ian McKellan, Annette Bening, Robert
Downey Jr.
b. Romeo + Juliet (1996) Dir. Baz Luhrmann. Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes.
c. Titus (1999) Dir. Julie Taymor. Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange.
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William Shakespeare: As You Like It (2010)
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1710532/
Director: Thea Sharrock
Designer: Dick Bird
Composer: Stephen Warbeck
Choreographer: Fin Walker
Fight Director: Kevin McCurdy
Location: The Globe Theatre, Bankside, London
First Performance of this production: 30 May 2009
Run time: 149 minutes
Cast
Duke Senior
Duke Frederick
Philip Bird
Brendan Hughes
Rosalind
Celia
Touchstone
Naomi Frederick
Laura Rogers
Dominic Rowan
Oliver
Orlando
Adam
Jamie Parker
Jack Laskey
Trevor Martin
Jaques
Amiens
Tim McMullen
Peter Gale
Corin
Silvius
Phebe
William
Audrey
Sean Kearns
Michael Benz
Jade Williams
Gregory Gudgeon
Sohie Duval
Charles
Le Beau
Sir Oliver Martext
Hymen
Sean Kearns
Gregory Gudgeon
Peter Gale
Ewart James Walters
Musicians
Rob Millett, Ben Grove, Tracy Holloway, David Powell, Dai Pritchard
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Shakespeare in Love (1998)
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138097/
Director: John Madden
Written by: Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard
Executive Producer: Bob Weinstein
Producers: Harvey Weinstein, Edward Zwick, Marc Norman, David Parfitt
Cinematography: Richard Greatrex
Film Editing: David Gamble
Art Design: Steven Lawrence and Mark Raggett
Set Decoration: Jill Quertier
Costume Design: Sandy Powell
Key Members of the Cast:
Philip Henslowe
Hugh Fennyman
Lambert
Geoffrey Rush
Tom Wilkinson
Steven O’Donnell
Will Shakespeare
Christopher Marlowe
Will Kempe
Richard Burbage
Ned Allyn
Henry Condell
Augustine Phillips
John Webster
Joseph Fiennes
Rupert Everett
Patrick Barlowe
Martin Clunes
Ben Affleck
Nicholas Boulton
Mark Saban
Joe Roberts
Queen Elizabeth
Tilney, Master of Revels
Judi Dench
Simon Callow
Lord Wessex
Lady Wessex
Viola de Lesseps
Nurse
Colin Firth
Jill Baker
Gwyneth Paltrow
Imelda Staunton
Dr. Moth
Rosaline
Makepeace, the preacher
Anthony Sher
Sandra Reinton
Steven Beard
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Ran (1985)
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089881/
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Written by: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Masato Ide
Adapted from: William Shakespeare, King Lear
Executive Producer: Katsumi Furukawa
Producers: Masato Hara, Hisao Kurosawa
Cinematography: Asakazu Nakai, Takao Saito, Shoji Ueda
Film Editing: Akira Kurosawa
Production Design: Shinobu Muraki, Yoshiro Muraki
Set Decoration: Jiro Hirai, Mitsuyuki Kimura, Yasuyoshi Ototake, Tsuneo Shirmura,
Osumi Tousho
Costume Design: Emi Wada
Key Members of Cast:
Shakespeare
Actor
Lord Hidetora Ichimonji
Taro Takatora Ichimonji
Jiro Masatora Ichimonji
Saburo Naotora Ichimonji
Lady Kaede
Lady Sue
Shuri Kurogane
Kyoami
Tango Hirayama
Kageyu Ikoma
Shumenosuke Ogura
Mondo Haganuma
Samon Shirane
King Lear
Goneril
Regan
Cordelia
Tatsuya Nakadai
Akira Terao
Jinpachi Nezu
Daisuke Ryu
Mieko Harada
Yoshiko Miyazaki
Hisashi Igawa
Pita
Masayuki Yui
Kazuo Kato
Norio Matsui
Toshiya Ito
Kenji Kodama
Takashi Watanabe
Mansai Nomura
Takeshi Kato
Jun Tazaki
Hitoshi Ueki
Tsurumaru
Koyata Hatakeyama
Seiji Ayabe
Nobuhiro Fujimaki
Fool
Kent
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The Tempest (2011)
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1274300/
Director: Julie Taymor
Written by: Julie Taymor (screenplay), William Shakespeare
Executive Producers: Ron Bozman, Anthony Buckner, John C. Ching, Rohit Khatter,
Deborah Lau, Tino Puri, Greg Strasbourg, Stewart Till
Producers: Jason K. Lau, Julia Taylor-Stanley, Julie Taymor
Cinematography: Stuart Dryburgh
Film Editing: Francoise Bonnot
Production Design: Mark Friedberg
Set Decoration: Alyssa Winter
Costume Design: Sandy Powell
Cast:
Prospero
Miranda
Ariel
Caliban
Helen Mirren
Felicity Jones
Ben Whitshaw
Djimon Hounsou
Ferdinand
Reeve Carney
Alonso, King of Naples
Antonio
Sebastian
Gonzalo
Stephano
Trinculo
David Strathairn
Chris Cooper
Alan Cumming
Tom Conti
Alfred Molina
Russell Brand
Boatswain
Jude Akuwudike
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Example: Adapting Twelfth Night to Film: Some Keys
Twelfth Night. Dir. Trevor Nunn. Perf. Helena Bonham-Carter, Nigel Hawthorne, Ben
Kingsley, Imelda Staunton, Imogen Stubbs. Fine Line, 1997.
Contextualizing for film audience
Non-Shakespearean Prologue: setting scene, adding context—Messaline at war with Ilyria
(not in Shakespeare); twins as cross-dressing performers before shipwreck.
Opening: at dawn on beach: Enter Ilyrian patrol, Viola and Captain hiding. Captain’s lines
are not Shakespeare. Opens with 1.2, spare and careful choice of dialogue/
<Feste overlooks from the cliff (not in Shakespeare), seeing the necklace. Not shown,
but he will get it after Viola leaves—key for later.
<1.2.1-16
<1.2.22-26
’Tis said no woman may approach his court” (not Shakespeare)
<Montage—funeral procession (Olivia with face covered, obviously burial of her
brother); Viola registers the point, in hiding.
<1.2.31-37, 40-42, 48-55
eunuch>boy
Title, credits. Viola: haircut, breast binding, & male outfit (her discomfort)
Court: return to 1.1 (Orsino in love with love, languid / arrival of Viola-Cesario)
<1.1.1-8, 22-27, 29-33
her> Olivia
Valentino’s lines given to Orsino (29-31)
<Swordfighting practice 1.4.8-35
<delete lines 21, 27
<line 35: four or five>three or four
Montage: traveling to Olivia’s.
Olivia’s: kitchen scene: Malvolio inspecting the staff and their work, officious. Maria and
Fabian go into the garden
<1.3.3-4, 11-18, 22-27, 32-48, 51-50 (note reversal), 68, 77-80, 87-111
“What a plague means my niece to take the death of her brother thus? And sure care’s
an enemy to life.” (Not Shakespeare)
<line 80: delete “bear-baiting”
<line 96: delete “neither in estate, years, nor wit”
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<line 102: delete
<lines 105-112: some deletions of phrasing.
Intercutting Scenes to reinforce a theme: “O Mistress Mine” (bridging scenes)
<Orsino’s court 1.1.18-22
<Toby et al drunk in kitchen 2.3.1.2, 12-16, 23-29
“Three merry men be we” (not in script)
<Cut to: Orsino’s court (2.4. O Mistress Mine): 2.4.3, 7-12 (some phrasings cut)
<Cut to: Toby et al in kitchen 2.3.2-3, 32-36
<Cut to: Orsino’s court 2.4.18-22
<Cut to: Toby et al 2.3.40-46
<Cut to: Orsino and Cesario/Viola 2.4.21-40
Delete lines 30, 36
<Cut to: Toby et al 2.3.45-56
<inset Orsino and Cesario/Viola
<Chant “O well a married man (not in script)
<Song: “my true love said to me
<Enter Malvolio for confrontation: 2.3.78-112, 120-26, 131-45, 155-60, 168-69
<some deleted phrasings, lines
<Montage: Viola in her bedroom taking off the disguise>to 2.2.25-26, 31, 34-37
Intercutting Scenes to emphasize “madness” in two tonic keys
Malvolio in dark room (“I am not mad”): 4.2.4-15
<Cut to: Sebastian and Olivia (Sebastian wondering if he’s gone mad): 4.3.1-15
<Cut to: Malvolio 4.2.40, 50, 60-100 (some phrasings and lines cut)
<Cut to: Sebastian solo 4.3.16-33 (some phrasings and lines cut)
<Cut to: Feste and Malvolio 4.2.104-23 (some phrasings and lines cut)
Reinforcing the resolution with a motif (and enhancing Feste’s character):
<Near Olivia’s 5.1.1, 5-8, 22-25, 40-94 (some cuts)
<5.1.96-262, 309-314, 266, 315 (Feste returns the necklace to Viola in revealing scene).
<Cut to “from Malvolio?” (letter: 5.1.317-367
<375-end. Feste sings; occasionally the song slows as Antonio exits.
366, 369-70 : Toby and Maria exit; Malvolio exits
<Wedding dance / Feste singing in landscape. Finis.
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Example: The Globe Theatre As You Like It
Some Stylistic Properties
<Filming an actual performance on an Elizabethan style thrust stage, in front of a live
audience. Note presentational acting style: actors speak back and forth to each
other, but they also appeal directly to us as audience.
<As with the text itself, presentation of a variety of comic acting styles, ranging from wit
combat (fast paced exchanges, often one-liners, “topping” each other or extending
another’s ideas), manic burlesque dance keyed to heavily accented lines, etc. Pay
close attention to those speeches revealing a character’s vulnerability or difficulties,
to see how the style of delivery changes.
<Color: note pillars draped in black in the city, black sheaths dropped in the country.
<Costumes: what are typical of the court/city? How are these different from the
country/peasants?
<Props: as with public stages in Shakespeare’s time, props are kept to a minimum. You can
keep track of which props appear in each scene.
<Scene changes: as with theatre in Shakespeare’s time, action is continuous—no breaks for
scene changes, characters acting out a following scene even as those from previous
scene exit.
<Text cuts, emendations, etc. kept mostly to a minimum, though there are a few significant
changes.
<See actors’ journals and notes on this production: http://www.globeeducation.org/discovery-space/plays/as-you-like-it-2009
Some Performance Notes
<Non-Shakespearean opening: theatre and audience shots, drums and entrance of
characters, with crowning of the new duke, Duke Frederick. Rosalind and Celia positioned
left and right of center: Frederick turns to Celia as the new princess, exeunt.
<1.1.1-55 with minimal text cuts. Cut to:
<1.2.1-103 Rosalind and Celia to see wrestling in court shortly. Some line cuts (65-83)
<1.1.65-end Charles comes to Oliver, who stirs him against Orlando. Earlier scene—does
this disrupt the time sequence established in the script, and if so, how? If not, why
not?
<1.2.104-end Playing out the wrestling match, with Rosalind and Orlando falling for each
other etc.
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<1.3. Cut some lines.
<2.1 fairly complete. Black sheaths removed from pillars.
<2.2 LeBeau takes both the first and second lords’ parts. Scene is otherwise complete.
<2.3 fairly complete.
<2.4. OK.
<2.5 Line 39 amends ambiguity in play script: Amiens will “sing it,” but Jaques teaches it to
him. Jaques “calls fools into a circle,” pointing at the entire audience in circular
fashion.
<2.6 Complete
<2.7 Fellow campers setting up campfire and preparing lunch even as scene unfolds. Some
cuts in larger speeches. Jaques places a pear on Orlando’s drawn knife even as
Orlando is being welcomed “to our table” (line 106).
<3.1 Oliver dragged before Frederick—Oliver covered with blood, tortured.
<3.2 Orlando casts papers with bad poems into the audience and hangs them on the
pillars. Later, Touchstone accentuates the heavily accented rhythms of one of
Orlando’s bad poems via quick dance based on those rhythms.
>When Ganymede interrogates Orlando, note the various kinds of “stage business”
(behaviors cued to the speeches) used by Aliena/Celia. One could study her physical
cues and non-verbal commentary via facial and bodily gestures throughout the play.
Musical Interlude (typically halfway through plays, to allow the audience to stretch, talk,
and buy wine and beer).
<3.3 Touchstone pops up from trapdoor, followed by bleating goat puppet—Touchstone
dances for audience before the scene gets going. Audrey and Touchstone meeting—
Jaques overlooking (an Elizabethan theatre trope—one character stands above or
apart and views others as they talk, commenting almost as a choral figure).
<3.4 Rosalind and Celia—relatively complete.
<3.5 Phoebe falls for Rosalind—relatively complete.
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<4.1 Rosalind and Orlando kiss (recognition). How does this change the meaning of the
text and interactions through the rest of the play?
<4.2 Deleted. Does this affect our perception of Jaques? Why? Why not?
<4.3 Silvius reads Rosalind’s speech at lines 56-63—emphasizes his awakening at how he’s
being used. Yet does it affect his feeling for/behavior with Phoebe in the long run?
>When Oliver enters, he sees Celia (and their relationship begins here, non-verbally).
>After Ganymede faints, Oliver helps “him” to his feet—and in doing so, his hands
grasp her breasts (he had up to this point assumed Ganymede was male): his
awareness of her identity stirred here. How does this affect his later lines?
<5.1 Touchstone drives off William. Some non-Shakespearean lines added after line 46,
before Corin enters.
<5.2 complete.
<5.3 deleted.
<5.4 flowers being tied to pillars in preparation for weddings even as scene unfolds. Scene
starts with lines 25-28, shifting to lines 1-4. Then picks up at line 36. Touchstone
dances, lines 71-73. Jaques de Bois’s lines are spoken by LeBeau.
>Formal dance at end, very typical of Shakespearean productions (via contemporary
accounts)—this leads to hipshake dance with drums. Epilogue spoken by Rosalind
signifies differently than in Shakespearean original, because we know that her part is
being played by a woman, just as Shakespeare’s audiences would have known “she”
was played by a boy.
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Shakespeare in Love: Notes
27 November 1999
Online version: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/shakespeare/Shak_inLove/SILCope.html
Two Plots
(a) the problem of mounting a production: will the company get funding? Will they find
the right actors? Will the company "gel," and will those in charge defuse the problems
inherent with actors' egos ? Will they run afoul of the Master of Revels? What unforeseen
problems could wreck their project? Will they, at last, properly entertain and instruct their
audience, and be able to meaningfully say that "it's a mystery"?
(b) the romance plot: will the deserving "poor player" get the love of his life? Will she
free herself from a life where her value is chiefly a commodity to be bargained for by father
and future husband? When the lovers come together, will it only be a "stolen season," or
what will give their romance a meaning beyond the time they have together? What,
ultimately, will their love mean, and will a play be able to capture the truth of love itself? In
connection with this plot, one might ask what each of the lovers ultimately has to give up,
what sacrifices they must make, for their love to be true in the highest sense. In Romeo and
Juliet, the price was their lives; here, the price is more elusive, involving not simply their
parting and loss of each other.
Two Central Cruces
(a) The bet for £50: Beyond the problem of writer's block, Shakespeare's initial worry
is how to get £50—to free himself from Henslowe and buy into Burbage's company. The
£50 crops up later, when "Wilhelmina" takes the bet that a play can show "the very truth
and nature of love," and again when Wessex needs this amount to pay his dockside debts—
and of course, when Queen Elizabeth determines that Will's play has won the bet, Viola
must take that purse from Wessex and give it to Will. Finally, the amount becomes one of
the signifiers of Will's success.
(b) The question: "can a play show us the very truth and nature of love?" The script
is built around the twin problems noted above, and as such presents Romeo and Juliet as the
play that answers the question in the affirmative; yet the foregrounded plot of Will and
Viola—and by extension, Shakespeare in Love itself—also answer the question affirmatively.
Both plays show that true love involves testing and self-sacrifice, though they find quite
different resolutions despite the common theme of loss. Perhaps those answers are related
to the different genres of each: tragedy and comedy. Note too that in the sacrifices made by
the lovers, the societies of each play get something back: civil peace in the case of Romeo
and Juliet, the plays of Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love—and in both plays, the
affirmation that love is central to deeper reflections about life's meaning and purpose.
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Some Approaches for Study
1. Film's relation to other films: often, film makers will develop allusions to other
films as a way of acknowledging a predecessor's efforts or to give the film greater
depth. The opening of S in L, for example, ironically rereads the opening of Olivier's
1946 Henry V; similarly, the court dance sequences and the initial bedroom scene
present filmic allusions to Zeffirelli's 1969 version of Romeo and Juliet, and the
drowning / shipwreck scene at the end copies Trevor Nunn's 1996 film version of
Twelfth Night.
2. Textual adaptation and rereading: The script takes lines from Love's Labour's
Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and to a lesser extent, Hamlet and other
plays. One way to study the Norman and Stoppard script is to explore how they
utilized Shakespeare's lines in the script they wrote, the greatest example being their
use of Romeo and Juliet. The Shakespeare play is presented not only as the centerpiece of the "playing" plot, but as a text evolving in direct relation to the evolving
relationship of Will and Viola in the romance plot.
3. Characters as a source for study: (a) factual: Burbage, Henslowe, Tilney,
Shakespeare (early life in Stratford or first years in London), Marlowe, Queen
Elizabeth I (especially her relationship with the theatre). (b) fictional: Rosaline
and the Nurse (from R & J), Viola (TwN).
4. The play as a romantic comedy following Northrop Frye's plot pattern: the
lovers must find their way around a blocking figure—here, Viola's father and
Wessex, the rival lover—to bring their love to triumph, which usually signals a
wedding or dance. The blocking character is either reconciled or cast out, and the
lovers' triumph signals the maturation and acceptance of the younger generation.
This script, however, undercuts the formula: the triumph is located in the performance of Romeo and Juliet, while the wedding parts the lovers and portends sorrow
and loss that necessitate their final gesture: another play, a ironic triumph to come.
5. Money as a theme: what the film says about money and empowerment. Note that
Wessex needs money for his plantations and is willing to trade his title for capital
gotten through marriage; Henslowe needs money to run his theatre and is willing to
rip off his own playwright and actors to get it; Shakespeare needs £50 to free himself
from Henslowe and join Burbage. Indeed, one could say that both plots grow out of
the need for money: the conflict that separates Viola from Will develops from Wessex's need for money, and the "bet" which will lead to Will's success in the theatre
grows from Will's need for money. Generally, students should look for ways in which
characters are valued and commodified by economic forces beyond their control, but
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note too a countervailing example in Fennyman: the man who would burn a man's
feet off for non-payment is, by the end of the play, transformed into one who realizes
there are values beyond wealth: the magic of the theatre transforms him.
6. The problem of mounting a production: This plot is one of the two central plots
in the play, and in some ways the struggle mirrors a perennial problem for all casts,
while in others it represents some problems particular to the Elizabethans—notably
the problem of the Master of Revels and his control over what the players might do,
the problem of being a social outcast and yet in demand for court as well as public
performances. Study involving this theme should concentrate on one of two areas:
the Elizabethan Company or our own contemporary problems in mounting a production.
7. Disguise (cross dressing) as a plot device: as with Elizabethan and Jacobean comedies (especially those by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Middleton & Dekker), crossdressing is utilized as a gender-bending motif, but also as a practical device so that
boy actors could impersonate women disguised as men. In giving cross-dressing roles
to both Viola (as Thomas Kent) and Will (as Wilhelmina), Norman and Stoppard have
employed this motif in a manner appropriate to both of these purposes. See the notes
on Twelfth Night in the Shakespeare Project Website (English 252 Course Notes>
file one, page 45; or the professor's essay, "Cross Dressing with a Difference") for
further notes on cross-dressing: http://web.grcc.cc.mi.us/english/shakespeare/
8. Queen Elizabeth as goddess. The "deus ex machina" (god from the machine) motif
is as old as Greek drama, but the idea of Queen Elizabeth as all-knowing presence and
agent of the resolution is similar to her character in Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels,
where she serves this purpose much as she does here.
Some Other Cues
1. The scene in the boat where Will first reads the letter regarding Viola's impending
marriage to Wessex: Thomas Kent/Viola questions Will about his love for
Viola in a way that is quite reminiscent of Rosalind / Ganymed's questioning of
Orlando (AYLI 3.2, 4.1)
2. Rosaline in S in L is derived from the Rosaline who is Romeo's first love in R & J,
but note how she's changed. In Shakespeare's play, Romeo complains that she
is too frigid, but here she is presented as sexually promiscuous and therefore
unworthy to be Will's muse (she has sex with both Tilney and Burbage, and in
the scene with Tilney it appears that she is one of the "perks" Tilney gets for
giving Burbage's company official favor).
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3. The "woman as muse" theme is by some standards an inherently sexist representation of love: the man cannot "produce" unless he has a woman standing behind him
& believing in him, and her task is to move him, sexually, emotionally, and
intellectually, to be a success: her success is dependent upon his, and her "payoff" is to be made "immortal" by his pen. (One could utilize the idea of commodification as a key to unlock how subtly the pattern of exchange-value returns
in the guise of love between Will and Viola, also noting how their exchangevalue is complicated by class differences).
In this context, Rosaline is contrasted to Viola as potential muse: Rosaline is unworthy because she spreads her value around; Viola is worthy because
her love is true and bent only on Will. Yet Norman and Stoppard complicate
this formula with declared alliances: she's to be married to a man she doesn't
love—and can't get out of it; he's been married to a woman from whom he's
separated, their love having died.
3. The bedroom scene is an imitation of the bedroom scene in Romeo and Juliet, but
note how in S in L the seriousness of their lovemaking is played against the
nurse's nervousness beyond the door: the same scene develops an exquisite
intimacy and comic relief, as is more appropriate for a comedy. Note too, that
Will's departure is unlike Romeo's: the latter must leave under penalty of death,
whereas Viola pushes Will out of bed because he hasn't written the scene they
are to practice that day. As his muse, she is stern and demanding, will even
forego her own pleasure if it hurts the success of the play.
4. Testing as a love motif: One of the marked qualities of love themes is that of testing
the lovers—rites of passage that prove their love true. S in L has four such passages:
(a) When Viola learns that she is to be married to Wessex with the Queen's approval, she writes Will to tell him to break it off. He, however, discovers
that Thomas Kent is really Viola, and pursues her in spite of the almostcertain loss that will follow. In taking this chance, he follows his heart
despite everything, thus proving his love.
(b) At the pub, when Viola learns that Will has a wife in Stratford, she deserts
him, and only when she learns that a playwright was killed in a pub does
she fully understand how much he meant to her. When Will appears,
seemingly as a ghost (reminiscent, perhaps, of Banquo's visitation to
Macbeth), Wessex is frightened off by the "apparition," but Viola realizes
that she has her love restored. Note how, after this scene in the church,
their love deepens and grows in the riverbank scene that follows: they are
learning how to talk to each other about their deeper fears and hopes, and
to realize that both of them are "caught" in circumstances beyond their
control.
Shakespeare Film Primer
Cope 16
<Note that this motif (the lover's apparent death as means to
force the other lover to understand the value of the relationship) is central to many of Shakespeare's comedies—e.g. Hero
in Much Ado, Helena in All's Well, Thaisa and Marina in
Pericles, and Hermione and Perdita in The Winter's Tale.
Here, however, the motif is reversed: the male lover seems to
die so that the female lover will return to him.
(c) When Viola is unmasked as a woman before the players, the whole question
of her value as a woman—whether Will and the players will accept her as she
is—comes to the fore. It's one thing for him to love her and know her
secretly, but when she threatens the success of the company, their love is
tested in a public way.
(d) When they are finally separated, Viola returns to Will and demands that he
"write me well": though they have lost each other, the value of their
relationship will live on in the play. She forces him to confront his
life's journey—and his own genius—even as she must confront the loss
of their love: both are tested and prove true, albeit the prices they pay
are quite different.
Internet Sources for Shakespeare in Love
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/Shakespeare/Shak_inLove/SM_Sh_in_Love.HTML (Steven
Marx’s Shakespeare in Love page)
http://www.cinetropic.com/shakespeare/ (navigate through this—some excellent stuff here,
ranging from the brief essay on Elizabethan England to the brief snippets of the filmscript you
can access here.
http://pages.cabrini.edu/jzurek/shakes/shakespeareinlove.htm (a pretty good course page with
excellent approaches to historical grasp of Elizabethan background as represented in the film).
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B05E4D9103AF932A25751C1A96E958260
(NY Times film review)
http://www.shakespearemag.com/reviews/shakespeareinlove.asp (Stephanie Cowell’s
Shakespeare Magazine review of the film)
http://mith.umd.edu//WomensStudies/FilmReviews/shakespear-love-lm (U Maryland Women’s
Studies review)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/sep/08/shakespeare-in-love-reel-history (Review
by The Guardian)
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/shakespeare-in-love-19990108 (Peter Travers at
Rolling Stone)
Shakespeare Film Primer
Cope 17
Shakespeare in Love Intertextual References
Note: page numbers refer to the script; citations are from The Riverside Shakespeare, second edition:
Norman, Marc, and Tom Stoppard. Shakespeare in Love: A Screenplay. New York: Hyperion/
Miramax, 1998. Print.
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. Second ed. G. Blakemore Evans and J. J. M. Tobin,
eds. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Print.
Page
6
7
7
7
8
8
9
11
12
12
13
13
14
16
17
17
18
19
20
21
25
28
28
29
29
31
34
40
Quote or reference
Source
“Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move”
Ham 2.2.116-17
plague / playing the inn-yards
1593/travelling companies
Richard Crookback
earlier play / Richard III
“half of what you owed me” . . .One Gentleman of Verona
Play on TGV
Chamberlain’s Men
Shakespeare’s future company
“a plague on both their houses”
Rom. 3.1.99-100
“Words, words, words”
Ham 2.2.192
wife, children
Anne Hathaway and children
the Ardens
Shakespeare’s mother’s family
twins
Hamnet and Judith
“he looks at the skull”
Ham. 5.1.182-200
Seneca
Roman playwright famed for
gruesome tragedies
“where were my seamstress’s eyes
playing on Sonnet 130
Master of the Revels / Tilney
the official court censor
“Cease to persuade . . . ever homely wits”
TGV 1.1.1-2
Rosaline
Rom. 1.1.118-238, 1.2.82101, 2.2.32-95
“To be in love . . . tedious nights”
TGV 1.1.29-31
“What light is light . . . shadow of perfection”
TGV 3.1.174-77
Nurse
Romeo and Juliet
pipsqueak boys in petticoats
boy actors playing female parts
Rosaline is in bed after sex
In Romeo, she is a resolute virgin
Ned Allyn / Admiral’s Men
famed actor / competing company
“Give me to drink mandragora”
Ant. C 1.5.4
“Was this the face that launched . . . towers of Ilium?”
Marlowe, Faustus 5.1.97-98
The Massacre at Paris
refers to the St. Bartholomew’s
Day Massacre and Marlowe’s
unfinished play.
“Was this the face. . . “ etc.
Marlowe, Faustus 5.1.97-99
“What light is light . . .” etc.
TGV 3.1.174-77
mountebank
pharmacist/snake oil salesman,
prominent in Jonson’s Volpone.
Shakespeare Film Primer
45
46
46
46
47
Balcony scene
“Anon, good nurse”
“Oh, I am fortune’s fool”
“Oh my lady, my love”
“If they find you here they will kill you”
82
82
83
84
84-85
99
“Good night . . . faithful vow for mine”
“My bounty is as boundless . . . both are infinite”
“I hear some noise within . . . I will come again”
“Stay but a little . . . too flattering sweet to be substantial”
“All my fortunes . . . A thousand times good night”
“By my head, here comes . . . a word with one of you”
Cope 18
playing on the balcony scene in Romeo
Rom. 2.2.137
Rom. 3.1.136
Rom. 2.2.10
Romeo 2.2.70: “if they do see thee, they
will murther thee.”
48
“Draw if you be men!”
Rom. 1.1.62
48
“Part, fools, put up your swords!
(Benvolio) Rom. 1.1.64-65
51
“Hieronymo”
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
“Tamburlaine”
Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine
“Faustus”
Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus
“Barabas”
Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta
“Henry VI”
Shakespeare, 1H6, 2H6, 3H6
53
“They cut my head off in Titus Andronicus”
Tit. 3.1.236
54
John Webster
next generation playwright, author of The
Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil
55
“Good morrow, cousin”
Rom. 1.1.160
“Is the day so young?”
Rom. 1.1.160
55-56 “But new struck . . . out of her favors where I am in love”
Rom. 1.1.160-68
61
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Son. 118
62
“Oh, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you”
Rom. 1.4.53
62
“a plague on both your houses!”
Rom. 3.1.106
71
the morning rooster / the owl
parody of nightingale and
lark in Rom. 3.5.1-7
72
My lady, the house is stirring . . .
adapting Rom. 3.5.39-40
73
“Have not saints lips . . . for prayer’s sake
Rom. 1.5.101-05
74
“Then move not . . . Give me my sin again”
Rom. 1.5.105-10
74-75 Then have my lips . . . you kiss by the book”
Rom. 1.5.109-10
75-76 “Madam, your mother craves . . . the more is my unrest”
Rom. 1.5.111-28
77
“Come hither, nurse. What is yond gentleman?”
Rom 1.5.128
77
“His name is Romeo . . . the only son of your great enemy”
Rom. 1.5.136-37
78
“But soft, what light . . . .more fair than she”
Rom. 2.2.2-3
78
“Arise fair sun . . . more fair than she”
Rom. 2.24-6
79
“It is my lady . . . O that she knew she were!”
Rom. 2.2.10-11
79
“The brightness of her cheek. . . O speak again bright angel”
Rom. 2.2.19-26
Rom. 2.2.123-27
Rom. 2.2.133-35
Rom. 2.2.136-38
Rom. 2.2.138-41
Rom. 2.2.147-53
Rom. 3.1.35-38
Shakespeare Film Primer
99
101
Cope 19
“Couple it . . . a word and a blow”
You were cast ashore in a far country
Rom. 3.1.39-40
Will’s dream presaging shipwreck and
survival of Viola in Twelfth Night
107 Stabbed to death in a tavern at Deptford
Actual manner of Marlowe’s death
110 Will as “ghost” /Wessex terrified
Echo of Banquo’s ghost in Macbeth
112 It needed no wife come from Stratford to tell you that Echo of “There needs no
ghost . . . “ Ham. 1.5.124-25
116 “Wilt thou be gone? . . . this night a torchbearer”
Rom. 3.5.1.14
117 “thou need’st not be gone . . . it is not day”
Rom. 3.5.16, 23-25
118 “Such mortal drugs . . . put this in any liquid thing you will”
Rom 5.1.66-67, 77
131-33 “Two households, both alike . . . bury their parents’ strife”
Rom. Prologue
MONTAGE:
135 “Do you bite your thumb at us . . . bite my thumb, sir”
Rom. 1.1.44-45
136-37 “Nurse, where is my daughter . . . what is your will?”
Rom. 1.3.1-6
138-39 “Such mortal drugs I have . . . to any that utters them”
Rom. 5.1.66-67
139 “I am hurt . . . I was hurt under your arm”
Rom. 3.1.90, 95, 97-98, 102-03
140 “Romeo, away, be gone . . . Why dost thou stay
Rom. 3.1.132-36
141 “Art thou gone so . . . Adieu, adieu”
Rom. 3.5.43-48, 51, 55-59
142 “No warmth , no breath . . . awake as from a pleasant sleep”
Rom. 4.1.98, 104-06
143 “Come hither, man . . . I pay thy poverty and not thy will” Rom 5.1.48-50, 66-67, 75-76
143 “Eyes, look your last . . . thy seasick weary bark”
Rom. 5.3.112-18
144 “Here’s to my love . . . There rust and let me die”
Rom. 5.3.119-20, 148-50,
161-62, 168-69
145 “For never was a story of more woe . . . Juliet and her Romeo” Rom. 5.3.309-10
150
153
Courtiers throw their cloaks over the puddle
to spare Queen Elizabeth from getting wet
My story starts at sea (Twelfth Night)
Story of Sir Walter Ralegh
doing the same.
Actually, this is TN. 1.2
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Letter to Dr. Henry Seaton re his essay on Kurosawa's Ran: Dividing Up Lear
See Dr. Seaton’s essay at the Shakespeare Project webpage:
http://cms.grcc.edu/sites/default/files/docs/shakespeare/contemporary/all-licensed_fool_alllicensed_film_akira_kurosawa_ran-henry_seaton.pdf
27 February, 1999
Dear Henry:
Thanks so much for the essay on Ran: I found it a marvelous close reading of Kyoami’s role,
particularly the section exploring the Noh jo-ha-kyu structuring of his trajectory. I was also
fascinated by Kurosawa’s decision to give Hidetora and the other characters a specific history,
each with his or her place in that history & personal reaction-formation associated with their
places in it. Kaede becomes particularly interesting in that context. Since her family had lived
in the First Castle before Hidetora took it from them, they must’ve been the rulers before the
Ichimonjis—and thus Kaede’s trajectory is not simply the vengeful action of a femme fatale, but
the final act of a family tragedy: her family’s ascendency preceded the Ichimonjis and their fall
began with Hidetora’s use of the wedding as a pretext to take power and destroy his enemies.
Kaede could almost be seen as an avenging Orestes in the sense that she’s similarly trapped
within the limited options her life has given her and can give her life meaning only in the
craftiness with which she “rights the balance” by destroying the Ichimonjis.
Pairing characters is an interesting sidelight to that history: Sue & Kaede as victims, for
example, tease out dual & yet opposite trajectories, with Tsurumaru as the sacrificial victim who
stands emotionally midway between his sister and Kaede; & the contrasts between Tango &
Kurogane, or Tango & Kurogane vs. Ogura and Ikoma make for further thematic complexities in
understanding the roles and loyalties of advisors / sidekicks.
Your essay has also reawakened my interest in how later authors have “divided up” Shakespeare
& larded motifs, plot lines, character qualities & even whole characters into their works—am
enclosing my “Melville / Shakespeare” essay, which explores some of the ways Melville made
similar adaptations from Shakespeare in his Moby Dick—adapting plot motifs, reimagining
speeches, even fusing characters in a giant plot structure that fairly bristles with Shakespearean
echoes. Harold Bloom would call the kinds of division practiced by Melville, Kurosawa, a
contemporary playwright like Tom Stoppard or even a director like Al Pacino (in his Looking for
Richard) evidence for an “anxiety of influence” that earlier masters exert over the later—an
influence which I’d be glad to acknowledge without the neurotic overtones of Bloom’s claim,
preferring to see the division and relarding of the earlier author’s text as an old blues guitar
player friend once called it—“stealing licks.” Kurosawa’s adaptations, however, seem by far the
most complex of all of Shakespeare’s descendants, since he performs similar operations with
both Shakespeare and the Noh tradition, complicating these echoes, as you’ve so clearly pointed
out, with the pop associations of Peter—which I assume from your essay would be similar to
giving the role of the fool to someone like David Bowie or Boy George.
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Cope 21
I think it’d be interesting, too, to explore more closely the ways in which the Gloucester plot is
subsumed & recast in Ran: Kyoami not only takes on some of the role of Cordelia and Kent in
their nursing of the mad Lear, but perhaps a bit of Edgar nursing his father Gloucester, too.
Edmund’s role seems to be subsumed in Kaede’s: like him, she plays the two elder siblings off
against their father, and though she has none of the complexities of Edmund’s bastard status—his
ambition borne of familial and social rejection—she does have a much deeper motive in the
peculiar nexus of her marriage and her social status being associated with the murderers of her
entire family. As for Gloucester himself, Hidetora’s leap from the ruined wall takes on one of his
motifs, yet Tsurumaru’s blinding by Hidetora takes on another: here Gloucester is not merely a
mirror of Lear’s foolishness, but an echo that surfaces in both victims and in Hidetora himself,
notably when he is at his weakest. What’s especially interesting, to me at least, is that while
some characters and relationships, speeches and plot turns simply echo the Shakespearean text
(as in the father and three children, the two eldest being untrustworthy and ambitious, the
youngest being punished for honesty), there’s no necessary one-to-one relationship in
Kurosawa’s adaptation of the motifs (the same is true of Melville)—as though, in rearranging
many of the coordinates, he could simultaneously give both the Shakespearean and the Noh
audiences the recognition of familiar elements and the strangeness of their transposed functions.
Peace / David Cope
Internet Links for Ran and King Lear
http://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=116 (Anthony Davis, “Exploring the
Relation of Kurosawa’s Ran to Shakespeare’s King Lear”)
http://www.screened.com/news/how-kurosawa-transformed-shakespeares-works-and-madethem-his-own/3062/ (“How Kurosawa Transformed Shakespeare’s Works and Made Them His
Own”)
http://ayjw.org/articles.php?id=519795 (“Western waters meet Eastern Flames: Shakespeare
Meets Kurosawa”)
http://www.geraldpeary.com/interviews/jkl/kurosawa.html (Gerald Peary, an interview with
Akira Kurosawa on Ran)
http://soar.wichita.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10057/1188/t07064.pdf;jsessionid=8B4AADFE3
31E255203C725605C76C98E?sequence=1 (“Shakespeare by Any Other Word?: Shakespeare’s
King Lear and Macbeth Reinvented in the Films of Akira Kurosawa,” Masters Thesis by Erica
Lee Zilleruelo)
http://www.cathycupitt.com/daughters-of-chaos-an-examination-of-the-women-in-king-lear-andran/ (Cathy Cupitt, “Daughters of Chaos: An examination of the women in King Lear and Ran”)
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B00EEDB1539F934A1575AC0A963948260
(Vincent Canby’s New York Times review of Ran, “The Screen: ‘Ran’ directed by Akira
Kurosawa)
Shakespeare Film Primer
Cope 22
Some Notes from Our Viewing of Kurosawa’s Ran
How does marginalizing women characters change the story? Or does it? In what ways is the patriarchy
of Lear different from the patriarchy of Ran? Might one come to some conclusions about how patriarchal limitations—and the excesses of extreme male power—affect the lives/ personalities/desires of the
society’s women characters? Might such excessive patriarchy distort the personalities/lives/desires of
male characters as well, as Coppelia Kahn and other feminist critics have noted in recent years? In terms
of gender construction, how are Goneril and Regan like/unlike Taro and Jiro? In the opening scene,
Saburo is honest like Cordelia, but she hesitates, concerned that she find an inoffensive way to speak
truth, while he is almost boorish in his honesty.
The feminine: in Lear, it is divided up by two evil sisters and one good. In the film, there is a female
villain (Kaede) with a horrible past of being victimized by the “hero” (Hidetora), and a victim (Lady Sue)
trying to free herself of horror and rage through Buddhist meditation. Hidetora spilled “oceans of blood”
and contributed to the chaos and mistrust—Kurosawa emphasizes the role of karma in a variety of ways,
especially in the fact that what Hidetora did in the past has ramifications in the present. Kaede’s testimony: after Hidetora signs the pledge and leaves in anger, she says, “how I have longed for this day” and
“right there, my mother took her own life.” Lady Kaede shares some aspects of Edmund (using the two
brothers against each other), but her back story is far more horrifying than simple exclusion due to
illegitimacy, and her goal correspondingly seems less to win power than to destroy her in-laws.
Sexual disorders, as in Lear, are signifiers of the chaos within—in Lear, Goneril and Regan with Edmund,
Goneril with Oswald—here, Kaede and Jiro (Kaede, like Edmund, plays Taro and Jiro for her own
advancement, yet again her goal is very different than political rule).
Return of Tango to Hidetora (unlike Kent with Lear, Tango is not in disguise): he makes Hidetora aware
that peasants have fled Taro’s decree against Hidetora, whose awakened compassion for them comes as a
result of Tango’s intercession. Note how peasants and their lot in life figure in Lear, his compassion
awakened by his own experience of being helpless in the storm (3.4.31-39).
There is no Gloucester character here—though Lady Sue and her brother bear some of his grief. In the
hovel scene: Tsurumaru (Sue’s brother) has been blinded by Hidetora (Kurosawa’s use of the motif not a
one-on-one transposition—Hidetora is not Cornwall, and Tsurumaru is not Gloucester). Tsurumaru is
unable to let go of his rage but will play music for them—“hospitality of the heart”—which drives
Hidetora mad with guilt. Hidetora becomes part “Mad Tom” and part blinded Gloucester, but there is a
depth of guilt for his past which is different from (and I think deeper) than the madness of Lear, which
seems as much a matter of his dementia and the problems of his family relationships as of any sense of
horror at what he has been (consider his line “I am a man more sinned against than sinning”).
Finally, in giving Hidetora a clearly lengthy brutal history, does Kurosawa undercut our ability to sympathize with him as he falls? Or is Kurosawa complicating the crisis and recognition by forcing us to
confront the deeper human frailties that so many do not want to find in their “heroes”?
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23
Julie Taymor’s The Tempest
In this age of magic realism, extraordinary CGI special effects and audience fascination with
magic, wild creatures and bizarre tales set in remote places, one would think that Shakespeare’s last
complete script, The Tempest, would be a prime candidate for contemporary filmic treatment. The play
features a Jacobean tour-de-force of special effects, ranging from the initial storm scene to bizarre
characters including an aged sorcerer, a fairy sprite and a monstrous beast-man who is the son of the devil
and a witch. Then there are the fairy Ariel’s invisible comings and goings, strange music, the
disappearing banquet brought by “strange shapes” who dance about and disappear, Ariel’s appearance as
an accusing harpy, driving the villains mad when their crimes are named. After this, there are Prospero’s
wedding masque performed by Roman goddesses, nymphs and reapers who descend from above, diverse
spirits in the shapes of dogs and hounds attacking some of the minor villains, and a charmed circle
straight out of the tales of theurgy and goety. into which the villains are brought to effect the final change
they must endure.
One might ask, then, why there has been no Harry Potter or Pan’s Labyrinth treatment of this
play. The filmic versions have been, to say the least, disappointing. A 1960 film starring Maurice Evans,
with Richard Burton’s Caliban made up with fins—more “Creature from the Black Lagoon” than native
islander or son of a witch and devil—was practically unwatchable. Derek Jarman’s 1979 experimental
adaptation was shot on location at Stoneleigh Abbey, and promises the viewer that it will be “faithful to
the spirit of the play and an original and dazzling spectacle mixing Hollywood pastiche, high camp and
gothic horror.” In fact, the quality of the film often reminds this viewer of the sort of homemade film put
together by undergraduates in their first effort, memor-able largely for Jack Birkett’s Caliban eating raw
eggs and for its non-Shakespearean finale, where Elisabeth Welch sings “Stormy Weather” among a line
of “hunky sailors.” Best of the earlier adaptations, the 1980 BBC version was filmed on a set thinly
outfitted beyond what one might expect on stage, with camera work that in our time can only be called
primitive; it does feature some good interpretive acting by Michael Hordern and others, and the dance of
the goddesses, nymphs, and reapers is memorable—the spirits lithely androgynous in their tightly fitting
body suits.
Thus, when this viewer came to Julie Taymor’s new version starring Helen Mirren, there were
high hopes that there would finally be the version that satisfies. The film falls short in many ways,
though Helen Mirren’s female Prospera is intriguing as a motherly sorcerer, whose scruples and concerns
do resonate differently per audience gender expectations for the character. Taymor, in trying to make
Caliban an “earth,” as he is so often called in the script, has in fact reified the old stereotype of the bestial
African male and, I feel, does not fully utilize the marvelous acting skills of Djimon Hounsou, who plays
the part. There are many other shortcomings, too, ranging from odd script cuts and additions to acting
which sometimes seems a bit flat—Alonso, for example, is a powerful character trapped in all-consuming
grief and a guilt that must be frightened out of him to make his spiritual needs manifest, but David
Strathairn barely scratches the surface of the character’s core. Still, even with its faults, this film comes
closer to the possibilities inherent in the script, even if they are not fully realized. —DC
Shakespeare Film Primer
Cope 24
Ladies' day on the magical island: Taymor's Tempest
Permission to reprint this article granted by The Shakespeare Newsletter (25 May 2012)
Accessing this article: Academic Onefile> keywords: hounsou caliban
Although Julie Taymor's transformation of The Tempest's Prospero into a woman named Prospera
might ultimately be as perverse an idea as Kenneth Branagh's relocating As You Like It in nineteenthcentury Japan, the results are far superior. For one thing, Taymor's Tempest is remarkably beautiful. The
film was shot on location on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which provided red rock desert and black lava
fields to contrast strikingly with huge vistas of sea and sky. The performance of Helen Mirren is also a
strength. She is, of course, a distinguished actress who reads Shakespeare with great fluency and
intelligence, and, at times, she evokes admirably the emotions and insights of the text.
Another plus, though of a different order, is the publication of the screenplay as a 176-page
coffee-table volume, with a foreword by Jonathan Bate, an introduction by Taymor, and the gorgeous
photography one expects of an Abrams publication. The illustrations recapture much of the film's
stunning visuals, and the text enables one to confirm his remembrance of what Taymor added and what
she dropped of Shakespeare's text, which in both cases is considerable. The screenplay also includes a
great many indications of how Taymor wished The Tempest to be played and/or understood.
The transposition of the play's protagonist from male to female impacts on a great many of the
film's moments, and Taymor's insistence that these are merely "subtle nuances that in no way alter the
essence of Shakespeare's play" is perhaps somewhat facile. Mirren's natural substitution of maternal for
paternal affection sometimes works quite well: with Miranda in their opening dialogue, for instance, and
sometimes with Ariel, who seems at times a fractious adoptive son and at others almost an object of
flirtation. But Prospera's hectoring (andromaching?) Miranda to pay attention
Shakespeare Film Primer
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25
or Ariel to remember his debt to her is perhaps even more unattractively harsh in a woman than in the
original Prospero.
Both Bate and Taymor comment on the film's supposedly advantageous elimination of what is
sometimes seen as Prospero's Freudian rivalry for his daughter. But aside from dropping the adjective,
what the film gives is the same rationale for testing Ferdinand, and since Prospera had enjoyed, so the
back story tells us, a happy marriage, her suspicions of the male seem no more clear or justified. Thus, her
harshness seems more arbitrary, and the inversion of power perhaps increases Ferdinand's humiliation. On
the other hand, Ferdinand may deserve no better. Almost immediately after Prospera has warned him—
sounding quite patriarchal, by the way—against breaking Miranda's "virgin-knot before/All
sanctimonious ceremonies," and he has proclaimed that "the strongest temptation/Shall never melt/ Mine
honor into lust'" he sings a seduction song, "O mistress mine" from Twelfth Night. Ferdinand, who the
screenplay tells us is nineteen, seems a bit young to be complaining that youth's a stuff will not endure,
and, for that matter, a bit young to have eyed full many a lady with best regard. His urging her to "Come
and kiss me, sweet and twenty" ought to sound very strange to Miranda, who Taymor's screenplay tells us
is sixteen, and who Shakespeare's text—both as printed and as read in the film—requires to be either not
quite or only just fifteen. Prospera returns to find the two lovers groping and kissing; Ferdinand, however,
assures his future mother-in-law, "The white cold virgin snow upon my heard Abates the ardor of my
liver"; she replies "Well."
Taymor's invented back story also creates difficulties; it cuts, adds, and fits less than perfectly
with Shakespeare's back story, which itself is not airtight. Prospera's husband, we are told, "ruled Milan
most liberally."
This is presumably Taymor salvaging something of Shakespeare's Prospero's preemi-nence in
"the liberal arts." But "liberal" in Shakespeare means "licentious," and someone con-nected with the film
should have known it does. The Duchess Prospera is obsessively committed to her magical and
alchemical studies, interrupting them only to attend to the "squalling" of Miranda, whose bassinette she
keeps close at her side, in easy access of maternal affection, noxious vapors, and chemical spills. The four
or five female attendants whom Miranda remembers from her infancy are nowhere to be seen; perhaps
they are reporting to Child Welfare.
When Prospera's indulgent husband dies, "authority was/ Conferred (as was his will) on
[Prospera] alone." This would have been a remarkable, if not unheard of, procedure in the late
Renaissance Italy that seems to be the film's basic temporal location. That the late Duke might leave his
dukedom to his wife as he might leave his stamp collection sounds very dubious, perhaps even illegal,
and certainly, since Prospero has taken no previous interest in public affairs, so politically ill-considered
that it might arise to an ethical issue. Yet, as Taymor has Prospera present the matter, her late husband said
that she should be in charge, and that answers all the questions.
What is dropped from the original also impinges severely on the false brother, Antonio. When
Antonio's sibling was male, he relied on Antonio for what sounds like a substantial number of years to
exercise executive power in Milan. His taste for power grows, he comes to believe "his own lie" that he is
indeed the Duke, and he makes the traitorous arrangements with King Alonso of Naples. But Prospero is
cast out when Miranda was "not/Out three years old" (i.e., before her third birthday—again, a matter
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someone connected to the film should have known); her reign in Milan and brother Antonio's
malefactions all must have occurred within perhaps a year or so.
This also seems hardly enough time for Alonso to become an "inveterate" enemy, or for the
people to develop sufficient affection to preclude Prospera's murder. The back story the film provides
seems less than well imagined, and, worse, Taymor and her pentametrist, Glen Berger, try to cover the
shortcoming with some truly dreadful verse. When Prospera deputizes Antonio, the essential vagueness of
the report is masked in self-important vocabulary: "he whom I did charge/To execute express commands
as to/ The prudent governing of fair Milan" ultimately means nothing more than "'I told him to do good
things." The ultimate demonstration of this kind of thing is Prospero's frenetic sputtering at Antonio's
particular style of viciousness: "Perverting nay/ Upstanding studies, now his slandering/And bile-dipped
brush did paint a faithless por-trait—/ His sister, a practicer of black arts !;/ A demon; not a woman, nay—
a witch!/ And he full-knowing others of my sex/ Have burned for no less ! The flames now fanned/My
counselors turned against me—." Almost all makers of Shakespeare film are wary of providing him with
additional dialogue: the reason why is quite clear.
The transforming of Prospero into Prospera does not destroy the film, but there are frequently
small prices to be paid, and it is difficult to see what these prices purchase. Taymor has in her cast three or
four actors who could have done a credible Prospero, as could Helen Mirren had Taymor chosen simply
to have her play the role as a male, as Vanessa Redgrave has done. I suspect that Taymor and Mirren saw
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the film as empowerment: providing a distinguished actress with a role otherwise restricted to male
players; imaginatively creating, somewhat in the style of Virginia Woolf's Judith Shakespeare, a female
equivalent to Shakespeare's mage; simply commenting on the inequalities to which women are or have
been subject. Whether any of this is a sufficient rationale is, as Falstaff says, a question to be asked.
The figure of Caliban establishes another of the film's orientations: this is a strongly post-colonial
Tempest, as is perhaps to be expected nowadays. Caliban is portrayed by Djimon Hounsou, and both Bate
and Taymor comment on the survival of sorcery within the culture of Hounsou's homeland, the West
African country of Benin. I do not see that this is any part of the film as it is played upon the screen, but
suspect that Hounsou's most famous role—that of Cinque, the leader of the slave-ship mutiny in Amistad
—resonates strongly here. Hounsou is a large, powerful, nearly naked black man continually complaining
of having been dispossessed and enslaved, complaining with an anger that frequently becomes homicidal.
Not all of this can be explained as simply Caliban's fictional experience; the invitation to see the relevance of colonial history is always at least implicit. As Caliban, Hounsou, we are told more than once,
underwent four hours of make-up, which makes it appear that much of his head and upper body is
covered with a shell-like carapace. This, Taymor tells us, is to insist on a specially intimate connection
between Caliban and the island itself: somewhat like the traditional allegorizing of Caliban as earth and
Ariel as air.
Once Caliban appears on screen, a bewildering number of things occur. He is first seen gnawing
on a root and crouched in a cave-like hollow under a small cliff. The camera does not linger on the detail,
but it does show a certain amount of litter or even garbage around Caliban, which might be thought to
accord with Prospera "stying" him here, away from the rest of the island. However, the stills in the
published screenplay make clear that the clutter around Caliban consists largely of bottles, that look like
wine or whisky bottles, and—amazingly—a couple of crushed beer cans. Taymor, as she demonstrated in
Titus, likes to skip eclectically from one age to another, and even here her Neapolitans wear costumes that
suggest Velasquez but close with zippers. Still, Caliban's later encounter with Stephano's celestial liquor
would seem to preclude any previous alcoholic "adventures.” And then, the camera moves quickly
enough that the entire matter might well pass without notice, which gives rise to wondering why it is there
at all.
Even more bizarrely, Taymor's Caliban has cut into his own flesh a number of words and phrases,
and in one of the photos in the published screenplay, we see them spelled out in scar tissue on his stomach
and upper right thigh. Taymor, at one point tells us these are obscenities, which they are not, and, at
another, that they are curses Caliban has heard from Prospera, which is only marginally more likely. All of
the words are "Shakespearean" in the sense that they occur somewhere in the canon and sound archaic
and unusual. "Hell-hated" and "fensucked," both from Lear (5/3/150; 2/4/167) do occur in contexts of
cursing, and "ruttish," which means lascivious (.4 WW, 4/3/219, the only occurrence in the canon) might
be a word Prospera called him. Most of the others sound nastier than in fact they are: "'spur-galled" is an
adaptation of a bit of Richard II's self-pity (R2. 5/5/94); "boar pig" is actually Doll Tearsheet's pet name
for Falstaff (2H4, 1/4/230); a "puttock" is a kite (2H6, 3/2/191); "cockered'" actually means pampered
(John. 5/ 1/70, again a unique usage); and "ratsbain" (1H6. 5/4/29) means poison, but is misspelled. Who
is to be charged with the error is an intriguing but unproductive speculation.
Caliban's self-mutilation suggests a degree of pathological self-hatred much in excess of anything
implied either in Shakespeare's play or elsewhere in Taymor's film, whether one chooses to see this as an
extension of his victimization or of his potentiality for extreme violence. The words incised into his body
also require something else neither play nor film suggests: Prospera has evidently taught Caliban not just
to speak, but to read and write. This makes for a significantly different Caliban now, and for a signify-
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cantly different relationship to Prospera before the action begins. Again, however, pursuing these
necessary implications that derive from Caliban's action is ultimately pointless: although the words cut
into his body are clearly legible in the photograph in the screenplay volume, they can neither be read nor
even recognized for what they are while one watches the film. Given the crust-like extrusions on
Caliban's body and the frequent patches of white that contrast with his dark skin, the words on his body
look like no more than some random scarring. One can read the words in the photograph, because the
camera has closed up and paused; in the motion picture, it never does so. This leaves us with the question
of why Taymor included the self-inflicted writing, and, incidentally, subjected Hounsou to that much
more time in make-up. It does not leave us with an answer.
Taymor also rather badly misreads the word "mooncalf." She considers this a nickanme
"endearingly coined by Stephano for Caliban," and draws upon it for Caliban's appearance: he has a white
circular moon around his left eye, and "call" suggested the patches of white on his body that presumably
produce a Guernsey-like effect. But a mooncalf is actually a misshaped or deformed birth, either bovine
or human, caused, so superstition has it, by the malevolent influence of the moon. And since prejudice
easily presumes mental disability from physical disability, the word also comes to mean dolt, or total fool.
There is nothing fuzzy moo cow about the word, and, again, someone connected with the film should
have known so. The endearing mooncalf Caliban is much in accord with Taymor's reading of the
character as a victim of colonialism. She finds Hounsou's Caliban at times "puppylike," which I think is
clearly not the case, and having added notably to Caliban elsewhere, she makes two striking omissions.
One is that although Shakespeare's text includes a good deal about Caliban kneeling to Stephano and
kissing his foot, these actions do not happen in the film. This is all the more notable since about half of
the relevant references that say these things will be or are being done are actually spoken in the film. Why
these actions are said to be done but aren't perhaps is to excuse the character or the actor from some
especially distasteful humiliation, and thus to retain the possibility of his confronting Prospera in the final
scene as more or less an ethical equal. But the basic incoherence is reminiscent of the matter of the words
on Caliban's body.
The other omission is even more striking: in Caliban's last speech, he does not say that "I'll be
wise hereafter/And seek for grace." In the discussion after the showing I attended—the November 8th
fund raiser for the Shakespeare Society at the Paris Theater in New York City—Taymor dismissively
noted that her Caliban doesn't "promise to be a good boy." This is much in keeping with Taymor's general
view that sees Prospera bearing considerable blame for her treatment of Caliban, a situation which she
sees as Shakespeare's intention. Taymor's comments in the screenplay often reflect this attitude, but in
fact, the only point in the play that it finds expression in language is Prospera's "This thing of darkness I/
acknowledge mine," read by Mirren and intended by Taymor to mean "I acknowledge my share, at the
least, in making Caliban into a thing of darkness," which of course it need not mean. Taymor's resolution
of what she clearly intends as a major and unresolved tension in the play comes without words. In his last
scene Hounsou remains motionless, expressing both fear and hatred. Mirren looks at him steadily and
perhaps a bit grimly. Then: "PROSPERA takes in the full measure of her own responsibility for
CALIBAN. There is a silent moment of communion between them." Since neither Mirren nor Prospera
nor Shakespeare actually says what is happening here, it is perhaps good that Taymor explain
what otherwise we would not know.
The film's Ariel is Ben Whishaw. He is boyish, small and slight, entirely covered in white body
make-up, except for an upright shock of dark hair and his curiously abbreviated eyebrows. The early
establishment of his basic appearance is judicious, since over the course of the film, he will be
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transformed in a great variety of ways. There are shots in which he looms over Alonso's ship like a
gigantic Neptune, standing, so it seems, waist deep in mid ocean; on the other hand, he is the size of a
chipmunk when he awakens Gonzalo to save his life. His image is frequently multiplied, as when three
different Ariels watch the Neapolitans from behind three different trees--(the image in the screenplay
volume establishes that Ariel, though male, has no genitals); in yet another of the published photos,
twenty-three stroboscopic Ariels race across the frame while three of the shipwrecked nobles are frozen in
immobility. There seems to be little or no limitation to what form he may assume: Ariel is a sea nymph
with long hair, female breasts, and a fish's tail when he lures Ferdinand. He is a huge and fierce harpy,
coated with black oil, even on his teeth and tongue, and molting into feathers and small birds, as he
overturns the banquet table. When Trinculo falls into a pond, Ariel appears as a large frog-like creature
with impossibly extended fingers and toes. And when he chases the comics back to Prospera's cell, he is a
huge swarm of bees arranged so as to reproduce Ariel's features.
Compared to these feats, Prospera's own magicking seems small potatoes. She calls up a circle of
fire easily enough, but Taymor has eliminated the masque of Juno and Ceres, for which a kind of magic
lantern show in the skies is substituted, with views of astrological and alchemical charts, a version of da
Vinci's ideal man, some zodiacal signs and some sea creatures. Something of this disparity is implicit in
the play text: Ariel is the most frequent agency through which his master's power is exerted. Here, however, the fact that Whitshaw was unavailable for the location shooting and did most of this acting to a
green screen may well have intensified the sense that his adventures exist rather apart from Prospera and
the rest of the film. Taymor may have acknowledged this to a degree by her insistence that Whishaw and
Mirren act, live and together, the passage from Act Five, scene one, in which Ariel expresses his pity for
the humans, and Prospera concurs: "The rarer action is/ In virtue than in vengeance." And although Ariel's
image is elsewhere sometimes blurred or outlined with a kind of halo or semi-transparent, here Taymor
was careful to keep both actors in the same scale and focus and frame (see photo on p. 80).
The heavy use of CGI with Ariel has attracted some criticism, and it must be admitted that the
speed at which he moves and the protean shapes through which he metamorphosizes approach the comic
effect of an animated cartoon; he plays Roadrunner to the others' Wiley Coyote. But in a film in which
Taymor's Prospero, though played by a distinguished actress, is grim and joyless, and her Caliban is an
anthology of incoherences, the sheer tim of her Ariel is most welcome.
P.S. The screenplay tells us that Prospera has in her cell "a natural furnace," and that "The fire is from the
volcanic lava flowing deep within the earth's core." If so, why all the tsimmes about firewood?
T.A.P.
Citation:
"Ladies' day on the magical island: Taymor's Tempest." Shakespeare Newsletter 60.2 (Fall
2010): 41+. Academic OneFile. Web. 16 May 2012.
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Some Internet Sources for Julie Taymor’s The Tempest
http://collider.com/julie-taymor-interview-the-tempest/64058/ (Christina Radish, Julie Taymor interview
on the film)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/movies/10tempest.html (A. O. Scott’s New York Times review of the
film)
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2010/12/julie-taymor-the-tempest.html (Richard
Brody’s review of Julie Taymor’s film of The Tempest, in The New Yorker)
http://www.chowk.com/Arts/Movies/Prosperas-Plight-A-Review-of-Julie-Taymors-The-Tempest
(Annanya Dasgupta, “Prospera’s Plight: A Review of Julie Taymor’s The Tempest”)
http://www.cinelogue.com/reviews/the-tempest (Jonathan Henderson’s Cinelogue review of the film)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/7996596/Review-The-Tempest-with-Helen-Mirren-infirst-screening-at-Venice-Film-Festival.html (Ralph Beames’ review of the film for The Telegraph)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/06/the-tempest-helen-mirren-review (Philip French’s review for
The Guardian / The Observer)
Film Study Assignments: 4-5 pages, four sources (play text and film plus 2 other sources)
For each essay exam, write one essay based on your choice from among the subjects listed for
the plays covered. Narrow your topic so that you may cover it well (for example, working with
one or two scenes rather than trying to cover the entire script and film). You should support all
claims with textual evi-dence, and you may dialogue with me via email if you so desire. As
always, develop your subject ade-quately, follow MLA format, provide a works cited, and hone
your prose for compression, clarity, and style. Consult with me either in class or via e-mail if
you need further clarification.
Subjects:
1. Costumes and choreography
2. Text cuts or changes: effectiveness
3. Interpretation of key scene(s)
4. Gender and character
5. Actor’s interpretation of character and/or text
6. Director’s approach to filming a scene/scenes
7. Sets and blocking
8. Uses of camera
9. Use and effectiveness of spectacle/special effects
10. Non-Shakespearean motifs in text
11. Intercutting scenes and/or use of montage
12. Sets and scenes: interpreting the text
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Resources for Writing About Shakespeare and Film
Fitzgerald, Tom. “Comparing Film Adaptations.” In Search of Shakespeare. PBS. 2003. Web.
19 April 2012. Link: http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/educators/film/lessonplan.html
Gocsik, Karen. “Writing About Film.” Dartmouth Writing Program. Dartmouth University. 12 July
2005. Web. 19 April 2012.
Link: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/humanities/film.shtml
Shakespeare and Film: Some Sources
Anderegg, Michael. Cinematic Shakespeare (Genre and Beyond: A Film Studies Series).
Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Print.
Bevington, David. Shakespeare: Script, Stage, Screen. Longman, 2005. Print.
Boose, Lynda E., and Richard Burt, eds. Shakespeare The Movie: popularizing the plays on
film, tv, and video. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Print.
- - - - , eds. Shakespeare The Movie II: popularizing the plays on film, tv, video, and dvd. London and
New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.
Brode, Douglas. Shakespeare in the Movies: From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love.
Oxford and New York: Oxford U P, 2000. Print.
Cartmell, Deborah. Interpreting Shakespeare on Screen. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2000. Print.
Collick, John. Shakespeare, Cinema and Society. Manchester and New York: Manchester U P,
1989. Print. [chapters on Shakespeare in Japan, on Kurosawa's versions of Macbeth and
Lear, on his relationship to the Noh theatre, his politics, etc. bibliography]
Coursen, H. R. Shakespeare: The Two Traditions. London: Associated University Presses, 1999. Print.
Crowell, Samuel. Shakespeare Observed: Studies in Performance on Stage and Screen. Athens: Ohio U
P, 1992. Print.
Davies, Anthony. Filming Shakespeare’s Plays: The Adaptations of Laurence Olivier, Orson
Wells, Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1990. Print.
- - - - , and Stanley Wells. Shakespeare and the Moving Image: The Plays on Film and Television.
Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1994. Print.
Goodwin, James. Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema. Johns Hopkins U P, 1994. Print.
Hindle, Maurice. Studying Shakespeare on Film. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.
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Jackson, Russell. Shakespeare Films in the Making: Vision, Production, and Reception.
Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2007. Print.
Jorgens, Jack. Shakespeare on Film. London: Indiana U P, 1977. Print.
Manvell, Roger. Shakespeare and the Film. London: J. M. Dent, 1971. Print. [chapter on Kurosawa's
Throne of Blood].
Marx, Steven, ed. Steven Marx’s “Shakespeare in Love” Page. Cal Polytechnic Institute. 20 September
2003. Web. 19 April 2012. Link:
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/Shakespeare/Shak_inLove/SM_Sh_in_Love.HTML
Norman, Marc, and Tom Stoppard. Shakespeare in Love: A Screenplay. New York: Miramax, 1998.
Parker, Brian. "Nature and Society in Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood." U of Toronto Quarterly 66 (1997): 508-25. Print.
Paster, Gail Kern, ed. Screen Shakespeare (various essays). Shakespeare Quarterly 53.2
(Summer 2002). Print.
Prince, Stephen. The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa. Revised and expanded ed.
Princeton: Princeton U P, 1991. Print.
Richie, Donald. The Films of Akira Kurosawa: third ed. expanded and updated with a new epilogue.
Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: U of California, 1998.
Rosenthal, Daniel. Shakespeare on Screen. Hamlyn, 2001. Print.
Seaton, Dr. Henry. “’All Licensed Fool’: All Licensed Film: Akira Kurosawa’s Ran. The Shakespeare
Project. Grand Rapids Community College. December 2011. Web. 19 April 2012.
Link: http://cms.grcc.edu/sites/default/files/docs/shakespeare/contemporary/alllicensed_fool_all-licensed_film_akira_kurosawa_ran-henry_seaton.pdf
Shaughnessy, Robert, ed. Shakespeare on Film. New York: St. Martin's, 1998.