Shakespeare the Illusionist
Magic, Dreams, and the Supernatural on Film
By Neil Forsyth
In Shakespeare the Illusionist, Neil Forsyth reviews the history of Shakespeare’s plays on film, assessing what filmmakers and TV directors have made of the spells, haunts, and apparitions— Puck and the fairies, ghosts and witches, or Prospero’s island—in his plays. A bold step forward in Shakespeare and film studies.
Cinematic Hamlet
The Films of Olivier, Zeffirelli, Branagh, and Almereyda
By Patrick J. Cook
Cinematic Hamlet contains the first scene-by-scene analysis of four outstanding film adaptations by Laurence Olivier, Franco Zeffirelli, Kenneth Branagh, and Michael Almereyda of Hamlet. Indispensable for anyone wishing to understand how these directors rework Shakespeare into the powerful medium of film.
The Practical Shakespeare
The Plays in Practice and on the Page
By Colin Butler
A comprehensive treatment of Shakespeare’s plays, The Practical Shakespeare: The Plays in Practice and on the Page illuminates for a general audience how and why the plays work so well.Noting
Directing Shakespeare
A Scholar Onstage
By Sidney Homan
An impossible question from a Chinese actor—“Why is Shakespeare eternal?”—drove Sidney Homan after fifty years in the theater to ponder just what makes Shakespeare…well, Shakespeare. The result, Directing Shakespeare, reflects the two worlds in which Homan operates—as a scholar and teacher on campus, and as a director and actor in professional and university theaters.
Shakespeare at the Cineplex
The Kenneth Branagh Era
By Samuel Crowl
Samuel Crowl’s Shakespeare at the Cineplex: The Kenneth Branagh Era is the first thorough exploration of the fifteen major Shakespeare films released since the surprising success of Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V (1989). Crowl presents the rich variety of these films in the “long decade: between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.”
Framing Shakespeare on Film
How the Frame Reveals Meaning
By Kathy M. Howlett
The aesthetics of frame theory form the basis of Framing Shakespeare on Film. This groundbreaking work expands on the discussion of film constructivists in its claim that the spectacle of Shakespeare on film is a problem-solving activity.Kathy Howlett demonstrates convincingly how viewers’ expectations for understanding Shakespeare on film can be manipulated by the director’s cinematic technique.
Shakespeare Observed
Studies in Performance on Stage and Screen
By Samuel Crowl
In this lively study of both modern film and stage productions of Shakespeare, Samuel Crowl provides fascinating insights into the ways in which these productions have been influenced by one another as well as by contemporary developments in critical approaches to Shakespeare’s plays.
Shakespeare in Production
Whose History?
By H. R. Coursen
Shakespeare in Production examines a number of plays in context. Included are the 1936 Romeo and Juliet, unpopular with critics of filmed Shakespeare, but very much a “photoplay” if its time; the opening sequences of filmed Hamlets which span more than seventy years; The Comedy of Errors on television, where production of this script is almost impossible; and the Branagh Much Ado About Nothing, a “popular” film discussed in the context of comedy as a genre.In
Teaching Shakespeare into the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Ronald E. Salomone and James E. Davis
Shakespeare is a central shaping and defining figure in our culture. His plays are being taught, filmed, and performed every day in many places and in most of the world’s languages. At the same time, teachers and students from junior high through the early undergraduate years often struggle with the Bard in discomfort and negativity that can only be counter-productive.Teaching Shakespeare into the Twenty-First Century is by teachers and for teachers.
Shakespeare Observed
Studies in Performance on Stage and Screen
By Samuel Crowl
In this lively study of both modern film and stage productions of Shakespeare, Samuel Crowl provides fascinating insights into the ways in which these productions have been influenced by one another as well as by contemporary developments in critical approaches to Shakespeare’s plays.
Darkness and Devils
Exorcism and King Lear
By John L. Murphy
Shakespeare’s King Lear appears twice in the records of dramatic performances before the closing of the theaters in 1642. The King’s Men played it before the King’s Majesty in Whitehall on December 26, 1606. The Lord Cholmeley’s Players gave it at Gowthwaite, a manor house of Sir John and Dame Julyan Yorke, Nidderdale, West Riding, in Candlemas, 1610.
