Shakespeare And Films

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UNIVERSITATEA BUCUREȘTI

FACULTATEA DE LIMBI ȘI LITERATURI STRĂINE

LUCRARE DE LICENȚĂ

Îndrumător Științific:

grad didactic, titlul, Nume

Candidat: Prenume, Nume

BUCUREȘTI , 2017

UNIVERSITATEA BUCUREȘTI

FACULTATEA DE LIMBI ȘI LITERATURI STRĂINE

LUCRARE DE LICENȚĂ

Titlul lucrării: Shakespeare and films

Shakespeare – opera și reproducerea pe peliculă

Îndrumător Științific:

grad didactic, titlul, Nume

Candidat: Prenume, Nume

BUCUREȘTI , 2017

THIS PAGE WAS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents…………………………………………………………………………………………..4
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………5

Chapter I. Hamlet………………………………………….……….…….………….7

§1. Comparation between the original opera and the film script….…….….…7

§2. Characters ………………………………………………………………….17

Chapter II. Macbeth………………………………………………….……….24

§1. Comparation between the original opera and the film script……………..24

§2. Characters ………………………………………….……….……….…….37

Chapter III. Henry V………………………………………………….…….….…43

§1.Comparation between the original opera and the film script………..….….43

§2. Characters ……………………………………………………………..……..….51

Conclusion/Recommendations …………………………..……………………59

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..61

Annexes………………………………………………………………………….64

Shakespeare and films

INTRODUCTION

At the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th centuries, when William Shakespeare was becoming an academic institution, so to speak—a subject for serious scholarly study—a revolutionary search began in the world outside the universities for the means to present his great dramas in the new medium of film. Pioneer French filmmakers had begun to produce primitive actualités (i.e., brief film clips of parading soldiers and umbrella dancers), which were screened between the live acts in vaudeville houses in London and New York City. Among these early films was a remarkable production of 1899 (still available) by the London studio of the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company: a scene from Shakespeare’s King John—then on the boards at Her Majesty’s Theatre and featuring Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree—recorded on 68-mm film. Of four excerpts shot and later exhibited at London’s Palace Theatre to promote the stage production, only the death scene (Act V, scene 2), long thought lost, resurfaced in 1990 in an Amsterdam film archive. Like all silent films, the scene from King John might well have been accompanied by some variation of live music, sound effects, phonograph records, intertitles, recitations, or supplementary lectures, as filmmakers sought to compensate for a silenced Shakespeare.

When all is said and done, this flourishing body of work is a singular testament to Shakespeare’s universality and humanity. More than 400 years have passed since he put quill to paper, yet, centuries after he first brought them to life on the small outdoor stage near the River Thames, Shakespeare’s scenes, characters, and poetry continue to fuel a rich industry for film, literary, and music scholars and critics. Ultimately, of course, Shakespeare’s commercial value rests on his immeasurable ability, then and now, to captivate readers, music and theatre lovers, filmmakers, and moviegoers alike in his own “strong toil of grace.”

CHAPTER I. HAMLET

§1. Comparation between the original opera and the film script

The Hamlet theme takes as premise the discrimination between the thinking man (the intelectual) and the man of action (the politician, in our case). This discrimination introduced by Hans Morgentau in his study: Thought and Action in Politics to demonstrate the impossibility of the scientific establishment of ideology and political theory. In his opinion, theory cannot change the political reality, neither can it be an instrument of changing it; anything it can do is to justify the situation resulted by the decision or intervention of the man of action, becoming this way ideology which can sell itself to any force wants it or can make use it.

The theoretician´s lack of capacity to give answers to the questions of political practice ,,makes science the slave rather than the master of the object ´´, or the theorist ,,rather a victim than the beneficiary of knowledge´´.

For this reason, the intellectual must stick to the field of reflection , because his particiapation to the action transforms the act of the reflexive conscience into kind of ,,activist betrayal´´ leading to the failure of his vocation. For instance:,, Hamlet who is destined to think and feel, not to act´´ when he goes into action becomes its victim.

In opposition to this point of view, is promoted the idea of an intellectual Hamlet who, althought accepting the action, saves himself because he acts like an intellectual not like a man of action. That is basing his action on verified and verifiable truths resulting from the process of an elaborate gnoseology ( in comparation with the politician, or a man of action who acts empirically and subjectively), the finality of his action being essentially a moral one.

Operating with two human prototypes – the reflexive and the active ones – distinct of course since it stresses the predisposition of the reflexive rather than the active stance, in fact in one case the will of vital manifestation in comparison with the reflexive stance, we can convene that the vocation or destiny of the intellectual is the maximal capitalization of reflection in and by the act of creation.

For him the need to know, the perpetual search to question regarding fact and the meaning of man's existence in this world, the gnoseological act constitutes eventually the modem reason for his own existence. In accordance with logic and taking the reasoning to the end, the act of reflection faces death, realizing that the sense of life leads to death, that life itself is the road to death. But, while on the end of the road there is nothing but death, logic tells us that there is no justification to bear all the ordeals of the whole jurney, on the contrary, it is logic to put on the end to it the moment you discover this truth. Self destroy puts on the end however to the act of knowing.

Face to face with this fact the reflexive conscience alerted by the vital forces who ask for their right to manifest themselves, to fulfill their biological functions.

Between self-destroy and will to act the reflexive conscience gives up in favor of life. However it (the reflection) cannot reconcile itself only with the withdrawal in front of death as long as the latter continues to stalk it, expecting the erosion of the vital forces.

There must be a way to challenge its death, there must exist another answer to the great problem of death, problem witch the man of action does take into consideration to a less extent.

The answer to the reflexive conscience appears together with the discovery and realization of the vocation, obeying it, following it, the reflection becomes an objective fact in creations. Thought creation man can overcome his death even if he cannot avoid his end. If he does not fellow his vocation and accepts the action, the intellectual can save himself recoming his vocation, when he does not realize too late that he is risking failure or like Hamlet accepting the unconditional engagement as a moral duty when his action based on truths validated in the process of gnoseogy re-establishes, the good, the valoric order.

Hamlet, prince of Denmark, is at school in Wittenberg, Germany, when his father, King Hamlet, dies. He comes home to Elsinore Castle to find his mother, Queen Gertrude, married to his uncle Claudius, the late king's younger brother. Claudius has had himself crowned king. Soldiers guarding Elsinore report to Hamlet through his friend Horatio that his father's ghost has been seen on the battlements. Hamlet goes with them to see the ghost, which speaks to him, saying that Claudius has murdered the king by pouring poison in his ear and that he, Hamlet, must avenge his father's murder. Hamlet swears to do this, but his philosophic mind is deeply upset at the shock of his uncle's treachery and his mother's possible involvement in it.

In the meantime, three related series of events are happening at the Danish court. First, the nations of Denmark and Norway have been engaged in border disputes with each other and with the neighboring country of Poland; King Hamlet became a hero in the eyes of his people by winning one such battle. Now Fortinbras, son of the late king of Norway, and nephew of the present, ailing king, wants Claudius' permission to march his army through Danish territory on the way to fight the Poles. Second, Claudius' chief adviser, the elderly Poloni- us, is troubled by the behavior of his hot-headed son, Laertes, and his sensitive daughter, Ophelia. He is sending Laertes off to Paris to acquire polish and courtly manners, and instructs young Reynaldo to spy on him and report back if he falls into bad company. As for Ophelia, both Polonius and Laertes are concerned that she may be becoming too attached to young Hamlet, who has been sending her trinkets and love poems. They caution her to be careful, since it's not likely that the heir to the throne would marry someone below his royal station.

Third, Claudius and Gertrude are concerned over Hamlet's behavior, which was moody before the ghost spoke to him and has become increasingly disturbed, though they of course do not know why. They send for two of his school friends from Wittenberg, the Danish nobles Rosenantz and Guilden- stem, to try to discover the source of his moodiness. Arriving at the court, these two try to cheer Hamlet with news of a traveling company of actors on their way to Elsinore. This gives him a solution to one of his major worries—how to determine whether the ghost is really his father's spirit and is telling the truth, or is an evil spirit sent to tempt him into sirt. He will have the actors put on a play about a courtier who poisons a king and seduces the queen. Claudius' reaction to the play will reveal the truth.

Meanwhile, Ophelia tells her father about a disturbing encounter she has had with Hamlet, who was behaving strangely. Polonius concludes that Hamlet's frustrated love for her has made him go mad. To prove this to Gaudius, he has his daughter confront Hamlet in a corridor where he and the king can spy on them. Hamlet comes in, musing on death and whether or not he has the right to take a man's life. When Ophelia interrupts him, he becomes emotionally violent, denies he ever loved her, and urges her to go into a convent. Gaudius is greatly upset by the scene, which makes him begin to fear that Hamlet has found out the truth about his father's death.

The performance of the play confirms Gaudius' worst fears. During the pantomime prologue, Hamlet starts making double-edged remarks that drive Gau- dius out, angry and ashamed, when the actors have barely begun to speak. The court scatters in confusion, and Hamlet tells Horatio he is now totally convinced the ghost was telling the truth. Gertrude, furious with her son sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstem to tell him she wants to see him in private, in her chambers. On the way there Hamlet sees Gaudius, defenseless, kneeling and attempting to pray. Hamlet thinks about killing him then and there, but holds back, believing that a man killed while praying would go to heaven, hardly a suitable punishment for Claudius' crimes. Hamlet cannot of course hear Claudius' thoughts, which are preoccupied with his inability to pray and his unwillingness to show true repentance by renouncing both the throne and his marriage to Gertrude.

Arriving at his mother's room, Hamlet is harsh and bitter with her, despite having promised himself (and earlier the ghost) to treat her gently. He accuses her of murder and incest—her new husband is her brother- in-law—attacking her so forcefully that Polonius, who has hidden behind a tapestry ("arras") in case she needs assistance, cries for help. Hamlet stabs what he thinks is Claudius, and is disappointed to learn he has killed only the meddling old man. Over the corpse, he tries to convince the now-frantic Gertrude to give up her second marriage. He is interrupted by the ghost, who reminds him that he has sworn to kill Claudius and leave his mother in peace. Their conversation convinces Gertrude, who cannot see the ghost, that her son is indeed mad.

Hamlet followed his path succeeding to defeat death, to be still after the centuries as a Shakespearean character more alive than many living around us. Because he is not pressed into reaction as many have said, by assuming the mission to avenge his murdered father.

He was condemned to action through origin, descendence as a son of a king and inheritor to the throne, even it his father hadn't been killed – or may be even more in this case – he could not avoid the role et the man of action.

His father did not bring him up or send him to higher school to become a philosopher or aesthetidan, but to be able to be his heir to the throne, and open-minded inheritor if possible.

Accepting the action when his father's murderer acceded to for throne, the revenge asked by his father spirit becomes the impulse and immediate motivation, but be does not act as an avenger neither of his father nor to occupy his rightful place on foe throne – fact which would have transformed him either in a victim of his father, order or in a common murderer like his uncle, who became king through ,,crime and usurpation´´.

Hamlet rises above these personal mobiles – and that's why he delays continuously the act of justice, in his search, verifications and confrontations of the truths, which give him the right to sanction at the right moment, the guilty one. He does not seek effectively revenge but he wants to reinstate the order of values justice and the correct form of government.

His act of justice derives from the treachery of the usurper as changeover against him of his own baseness and wrongs committed against his subjects.

The end of Hamlet is nothing but the price of justice, elevating him at the same time at the rank of exemplary morality, the equivalent of the highest achievement of vocation.

Based and built around this idea the essay tries to give an answer to a problem of perpetual actuality, that of the individuals, involvement in the life of his society of his chances and his responsibilities, especially in a world turned upside down by radical changes.

Just as Shakespeare’s passage to the play was littered with personal and professional obstacles, so the text’s transmission to us has similar complications. We receive Shakespeare’s plays from two publishing formats: Quarto copies, which were relatively cheap single-volume editions of the plays generally published in Shakespeare’s lifetime (1564-1616), and the First Folio edition of the plays in 1623. The First Folio was an attempt by his fellow actors in Shakespeare’s Company (promoted to being The King’s Men by James I) and shareholders in The Globe, Henry Condell and John Hemingcs, to collect all of his plays in a single volume. Only eighteen of those thirty-six plays had previously appeared in print in Quarto editions, so had Hemingcs and Condell not gathered the plays into a single volume we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s dramatic canon.1

In some instances we have multiple Quarto editions of the plays to go along with the text of the play as it appears in the First Folio, and rarely are those versions identical. Sueh is the case with Hamlet. We have two quarto editions of the play, commonly referred to as Q1 and Q2, as well as the Folio text. There are substantial variations between all three versions of the play, and the text we read (or watch and hear in the theatre) is generally an editor's compilation of material from Ql, Q2, and the First Folio.

This brief history reveals that Shakespeare's texts are not stable and have existed in multiple versions since their inception. Ql, for instance, is a much shorter version of the play than either Q2 or the First Folio, which are closer in alignment, with the exception of Hamlet’s soliloquy‘How all occasions do inform against me/ missing in the Folio text. The truncated Ql appears to be a version used when Shakespeare's company toured the provinces or Europe when the plague closed the theatres in London.- Stephen Greenblatt has noted that ‘Shakespeare´s generous text' often supplies more material than can be performed in 'the two hours traffic of our stage’ as the prologue to Romeo and Juliet announces, thus suggesting that he intentionally wrote more material than was likely to get dramatized in any single production.' The text could be shaped and trimmed (as it now is in almost all contemporary stage and film productions of the plays) by the actors to fit the particular demands of a variety of playing spaces and theatrical circumstances. Hamlet certainly appears to be such a ‘generous’ text: a conflated version containing all the elements unique to Ql, Q2, and the First Folio texts makes it Shakespeare's longest play.

Hamlet is the most read, discussed, and performed work in the Western literary canon. The play’s cultural history is as protean and enigmatic as its fascinating but elusive central figure. The play was conceived at a moment of transition in the life of its creator, in the culture he helped to shape and fashion and in the political dynamics of the English monarchy. And it appeared precisely as the sixteenth century, dominated by the energies released by the Reformation and the rise of the nation-state, gave way to individual self-fashioning and scientific scepticism.

Hamlet, like the late-Elizabethan age it reflects, is set in the interrogative mood. The play abounds in questions from Bernardo’s opening query, ‘Who’s there?’, to Hamlet’s famous ‘To be or not to be’ formulation to the Gravedigger’s puzzlement: 'Is she to be buried in Christian burial, when she willfully seeks her own salvation?’ The play’s atmosphere is muddled and mysterious. Is the Ghost an honest representation of Hamlet’s father ora creature created by the devil? Is Claudius his brother’s legitimate successor or his fratricide? Is Gertrude innocent or guilty of adultery? Is she complied in her first husband’s murder? Does Hamlet love Ophelia or simply use her as a pawn in his

Lord of Misrule who presides over carnival, wants to turn everyday into holiday. Hal makes a shifty but subtle move to equate the two fathers so that he appears To emerge in Henry V as his own man, politically untarnished and morally reformed. Even As Yon Like It touches on paternal legacies in the conflict between the brothers Oliver and Orlando after their father’s death and in the contrasting paternal examples of another pair of brothers, Duke Senior and Duke Frederick. Rosalind, who adopts masculine attire when she and her cousin Celia run away to the Forest of Arden to escape Celia’s paranoid father, perhaps achieves the single healthiest synthesis of male and female qualities in all of Shakespeare, the myriad issues which link and trouble fathers and sons were certainly alive in Shakespeare’s art and life when he began working on his version of the Hamlet story.

If Shakespeare had both personal and material motivations for turning to Hamlet he had professional reasons as well. In the first ten years of his career he had proved to be the master of the genres of the English history play and romantic comedy. Perhaps he felt that he might get trapped by audience demand to continue to produce works similar to the ones which had made his fame. Fast staff, for instance, threatened to rake charge of his career so, after promising his return in Henry V, he killed him off instead. This so provoked Queen Elizabeth, according to legend, that she demanded lie write a new play showing fall in love characters. Shakespeare obliged but solved his first problem by reducing the great subversive comedian to little more than the butt of jokes played upon him by two middle- class housewives.

Similarly, Shakespeare tried to break the hold of romantic, festive comedy by writing a series of plays, Measure For Measure, All's Well That Ends Well, and Troilus and Cressida, that either pushed the limits of what could be successfully released and resolved within the romantic comedy genre or shattered it altogether by cynical satire. Shakespeare was trying to turn his art and his audience to the tragic mode, and Hamlet was his vehicle. Hamlet stands at the beginning of the great string of seven tragedies Shakespeare wrote between 1600 and 1608, securing his reputation as the greatest English dramatist. Though not as tightly focused as Macbeth, as intensely powerful as Othello, as searing as King Lear nor as sweeping as Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet remains, for the world, his signature work.

Hamlet wants to insist that it is perfect conscience’ for him to ‘quit’ Claudius and that Horatio must serve as a witness to his innocence. By the fifth act the typical Renaissance revenger is so deeply embedded in the villain’s ways and means that the two have become largely indistinguishable. Shakespeare’s Hamlet never stoops to Claudius’s lethal methods. Hamlet eventually gets his man but the other deaths (Gertrude’s and Laertes’s) are Claudius’s responsibility, not his.

Filmmakers, like theatrical people, have always regarded Hamlet as the apex, the ne plus ultra, so to speak, of not only Shakespearean performance but of haut culture as well. From the first stirrings of the infant movie industry, there have been earnest efforts to put this most enigmatic of Shakespeare's plays on screen. In the index to Shakespeare on Silent Film, the indefatigable Robert Hamilton Ball lists twenty-six silent Hamlets, but the statistic is misleading because of the twenty-six, three or four, like an American Vitagraph Hamlet, were planned but never released, a few simply exploit the title, nothing more, and except for three Italian, British, and German versions, they are all either fragmentary or stunted one-reelers. The three “feature length” (over two reels) titles include the British 1913 Hepworth/Plumb (59 mins.), an Italian 1917 Eleuterio Rodolfi Amleto that originally ran over one hour, and a 1920 Svend Gade 117-minute Hamlet from Germany’s Weimar Republic. The earliest filmed Hamlets came close on the heels of the first Shakespeare movie ever produced, which was a scene or two from an 1899 King John made in London by Edison associate William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson and actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.

The reification of Hamlet in the oxymoron of the silent Shakespeare movie has of course invited universal scorn, even guffaws. Yet it has only been a kind of poetic justice that Hamlet, in which the protagonist notably refers to “inexplicable dumb shows,” should have been appropriated by an art form wherein the highest eloquence comes from silence. Even Shakespeare’s own First Player expostulates on the virtues of speechlessness when he cites the power of “the silence in the heavens” (2.2.484) just before a storm. Reinventing Hamlet in silent movies only beefed up an agenda that had been growing ever since Shakespeare first conceived of the brooding

prince. As a matter of fact, Shakespeare’s own Hamlet reinvents himself in every scene in the play, running the gamut from sullen adolescent to quicksilver poet, to profound thinker, to youthful undergraduate, to aging graduate student, and even to skilled fencer. Stage and screen history includes an infinite variety of Hamlets ranging from a cerebral Olivier, to an ethereal Howard, a truculent Williamson, a grungy Skarsgaard, and a phlegmatic Gibson. In this lover, thinker, warrior, statesman, rhetorician, avenger, troublemaker, Shakespeare created a cipher more enigmatic than the Mona Lisa, so much so that it becomes impossible to distinguish complexity from incoherence, or, quite the opposite, incoherence from complexity. We will never know which is the case, and that is why the play perennially tantalizes and intrigues critics.

§2. CHARACTERS

Tall, slim, and cadaverous with hollow cheekbones, Forbes-Robertson struck an elegant figure, and managed to reinvent a tenth-century Danish warrior as the very embodiment of a Victorian gentleman. Forbes-Robertson would fit nicely into today’s Masterpiece Theater costume dramas as the sort of reliable chap one might encounter in the first-class dining room of the Titanic. He is therefore not so much a genteel as a gentlemanly Hamlet, who when Ophelia returns his gifts chides her almost without rancor. During the play scene he lounges near Ophelia, but the camera respects Victorian propriety, resisting the voyeurism encouraged by Hamlet’s offer to lie on Ophelia’s lap and his bawdy remark about “country matters.” Similarly, Hamlet’s restraint in the closet scene when he hesitates to kill Claudius suggests an elaborate rationalization for sparing his uncle rather than a wish to preserve him for “a more horrid hent” (3.3.88). The graveyard scene brings him to the peak of his powers; holding Yorick’s skull, he embodies the dignity, intelligence, wit and gravity of the iconic Hamlet. Like Sarah Bernhardt, Sir Johnston—in agreeing to record his Hamlet for posterity— grasped what Ernest Hemingway meant when he wrote in Death in the Afternoon of how the art of the bullfighter was “impermanent,” saying that “when the performer is gone the art exists only in the memory of those who have seen it and dies with them.”

In a resourceful cinematic trope, the ghastly skull of Yorick dissolves into Yorick’s living face. As Russell Jackson has pointed out, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) contrives a similar conceit with Yorick’s skull, which possesses crooked teeth much like Ken Dodd’s, the British comic playing Yorick who, in a flashback, has been shown frolicking with a prepubescent Hamlet.23 The intercutting of the duel scene with Fortinbras’s approaching army reflects a technique already well developed by D. W. Griffith and anticipates Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 handling of the ominous approach of Fortinbras’s gray-clad infantry. As if borrowing from the Forbes- Robertson Hamlet, the Italian movie ends with Hamlet seated bolt upright on the throne and attended by Horatio. After Fortinbras’s entry, in a familiar tableau, the body of the prince is solemnly borne out; however, as if to signify the complete reversal of order in the universe, Hamlet’s head is seen, like the world, as upside down, a filmic trope that Orson Welles exploited at the opening of his Othello (1952).

At the dawn of the motion picture era, however, the prince carried a special frisson to nineteenth-century audiences because he was thought of as the embodiment of genteel manners and rarified thought, of indeed what the French under the influence of Jules La Forgue and others came to call Hamletism, a code for the “enigma of us all.” Goethe and the romantics had planted the seed for the idea of the Danish prince as a noble and beautiful soul lacking the strength to act decisively. For most people, the Idea of Hamlet satisfied intellectual curiosity without any need for restless probing of the actual complexities and mysteries of Hamlet itself. This epicene, indecisive Hamlet stuck in people’s minds—whether they had read the play or not, that didn’t matter—as a person far above the vulgar herd in sensibility, intellect, and thoughtfulness, someone to be revered and respected, a beatified icon, the “glass of fashion and the mould of form.” It became a norm for nineteenth-century Hamlet portrayals, though sometimes the basis for differentiation when actresses, like Sarah Bernhardt, felt compelled to inject a more forceful spin on the prince.

The very editing processes that make Hamlet’s (interactive command of multimedia in the film seem like self-reflective knowledge and art of being are also what open the film to a critique of its misrecognized narcissism. Hamlet sees himself everywhere, in East of Eden clips with James Dean; in a clip of Return of the Crow showing in Blockbuster; in footage of a 1950s, Leave It to Beaver-Mike nuclear family; in a film clip of Sir John Gielgud as a young man doing Hamlet in the gravedigger’s scene. In the easy flow of accessible images of the film, Hamlet’s time is never out of joint. Hamlet is truly posthistorical not only in his accessing of images but in the way that the mediatization of the live here implies no loss. Hamlet can stop, start, rewind, and fast forward the film of himself holding a gun in his mouth and to his head at will, all without loss. (By contrast, Ophelia burns photos of Hamlet and her, and Hamlet’s letters to Ophelia end up floating in a fountain.)

The final moments of the film, as Hamlet dies, register an even more psychotic breakdown of film and video as a close-up of Hamlet’s eye is intercut with video footage of Ophelia, his father, mother, and uncle, seen previously in the color film itself, now in black and white. What began as Hamlet returning the gaze with his camcorder now becomes a cross-cut mirroring of one of his eyes and film footage outside his consciousness which is positioned as if it were his memory, his consciousness. Buddhist idealism goes out the window as Hamlet meets Kurt Cobain in Nirvana.

Interestingly, it is Claudius who allegorizes a psychotic sequence of images drawn from infomercials, cartoons, and news coverage of a Bill Clinton State of the Union speech he sees on his limousine TV and draws a moral that applies to himself. As if the TV were speaking to him, he has an attack of conscience, moving into “O my offence is rank.” Claudius finally blocks out the images by covering the screen with his hand, having had enough. Hamlet, however, does not see Claudius reading these images as his own story. The problem narcissism poses in Almereyda’s Hamlet is more than simply a Buddhist conception or the rather explicit exposure of Hamlet and Ophelia love sceene in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet? Does Hamlet’s video footage of Ophelia show us a moment in which Hamlet’s appearance is unwelcome and obtrusive, as if he were spying on her like another Laertes? Is that why she covers her face with her book? Or is this a moment of self-consciousness on her part? Ophelia’s interiority is not the issue for Hamlet, however. His ability to use lies to atracting her as live is at one with his misrecognition of his own mediatization of “interbeing” as a live voice-over.

Film demands music in a way that stage drama docs not* In fact film uses the score to heighten tension, underline emotion, define character, and enhance landscape in a manner rarely if over employed in tile theatre (outside of musical comedy). In films the score is often allowed to come in under the dialogue in ways that would confound great modern playwrights from Chekhov and Ibsen to Beckett and Pinter. The film score then becomes a particularly complicated element in the Shakespeare film, where it has not been a natural ingredient in his performance on stage and where it threatens to rival or eclipse the powerful music created by his verse.

Olivier, wisely, turned to a respected contemporary classical composer, William Walton, to create the film score for Hamlet. Walton had already composed the music for his Henry V -1944 and he would go on to write the score for Olivier's last Shakespeare film, Richard (1955). ‘Not uninteresting' was Walton’s understated comment to a friend after completing his music for Hamlet. He went on, Tve had to do nearly an hour of appropriate but otherwise useless music’.4 The comment reflects less a judgement than a recognition of the different circumstances and challenges of the music that Walton wrote for Olivier’s Henry V and for his Hamlet, and the differing priorities of the two scores. Walton's music for Henry V was in the ‘nunnery’ scene. After his savage, misogynistic attack on female duplicity: ‘God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another’ he dashes up the winding staircase, seeking solace but finding instead the sea crashing on the rugged coast below in echo of troubled thoughts hammering away in his mind. Branagh, by contrast, embeds his Hamlet in the world of Claudius’s Machiavellian statecraft. Thinking he is alone, he delivers his thoughts to his reflection captured in one of the Great Hall’s mirrored doors; the very one behind which Claudius and Polonius have hidden to spy on Hamlet through a two-way mirror. Kate Winslet’s Ophelia is also present, abandoned in the shadows in the rear of the hall because her father and the King have rushed for cover on Hamlet’s entrance.

Mirror shots are tricky (how do you keep the camera and its host of operators from also being caught in the reflection?) but are an imaginative device for translating the stage convention of the soliloquy into cinematic terms. Orson Welles uses one in a crucial moment in his Othello (1952) and Trevor Nunn also does so for Viola’s soliloquy in his film of Twelfth Night (1995). Branagh’s delivery of the speech is a quiet, determined, philosophical investigation rather than Olivier’s dreamy distracted reverie. When Olivier’s Hamlet pulls out his dagger on ‘might his quietus make with a bare bodkin, it slips out of his hand and tumbles down into the sea below: a gesture of Hamlet’s impotence and castration anxiety. When Branagh’s Hamlet pulls our his dagger wc are given a quick reaction shot of Claudius and Polonius flinching behind the mirror. This Hamlet is potentially lethal and to be watched because he is also to be feared.

When the soliloquy begins the camera shoots over Hamlet's hack and shoulder to capture his image in the mirror. As the speech progresses the cameră slowly closes in so that finally we see Hamlet only in reflection, appropriate for representing his most reflective moment in the text. But the mirror also works to remind how much Branagh’s Hamlet sees himself, or potential versions of himself, reflected in the many alter-egos

Shakespeare’s full text provides him: Fortinbras, Horatio, Laertes, even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Most significantly it provides Branagh with another imaginative cinematic technique to bring Hamlet and Claudius into conjunction with each other. In looks, dress, and manner they are twins as well as ‘mighty opposites’.

Because Branagh emphasizes the political dimensions of Hamlet’s tragedy, his version of the play is more concerned with fathers than mothers. Olivier’s film concentrates on Hamlet’s relationship with his mother and his father’s ghost; Claudius plays a peripheral role. Branagh’s Hamlet, by contrast, is obsessed with Jacobi’s Claudius and the film repeatedly finds cinematic ways of linking them. In fact as Branagh’s Hamlet is presented with an array of contemporary alter-egos so is he surrounded by complicated father figures including the Ghost, Claudius, the First Player, and even Priam. The culmination of the film’s interesting twinning of Hamlet and Claudius comes in the scene of Claudius’s confession and Hamlet’s opportunity to ‘do it pat are not Branagh treats this moment as if it were a companion scene to his encounter with his other father — the Ghost. Then, as the Ghost told the story of his brother’s personal (the Queen) and political (the crown) treachery, Branagh held the camera in tight close-up on Brian Blessed’s mouth and eyes and also used flashbacks that illustrated the murder and Claudius’s sly attentions to Gertrude as the royal family competed at a game of curls. In the confessional, Branagh now holds the camera in tight close-up on Hamlet’s left eye and provides flashbacks to Claudius’s lascivious behaviour: downing cups of Rhenish, murdering old Hamlet, unlacing Gertrude’s corset, and chasing her into her bedroom.

According to Russell Jackson’s diary account of the filming of Branagh’s Hamlett when the great French actor Gerard Depardieu (who plays Reynaldo) arrived on the set to shoot his scene he became the first of many to be struck by the uncanny physical resemblance between Derek Jacobi’s Claudius and Branagh’s Hamlet. Branagh’s Shakespearean career has been intimately linked with Jacobi. He first saw Hamlet as a teenager when he took the train from Reading to Oxford to see Jacobi’s performance of the prince and it was that experience that inspired Branagh to want to be a classical actor, A decade later he invited Jacobi to direct him in a stage production of Hamlet for his Renaissance Theatre Company.

CHAPTER II. MACBETH

§1. COMPARATION BETWEEN THE ORIGINAL OPERA AND THE FILM SCRIPT

Shakespeare also made good use of the limited sound effects at his disposal. The witches always arrive to the sound of thunder; there is a ‘drum within’ (signifying battle) as Macbeth and Banquo make their first entrance , a bell sounds as the signal for Macbeth to enter Duncan’s chamber, an owl shrieks as he commits the murder, there is a prolonged knocking at the castle gate immediately after the murder, and a loud ‘alarum bell’ is rung after it has been discovered Simple though these sounds are, they are made dramatically expressive and powerful by their timing, the precise moments at which they occur.

Macbeth., like Julius Caesar, is a play about a political assassination and a consequent civil war, and in both plays the pivotal episode is the assassination itself. Everything before the murder of Duncan leads up to it and everything after the murder follows as a result of it. In comparison with the earlier tragedy, however, Macbeth is predominantly a private, intimate drama. There are no public orations, no turbulent crowds; the murder of Duncan, unlike that of Caesar, takes place off stage and not in a public arena, and Macbeth’s prolonged inner disintegration is more significant than his death. The most dramatically tense episodes consist of soliloquies or conversations between two people, especially Macbeth and his wife, and the longest scene, the ‘England’ scene , consists largely of a dialogue between Malcolm and Macduff. The focus of attention is consistently on the feelings, the states of mind, of the principal characters, and on the influence of one character on the mind of another.

These predominantly intimate passages are interspersed with more public, visually spectacular episodes such as Duncan’s arrival with his retinue at Inverness with ‘torches’ and to the music of ‘hautboys’ , the sequence following the discovery of Duncan’s murder, when the stage rapidly becomes crowded with characters; the mysterious sinking of the witches’ cauldron, also to the sound of‘hautboys’; the supernatural vision of the eight kings presented by the w itches to Macbeth; and the entry of Malcolm’s soldiers under the camouflage of their ‘leafy screens’.

Stars, hide your fires,

Let not light see my black and deep desires,

The eye w ink at the hand. Yet let that be,

Which the eye fears when it is done to see.

The darkness which enfolds many of the early scenes is accompanied by repeated verbal references to night and becomes associated with the pervasive impression of evil w hich is unique to this play:

Light thickens.

And the crow makes w ing to th’rooky wood;

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,

Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

Whereas performances at the Globe, which was open to the sky, had to take place during daylight hours, indoor performances, such as those given at the court and the Blackfriars, were lit artificially by candles and could be given at night, thus allowing the effect of darkness to be created literally. Darkness plays a significant role in Macbeth, and several of its episodes take place at night. Such scenes are usually indicated by stage directions calling for torches, as in Duncan’s arrival at Inverness and the scene in which he is feasted off stage. The murders of both Duncan and Banquo take place at night, as does Lady Macbeth’s sleep-walking where she enters ‘with a taper’. Darkness is invoked by Macbeth who, horrified by the deed he is tempted to commit, calls on it as a means of concealing his ow n evil impulses.

The heroism of Macbeth is the heroism of a mere soldier,'—of the body, and not of the mind. In the murder- scene he is an absolute coward ; with the witches he is desperate, not resolute; it is in the field of bottle only that he is a brave man. It has indeed been said that Shakespeare intended to show the inseparable connexion between true courage and morality ; but Shakspcare had too much knowledge of human nature to think of any such thing; daily experience shews us that vice is often brave, and virtue cowardly. Besides, he has left us a Richard the Third, who was as little to be censured for fear, as praised for goodness. Moreover, was a very approved soldier, and yet be had a very indifferent name for virtue.

The plot deserves the highest praise ; the very multitude of its incidents makes the time of its action seem short; it is as if the balance weights had been taken from the clock of time and the wheels ran on with unchecked velocity; three great events take place, and though they must of necessity have happened at very distant periods, yet the poet has so admirably linked them together by minor incidents, that no pause occurs, and consequently the unity of time does not appear to be violated.

Of the alterations nothing can be said, unless to express our wonder at the stupid barbarians, who dared to lay hands on this perfect work with the idea of its improve-

Lady Macbeth is drawn with a masterly hand; her crimes and her sufferings are of grandeur almost supernatural ; the partial visitings of remorse too are in perfect keeping. In the awful hour of night and murder, when a nature seems to cry out against the deed, one kindly feeling alone clings to her heart,

“ Had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I had done it.” .

This solitary human expression casts a momentary blaze on the scene of horror, only to render the subsequent darkness more tremendous. Let any pne read this with the fitting circumstances of time and place, and he will feel its force more fully than by any stage representation. It is not in the blaze of lights and the presence of numbers that the awe of this scene is to be duly estimated ; the cricket will not cry, nor the owl shriek to the imagination, unless in loneliness and the doubtful light of a midnight chamber.

Macbeth’s character is so beautifully described by his ambitious wife, that it seems like presumption to add a lot to his delineation.

There is a popular story that Macbeth was first performed before King James on 7 August 1606.The story goes that the boy actor Hal Berridge, who was playing the part of Lady Macbeth, was taken ill and Shakespeare took his place. Hal Berridge died of his illness, beginning the tradition of bad luck associated with this play.The first reliable written record we have of any performance of Macbeth is Simon Formans detailed diary entry from 1611. The play was first published in 1623 with 35 other plays by Shakespeare in a book now known as the First Folio.

Macbeth is set in Scotland in the eleventh century, about 550 years before Shakespeare wrote the play. Shakespeare adapted the story of Macbeth from a popular history book known as Holinshed’s Chronicles.

Holinshed’s portrayal of Macbeth is much more positive than Shakespeare’s. In Holinshed’s Chronicles, Macbeth seizes the crown in open combat with the support of many Scottish Lords, including Banquo. Holinshed portrays King Duncan as a weak, unpopular ruler, who does not punish injustices. After killing Duncan, Macbeth goes on to rule Scotland effectively for ten years.

Many of the details that audiences find most fascinating in Shakespeare’s Macbeth do not appear in Holinshed’s Chronicles. For example, Holinshed presents Lady Macbeth as ambitious and persuasive, but she does not summon spirits, and nor does she sleepwalk.

Shakespeare looked elsewhere in Holinshed’s Chronicles for his portrayal of Duncan’s murder. In the tenth century, King Duff was murdered by Donwald and his wife, while he was staying at their castle. However, in Holinshed’s account, the murder is committed by Donwald’s servants, who remove the body from the castle. A number of supernatural signs occur after the murder, including the country being plunged into darkness, and horses eating each other. Shakespeare lists these same ominous signs in his play. More important than any of these details, Shakespeare breathes life into characters that are otherwise two-dimensional, and, through soliloquy, gives the audience a window into the inner workings of Macbeth’s mind.

Shakespeare has an incredible command of language. His lines are packed with puns, metaphors and ironies. He often uses difficult, strange-sounding words and phrases, some of which have shifted in their meaning since he first wrote them. Sometimes he uses a different word order to what you might be used to, and the characters in his plays often speak in poetry. Shakespeare’s language can, at times, be challenging, but the reward is in the challenge.

There are some tips on how to read the text and some of the main features to look out for. The reader doesen´t need to worry too much at first about terms like iambic pentameter and rhyming couplet. At this stage, practise reading the text aloud and enjoy the sound of the language.

Shakespeare sometimes leaves a line of iambic pentameter incomplete, breaking the rhythm of the text: the final line above is a good example of this. Shakespeare deliberately constructs these irregular lines in order to highlight aspects such as dramatic tension. Leaving the line with fewer than the usual ten beats allows time for the characters to pause or perhaps to do something during the moment of silence. Here it allows time for Macbeth to look at his hands, which are covered in King Duncan’s blood. The pause in the dialogue adds discord or tension to the scene.

The Macbeth that Orson Welles directed in 1936 has come to attain a complicatedly iconic status for many subsequent African-American productions of the play and even for black theatre more generally. Indeed, the photo of the Welles premiere that graces our cover was included in one of the playbills of the New Lafayette Theatre, a company that from 1967 to 1972 was exclusively devoted to “the development and production of original contemporary plays about the twentieth-century African-American experience,” with no Shakespearean adaptations whatsoever (Orman).1 Woodie King, Jr., founder of the New Federal Theatre (named after the WPA’s Federal Theatre), likewise cites the image as a record of a transformative moment: “Those early photographs of people crowding outside of the theatre: They are smiling, and they are happy, and they are dressed up to go to the theatre in Harlem” (2003, 106). The notoriety of the FTP production has helped to establish Macbeth as arguably the most popular Shakespearean play for contemporary black repertory, as the Appendix to this collection documents its frequent appearance at black theatre companies as well as at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) drama programs. Performing in this specific play often stands metonymically for advances in non-traditional casting; for instance, when one reviewer notes that “Black actors have long felt that they are not given a fair whack at the major roles of English drama,” it is telling that he envisions that progress would entail audiences who “should be able to admit a black Macbeth in Shakespeare” (Kingston).

Welles places you in a color-bind: if you decide to perform Macbeth with an all-black cast, you are already following in grooves he etched long ago, which can at times feel like ruts. If, on the one hand, you attempt to reconstruct the 1936 production, you run up against impossible standards of “fidelity” all-too familiar for anyone adapting Shakespeare, but further exacerbated by the detailed yet diffuse and often contradictory archive of “what the Welles production really was like.” If, on the other hand, you deny the production’s influence when it clearly has established a precedent, you are liable to become irritated by its gravitational force. I sense this to be the case with Alfred Preisser, who co-founded the Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH) in 1999, which inaugurated its first season with Macbeth and has since remounted this play more often than any other (five out of its first ten seasons have included Macbeth). Preisser stated in his correspondence with me that, while he was familiar with the Welles Macbeth, his

“production was not influenced by that interpretation… I’ve never really thought about my position as a director in relationship to Welles’s work.” Yet Preisser admits some frustration in the reception of his all-black

Macbeth: Because of the music and dance, many people perceived the production as a “voodoo Macbeth.” This says more about many people’s continued limited perceptions when they see African Americans onstage than it did about this particular production. In all of our dramaturgy, we never discussed the West Indies, we never touched voodoo, etc. People, including critics, would sometimes identify the costume as “African,” I think because black people were wearing them, not because of what the costume actually was.

Roman Polanski’s controversial version of the classic Shakespeare play casts Jon Finch and Francesca Annis as the murderously obsessed couple who utilize witchcraft and prophecies as stepping stones to power. Polanski’s First film after the murder of his wife. Sharon Tate, by the Manson family, this graphically violent MACBETH could be read as an attempt to exorcise real-life demons. In any case, this version, if not the best Shakespearean adaptation, is certainly the most inspired in its recreation of the cold barbaric spirit of the play’s original setting. The vulgarity and gore on the screen is neither exploitative nor irresponsible, but a thoughtful interpretation that is less beholden to conventional theatrical techniques of the time. In accordance with this approach. Polanski elicited naturalistic understated performances from his actors which bolstered the play’s realism while bringing the poetry down to earth. Some would argue he brought it too far down.

While Annis's nude sleepwalking scene has been criticized as evidence of Playboy Enterprises’ involvement (in fact, the script was written before Playboy agreed to produce the film), it is true to the period. The project was originally offered to Allied Artists and then to Universal but both deals fell through. Polanski originally intended to cast Tuesday Weld as Lady Macbeth, but she declined after learning about the nude scene. Photographed in Wales during incessant downpours and fog, the picture was completed way behind schedule and lost about $3.5 million dollars. The original cut received an ‘X’’ rating.

Duncan's vulnerability coincs. as Machiavelli might diagnose it. in being loved rather than feared. "It is,” Machiavelli famously writes, "nnidt safer to be feared titan loved" . This is because, he elaborates, "love is sustained by a bond of gratitude which, because men arc excessively sell’-intercstcd, is broken whenever they see a chance to benefit themselves''. The direct influence of Machiavelli on Shakespeare has been the subject of much speculation, with Quentin Skinner and Richard Tuck helping, to establish the influence of Machiavelli throughout continental Europe in the sixteenth century and in England primarily in the later seventeenth century if a direct relation between Machiaveili´s theories ol statecraft and Shakespeare’s representation of rulership in Macbeth is unlikely, nevertheless Machiavelli’s emphasis on itself inerest helps brine forward the apparently contradictory elements of Macbeth's relation to Duncan: he at once celebrates the king's rule, acknowledging his generosity, and destroys such rule as a means of benefiting himself

While Shakespeare offers a model of love-based sovereignty in Duncan, he also offers its opposite through Macbeth: rule based in fear. Under Macbeth’s rule, as his opponents claim, “each new mom/ new widows howl, new orphans cry” a description by Macduff that reinforces the opposition of Macbeth and daylight. The country is. as Rossc claims, “almost afraid to know itself’. Yet the fear and horror in Scotland does not aid Macbeth’s sovereignty, primarily because he inspires, as Machiavelli warns, not only fear but hatred: “a ruler must make himself feared in such a way that, even if he does not become loved, he does not become hated“. Through excessive cruelty, attempting to murder Banquo and Flcance, as well as Macduff and his family, the Macbeths appear as a "butcher and his fiendlike Queen“. As a result. Macbeth cannot govern effectively, being an illegitimate and murderous ruler: “those he commands move only in command./ Nothing in love” his troops desert him or fail to fight with conviction.

Furthermore, in ruling Scotland the Macbeths inspire not only fear and hatred in others, but also experience fearful anxiety themselves. After the murder. Lady Macbeth’s first line. "I am afraid” . anticipates Macbeth’s: "I am afraid to think what I have done" . Macbeth later confesses “fears in Banquo" . he and Lady Macbeth “eat [their] meal in fear". and he suffers, as he claims, the "initiate fear" of the novice to murder. Only the witches can set his “fear aright". The fear Macbeth inspires in others offers him little repose, instead infecting his experience of his own rule from the moment he plots it.

The earliest Macbeth movies were too brief to convey anything but simple villainy; Attempts in America [Death Scene from Macbeth in 1905 from American Mutoscope and Biograph Company}, Italy (Macbeth in 1909 by Mario Caserini lor Cines of Rome), and France (Macbeth in 1910, Calmettes of the Comédie-Française) were brief, ranging between two and fifteen minutes. Their primary interest is historical rather than aesthetic, featuring primitively staged action scenes and histrionic acting. A more ambitious Macbeth was produced in Germany in 1913, directed by Ludwig Landmann and running a full forty-seven minutes. This was a key precursor to feature films as we know them. Unfortunately, the film remains lost.

Also missing is the version produced by D. W. Griffith in America in 1916, immediately following the release of his landmark Birth of a Nation. As Griffith was absorbed with the creation of his immense Intolerance, the impressario allowed john Emerson to direct Sir Herbert Tree as Macbeth. This marks a notable early appearance by an acclaimed actor in the still-déclassé medium of motion pictures. Griffith's own cinematic pleas against social disorder as well as his love of threatened characters in an epic scope made him a prime candidate to bring Shakespeare to the screen. The two artists were both complimentary in conservatorism of philosophy and originality of approach.

There could be no greater contrast to the Welles Macbeth than the one directed by George Schaefer in 196L It was originally broadcast on television (NBC; Sunday, November 20, 1960) anti then received limited theatrical release, Schaefer's Macbeth rates as one of the earliest madc-for-TV movies since the networks, which were still providing live and taped plays, wouldn't begin airing features in prime time until the following fall, and original films didn't take their bow until two years later. Indeed, Macbeth was a redux of a live production Schaefer had directed with Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson in 1954.

The film also inadvertently proves that stage acting, even at its best, has little to do with screen performance. Judith Anderson's reputation certainly survives; Iter role as the demented, repressed housekeeper in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca assures her a place in the scene stealer's hall of fame. However, her Lady Macbeth, a role she all but patented onstage, appears even more awkward than Evans's work. Anderson was unable to readjust her stage interpretation for a radically different medium To make matters worse, director Schaefer emphasized close-ups [for the TV broadcast] while also attempt ing to utilize epic film technique (for theatrical release), so Anderson's performance is, like the piece itself, neither fish nor fowl. She appears to be auditioning for the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, it's impossible to distinguish her from the weird sisters. We get no sense of a sensuous, ambitious, confused woman—only a screeching shrew.

The biggest problem derived from the actors' age. Neither Evans (59) nor Anderson (62) was a spring chicken, so they wrongly convinced viewers that Shakespeare's Macbeths were old. That misses the point, as this is a tragedy of middle age. These people are hysterically attempting to break free of a mid-carecr rut and give in to their worst impulses out of desperation. Having addressed the problems of youth in Borneo and Juliet, Shakespeare would deal with old age in King Lear Macbeth ought to be appreciated for what it is: a bridge between those plays, completing the Bard's vision.

Shakespeare's plays are optimistic, sending audiences home with the positive attitude that good will eventually conquer evil. Polanski's films are pessimistic predictions of an ever more ugly universe, and our illusion that forces of darkness have been driven away is a temporary fantasy with which we delude ourselves. Certainly Polanski has as much a right to his vision as Shakespeare his; the issue, though, is whether Polanski had the right to corrupt Shakespeare's philosophy to present his own.

In this context, Macbeth's last lines take on a meaning altogether different from what Shakespeare intended. Life, Macbeth growls, "is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The phrase presages twentieth-century nihilism, but the Rard did nor intend Macbeth as the author's spokesperson. Macbeth's philosophy represents a good man gone bad, projecting his own inner darkness onto the outer world. Macbeth is Shakespeare's foil for Hamlet, who emerges from darkne*ss, deciding to do the right thing, "There's providence in the fall of a sparrow," Hamlet realizes before his final reckoning, at which point he acknowledges that "the rest is silence"—his life after death will be peaceful in a way Macbeth's will not.

Festival in summer 2013, Kenneth Branagh is not working on a movie version, though wanting to make a film of The Winter's Tale at some point. Branagh has held back from filming the Scottish play because a cinematic Macbeth directed by Justin Kurzef is due for release in 2015, Michael Fassbender playing Macbeth and Marion Cotihard Lady Macbeth. Kurzel's Macbeth has been shot on location in England and Scotland and is said to feature the original Shakespearean dialogue1 – as if this were an optional extra. We are moving into a period where the appetites of the popular cinema audience are persuading filmmakers to adapt the story of a Shakespeare play for the big screen rather than using Shakespeare's own play text – however cut down

This conjecture may or may not be confirmed by a forthcoming film version of Macbeth from director Vincent Regan, called Enemy of Man. Macbeth is played by Sean Beam who has said, Vincent wants to present the audience with something that's not necessarily very word-heavy Shakespeare, a dark and completely new take on the play/ This worrying description seems confirmed by Regan's stated aim to ‘strip back the dialogue and crank up the action and produce an atmospheric and blood-soaked chiller' That he aims to change Shakespeare's drama into a revenge drama is suggested by Regan's ‘take1 on Macbeth as being the tragedy of a successful childless oouple’(?) whose inner lives' he strongly believes' are tormented in the way he thinks Shakespeare’s was by the death of his young son Hamnet in the 1590s. This fantasy of the origination of Macbeth is very much of the psychological what’s my motivation?' kind, seeming to ignore the play’s real complexities. It remains to be seen how much the action film Enemy of Man will suffer from the ‘stripping-back’ treatment: remove Shakespeare's text and it wili no longer be Shakespeare.

Another Shakespeare movie adaptation for release in 2015 is Michael Almereyda s Cymbeline its trailer shows a fast-moving film severely cutting back its Shakespearean dialogue {as with many adaptations), yet in a way that feels as astutely achieved here as it was in Almereyda's 2000 Hamlet. Described as being ‘in the vein of Sons of Anarchy (the US TV series about a California motorcycle dub] and in the style of [Luhrmann’s] Romeo + Juliet* it tells the gritty story of a take-no-prisoners war between dirty cops and a drug-dealing biker gang'. This description seems very remote from the first and only previous movie version, filmed sedately as a silent in 1913. But when we hear that ‘extortion, betrayal and fiery passions threaten' the criminal empire of a ‘drug kingpin' (Ed Harris), driving him 'to desperate meas-ures\ those who know Shakespeare’s later Jacobean play will be reminded of what is at stake in his dark, complexly plotted and peculiarly passionate drama. Almereyda reworked Hamlet with great filmic invention to a succinct 106 minutes. It will be fascinating to see how effectively he has brought in his version of the even more involved Cymbetine (with Ethan Hawke as Giacomo) at 85 minutes. All of the foregoing suggests a movie industry still wanting to bring Shakespeare’s plays to the big screen. In many ways, Shakespeare as a classic property1 of both popular and arthouse twenty-first-century film entertainment seems to have come of age over the last few years. Even if many of us will be viewing such films at home on video, or streaming them via the internet.

§2. CHARACTERS

The tragedy of Macbeth lists five female characters in the dramatis personae: Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff, a gentlewoman attending Lady Macbeth, Hecate (who is not a character after all) and the three witches, who will only be called by numbers from one to three in the course of the play. The three witches as well as Lady Macduff are flat characters, but they can still tell us something about the Elizabethan reception of women. Yet Macbeth deals with clear cut phenomena like male/female, sacramental/diabolic, familiar/alien, living/dead and reverses them in order to illustrate the state of total chaos, where nothing is but what is not. I will only inquire into the character of Lady Macbeth at this point and may refer to the other characters at a different point. “Everything is but what is not” and "Fair is foul and foul is fair” are the two quotes that best characterize the reversal of order in the tragedy of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth fits into this state of disorder as she does not seem to have typical female traits. After having received a letter informing her about the prophecy that would make her husband king she is without doubt that she has to pour her (evil) spirits into Macbeth's ears6. Immediately after she is informed that the king is due to arrive she lays off the last female traits that remain by begging the spirits to "unsex” her. Yet she does not wish to see the wound her knife makes which might “empower her as a kind of supe-rmale". But she has become the “innocent flower” with “the serpent under it” and recommends her husband to act like that. Unlike Macbeth who rather seems like a henpecked husband she is not only willing to carry out the murder of the king but does also carry out the planning. As it is symbolized by calling the castle “her battlements” she is the person in charge. She is able to manipulate Macbeth and bring him to kill for power.

In 1999, Vodoo version:, Hecate (Mother of the night): Literary scholars surmise that Hecate’s speeches were added to Shakespeare’s manuscript (see the Daileader essay). Because of this, many productions remove, or greatly alter, Hecate’s role: Welles, for example, changed the gender of Hecate to a male character. Freed by this knowledge, we changed Hecate into the story’s narrator. According to the customs of the African Diaspora, the Mother of the Waters is honored between December 21 and January 6, in a ceremony that celebrates the end of the year. The old fetishes are stored away, and the new ones are introduced (Teish 133-35). The synergy between Catholicism and the Vodun is exemplified in New Orleans by the relationship between the Blessed Mary and Cuba’s Yemaya.1 Both are embodied in Hecate, who collects tithes at the crossroads of the old year and the new. In Haiti, she is called Agwe Tawoyo, the Ocean deity, whose roots are in the ceremonies of the Water Spirits, Olokun; in Toga and Ghana, the Mother of the Waters is Mami Wata (Teish 39-42). All these cultures make up the people who gathered in Congo Square in nineteenth-century New Orleans (Jerah Johnson 11-25). The Mother of the Waters is envisioned as a mermaid whose skin is covered with

elaborate chalk white drawings. The white chalk does not depict European skin but rather the pale enrapture of her divine spirit.

The Mambos: Shakespeare’s witches are transformed into three Mambos—daughters of Hecate. One is called to the service of the Mother of the Waters through dreams. Hecate appears in a dream with her snakes (represented by her locks of hair) and calls her daughters to initiation. Female worshipers called Mamisis tend to find prestige through devotion to Mami Wata (Teish 40-42). Their voices represent the winds that carry Hecate through time and space, weaving together the dramatic scenes that support the play’s wordplay. They keep the secrets of the Spirit of the Waters.

Macbeth does badly want to be king, but he also badly wants to avoid any responsibility for what that might take. He secs the Witches as the instruments of Chance (or Fate — the two terms overlap) and hopes that whatever needs to be done to put him on the throne, they will do. This short speech also, then, looks forward to his moment of indecision outside Duncan's bedroom, when he finally accepts that if he does not perform the act of murder, no-one will. Here’s another of the clothing images. Macbeth will not give himself any time at all to become accustomed to his new title (Thane of Cawdor) before he seizes and puts on the larger gannent of kingship. And that larger garment w ill never sit well on him

The next line and a half aren’t as straightforward as they might appear, and have been interpreted differently by different editors They’re best read as if they offer two separate statements (both attempts by Macbeth to make himself feel better about things – he has been deeply disturbed by the Witches’ prophecy):

o ‘Come what come may’: let things happen as they will (Macbeth once more shows his unwillingness to act in his ow n interests), o Time and the hour runs through the roughest day: either

Even the W'orst of days comes to an end (but that doesn’t altogether make sense – this has in some ways been a very good day for him), or

A time and an hour for action will come, nomatter what the difficulties (Macbeth docs within this explanation seem to hold out the possibility that he will lake things into his ow n ands — when the lime is right).

Worthy Macbeth’: Irony of a slightly different kind, not so much dramatic irony (which rests in events and the contradictions between them) as in words (when one thing is said, often in all sincerity, and we the audience know something very different to be the case.

Is Banquo, however, speaking in all sincerity. Is worthy something he knows Macbeth has been in the past but merely hopes he will be from now on? It would have been interesting to hear an aside from Banquo about now Maybe ,, ve stay upon your leisure' has a touch of friendly jest about it — Banquo has earlier commented to Ross and Angus on Macbeth’s preoccuption (line 142) in w hat could have been a lighthearted manner

His comment does at least make Macbeth aw are of how ill-mannered he has been (or how suspicious his behaviour may have seemed) and he hastens to apologise. He was worrying, he says, about ‘Things forgotten \ but that can hardly mean, as some editors suggest, that he has already forgotten what they were and is therefore lying (and revealing his basic dishonesty). We don’t forget things we have been worrying about (‘wrought', line 149, is quite a strong word) a few moments before. It’s more likely that he means ‘things 1 have now laid aside (deliberately forgotten) because I need to give you my full attention. ’ His very formal thanks to them which follow' reinforce this impression that he secs how important it is to behave as normally as possible. Not even Hamlet dominates his play as Macbeth does; he speaks about one third of the text as we have it. Compared to him, the other figures in the drams take on a common grayness, except for Lady Macbeth, and she largely vanishes after the middle of Act III, No Shakespearean protagonist, again not even Hamlet, is revealed to us so inwardly as Macbeth. Shakespeare quite deliberately places us under a very paradoxical stress: we intimately accompany Macbeth in his interior journey, and yet we attempt to refuse all identity with Macbeth; an impossible refusal, since his imagination becomes our own. In Macbeth the tragic tension is always more powerful than in Julius Caesar, gained, too, within a minimum of space either by the most perfect and powerful simplicity, or by the complexity of highly-charged, compressed, and pregnant metaphoric thought. The effects in the Brutus-theme are so much more prolix, and therefore less powerful, especially in the matter of blood-imagery, which I notice later. Both Brutus and Macbeth meditate in solitude concerning the proposed act (I quote only their first words): Brutus. It must be by his death: and for my part/1 know no personal cause to spurn at him. And Macbeth. If it were done, when ’tis done, then Were well It were done quickly. If the assassination Could trammel up the consequence and catch With his surcx'ase success . These exaggerated speeches—tending away from realism to pure poetic, Symbolism, like the storms and strange behaviour of beasts that accompany the central actions—emphasize the essentially chaotic and destructive nature of the first murders. Also after the murder each hero experiences a purely subjective vision of a ghost This suggests the continuance of the divided state of evil: though Brutus may continually refer to his high motives, the Ghost of Caesar introduces himself as 'Thy evil spirit, Brutus5.- The inward division tends to prevent any continued success, Both Brutus and Macbeth fail in their schemes not so much because of outward events and forces, but through the working of that part of their natures which originally forbade murder. Macbeth additional, unnecessary crimes are in reality due to his agonized conscience. Had he from the first been a hardened and callous murderer, had he undertaken the act without any conflict of mind or soul, there was nothing to prevent his establishing himself safely on the throne. Conscience, which had urged him not to murder Duncan, now forces him to murder many others. With Brutus, much the same cause produces the same final result by different means: his conscience, or instinct, or whatever it was which urged him not to assassinate Caesar, tells him not to risk further unnecessary bloodshed, and even to allow Antony’s oration—all in the nature of a peace-offering to his own uneasy conscience. The result in both cases determines the downfall of the hero. Brutus is confronted with a task from which his nature revolts. 1 le, like Macbeth, embarks on a line of action destructive rather than creative; directed against the symbol of established authority; at root, perhaps, selfish. For, though he may tell himself that his ideals force him to a work of secrecy, conspiracy, anti destruction, he is not at peace, lie suffers a state of spiritual or mental division. Iwo impulses diverge: one urges him to conspiracy and murder, the other reminds him of Caesar’s goodness and the normal methods of upright men. He is thus divided—torn between a certain sense of duty and his instinct for peaceful and civilised behaviour. Now his state is very similar to that of Macbeth. Though their motives at first sight appear to be very different, yet in each the resulting disharmony is almost ideiitical in imaginative impact. We should not let our sight of a poetic reality be blurred by consideration of‘causes'. With Macbeth it is almost impossible to fit clear terms of conceptual thought to the motives tangled in his mind or soul. Therein lies the fine truth of the Macbeth conception: a deep, poetic, psychology or metaphysic of the birth of evil. 1 le himself is hopelessly at a loss, and has little idea as to why he is going to murder Duncan, H# tries to fit names to his reasons—‘ambition’, for instance—but this is only a name. The poet’s mind is here at grips with the problem of spiritual evil—the inner state of disintegration, disharmony and fear, from which is horn an act of crime and destruction. And the state of evil endured by Macbeth is less powerfully, but similarly, experienced by Brutus.

CHAPTER III. HENRY V

§1.COMPARATION BETWEEN THE ORIGINAL OPERA AND THE FILM SCRIPT

Shakespeare’s Henry V is one of a number of plays about the English king to appear on the popular stage in the 1580s and 90s. The anonymous Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (printed 1594, though first performed nearly a decade earlier) dealt both with Henry’s youthful wildness in London taverns and his successful reign as king, focusing especially upon victory at Agincourt. The play provided both the structure and selected narrative material for Shakespeare's two Henry IV plays (1596) and Henry V. Pierce Pennilesse (1592) by the writer and pamphleteer Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) includes a comment celebrating earlier dramatic treatments of Henry’s reign: what a glorious thing it is to have Henry the Fifth represented on the stage, leading the French king prisoner, and forcing both him and the Dolphin [Dauphin] to swear fealty'. (Neither the famous Victories nor Shakespeare's play includes such episodes). The diary of theatre manager Philip HensJowe (c, 1555-1616) also mentions a new play about Henry V that appeared in 1595. As James Shapiro notes in his micro-history 1599: A Year in a Life of William Shakespeare (2005), Shakespeare obviously had it in mind to write a play on Henry V's reign from 1596, when he made the decision to stretch the narrative materials found in the Famous Victories over three plays.J Shakespeare promised to return to Henry’s story' in the epilogue to 2 Henry IV: ‘our humble author will continue the story with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katherine of France; where, for anything 1 know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat' (Epilogue, 25-8). But as will be seen in later chapters, critics such as Samuel Johnson and A, C. Bradley were censorious about Shakespeare's very limited treatment of Falstaff in Henry V.

There is one particular military expedition that provides important contextual evidence for dating Henry V. The Chorus to Act five invites the audience to imagine Henry's triumphant return following victory at Agin court:

But now behold,

In the quick forge and working-house of thought, How London doth pour out her citizens.

The Mayor and all his brethren, in best sort,

Like to the senators of th’antiquc Rome With the plebeians swarming at their heels,

Go forth and fetch their conquering Caesar in – As, by a lower but high-loving likelihood,

Were now the General of our gracious Empress – As in good time he may – from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,

How many would die peaceful city quit To welcome him!

The Chorus's allusion thus allows us to date the composition and first performances of Henry V to between late March and late June 1599, when news of Essex's limited achievements in Ireland – which certainly did not warrant such an effulgent comparison – started to reach London, The implications of Shakespeare's controversial analogy between Henry and Essex have often informed historicist criticism of Henry V from the midtwentieth century onwards, as will be examined further in later chapters. The Essex context also affects other areas of scholarship on the play. For example, Gurr identifies how The Mansion of Magnanimitie (1599) by Richard Crompton (c. 1529-99), a potential source for Henry V, recounted a series of historical English victories to provide lessons for the present and concludes with the defeat of the Spanish at Cadiz in 1596 led by Essex.

Umberto Eco, in a more sophisticated attack on Casablanca than the one mounted by Leslie Halliwell, assigns films to a category apart from printed texts. “A perfect movie, since it cannot be reread every time we want, from the point we choose, as happens with a book, remains in our memory as a whole, in the form of a central idea or emotion.” His classification would justify the subjective responses of many critics, making film a matter for memory and emotion and not for scholarly investigation. As Pilkington thinks, that one reason shooting scripts for Oliviers Henry V and Welles’s Chimes at Midnight have hitherto remained unexamined is that such attention to detail has seemed unnecessary to critics who regarded successful films as fortunate accidents and saw even perfect films as indivisible memories, beyond the reach of analysis.

But Eco’s “principles” have already been overtaken by technology. This study sets out to demonstrate that films can be read and reread and that they are subject to the same kind of detailed and accurate examination which has traditionally been given to printed texts. Such serious textual examination of filmed Shakespeare will make it possible for Shakespeare film criticism to move beyond appreciations and reviews to full-scale analysis, including point-by-point comparisons of shooting scripts and release scripts and examinations of the expressed intentions of directors and actors. Finally, it should be possible in the case of the six filmscripts under consideration to trace the evolution of their central interpretations.

As indicated at the close of Henry IV, Part 2, King Henry V is planning on entering into a war with France over some disputed lands and titles. He has instructed the Archbishop to be sure that his claims arc valid. When the play opens, the Archbishop explains to his Bishop how he plans to convince the king to enter into a war with France, thus protecting the church's property, which might otherwise be placed in the hands of the state rather than left in the church’s control. After the king is convinced of the v alidity of his claims, an ambassador from France arrives with a rejection of the claims; he also delivers an insulting barrel of tennis balls from the French Dauphin, who still considers King Henry to be the silly and rowdy Prince Hal.

As they arc on the verge of leav ing for France, King Henry is lending to some business—releasing a prisoner for a minor offense—and then he turns to three of his trusted advisors and has them executed for conspiring with the French to assassinate him. Meanwhile, in the French court, no one seems to take I lenry seriously. The entire court is contemptuous of his claims and of his abilities. They arc so overconfident that they do not send help to the town of Harllcur, which Henry easily conquers. Alter this victory, Henry gives strict instructions that all the citizens are to be treated with mercy and that his soldiers arc not to loot, rob, or insult the nativ e population. How ever, a companion from Hal’s youth, Bardolph, an inveterate thief, steals a small communion plate, and, as a result, he is executed.

In spite of the English victory, the French still do not express concern, even though the Princess Katharine is involved; if Henry is v ictorious, she will become Queen of England; as a result, she feels the necessity to learn the English language, and so she begins taking instructions in that language.

Meanwhile, the reports that the English arc sick and tattered allow the French to prepare for the battle with complete confidence, especially since they outnumber the English 60,(KM) to 12,(XX) troops.

Just before the crucial Baltic of Agincourt, an emissary once again approaches King He my with demands that he immediately surrender his person. His demands are rejected, and King Henry, in a patriotic speech, urges his troops to fight for “Harry, England, and St. George.” By miraculous means, the English are v ictorious and the French arc shamed into submission. At the end of the play . King Henry’s demands are granted, and he is seen wooing and winning Princess Katharine as his future queen.

Shakespeare coined many popular phrases thal arc still commonly used today. Here arc some examples of Shakespeare’s most familiar quotes from Henry V. You just might be surprised to learn of all the everyday' sayings that originally came from Shakespeare.

“O for a Muse of lire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention!” (Prologue)

"Men of few words arc the best men." (Act III, Scene 2)

"Even at the turning o’ the tide.” (Act II, Scene 3)

“As cold as any stone.” (Act II, Scene 3)

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

Or close the « all up with our English dead!

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility;

But when the blast of war blows in our cars.

Then imitate the action of the tiger:

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. (Act III, Scene I)

“I see you stand like grey hounds in the slips.

Straining upon the start.” (Act III, Scene I)

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” (Act IV, Scene 3)

Adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays and other works have been featured in nearly 500 films and/or videos w orld-w ide. That makes Shakespeare the most filmed playw right of all time. Here are the best, and most noteworthy, versions of Henry V that can help you study and better understand the play.

The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France

1944

Director: Laurence Olivier

Olivier directs and plays the lead in this chronicle of the life of Henry V. The film w as intended as a morale booster for British troops during World War II and focuses on Henry's military leadership skills, which ultimately resulted in Britain's victory over the French at Agincourt in 1415.

Henry V

1989

Director: Kenneth Branagh Rated:

This is Branagh's directorial debut, and he also stars in the title role. The lilm won the Acadcnn Award for Best Costume Design and also garnered Best Actor and Best Director nominations. It’s a war movie, with sort of a humanist (anti-war?) sentiment. This version features the memorable call to arms speech that ends with, “We few, we happy few, w e band of brothers.”

Since Henry V is the last play of Shakespeare’s tetralogy, the earlier three plays shed some light upon the present play. The Elizabethan audiences which Shakespeare was writing for would hav e known these earlier plays and, of course, they would have been familiar w ith many of the characters in this play. Therefore, since Henry Vis the play which shows King Henry V as the ideal Christian monarch, the earlier plays leading up to this rigurc of perfection arc enlightening. For example, w hen Henry prays just before the Battle of Agincourt, he says:

Not to-day, O Lord.

O, not to-day, think not upon the fault

My father made in compassing the crown.

(I V.i.31()—12)

The script is referring to the manner in which his father, Henry IV, became king. The fault referred to is the deposition and murder of Richard II, a theme w hich inns throughout all of the plays in this tetralogy. Henry V, therefore, is the Christian king w ho wears a crown gotten by questionable means. Furthermore, characters like Bardolph and Pistol and Hostess Quickly had appeared in some of these earlier plays, and there arc man) references to the famous Sir John Falstalf, one of Shakespeare’s greatest comic creations. Therefore, a brief know ledge of the earlier plays w ill clearly enhance the reading, enjoyment, and understanding of Henry V.

The sudden contemporary renaissance in filmed Shakespeare is British-led. hut by 1995 even British casting practices had changed to reflect the exigencies of market capitalism. Following in the direction that Zeffirelli had been the first to seize upon, the new British productions were now promoting their global commercialitv through a mixture of what has been derisively referred to as a cast made up of “British actors” and “American stars.” Branagh's 1989 Henry l7 had been filmed with a British cast. But by the time of Mitch Ado About Nothing, the British principals were surrounded by American pop film stars that made brothers out of America’s most popular hlock actor (Denzel Washington) and America’s most popular teen heart-throb (Keanu Reeves). There were, admittedly, some problems with casting Americans: in Branagh’s Much Ado, Don John’s line about Hero, “She’s a very forward March chick,” was cut for fear that Keanu Reeves would appear to be reverting to American slang rather than reciting Shakespeare. And as Alan Bennett, who, when making a film of his play The Madness of George ill, had to retitle it as The Madness of King George because American backers feared their audiences would think they had missed the first two parts, ruefully comments: “apparently,, .there were many moviegoers who came away from Branagh’s film of Henry V wishing they had seen its lour predecessors” (1995: xix), Yet the trend of using American stars continues, sometimes w ith particularly fortuitous implications that suggested new levels of narrative. In a production released in 1995, the presence of American actors Annette Bening and Robert Downey, Jr in Richard Loncraine’s World War I l-era rewrite of Richard If! provided a fitting way for the film to mark Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth, and her brother. Lord Rivers, as distinctive outsiders to the royal family, and, through dress and hair-style, encourage visual allusions that suggested Bcning-cum-Elizabcth, outsider wife to Edward IV, as that famous American divorcee and outsider wile to another King Edward, Wallis Simpson. By 1995 Branagh, too, had gone American: Hollywood’s Lawrence Fishbume played the Noble Moor to Branagh’s iago; and in 1990 Branagh’s Hamlet included such box office draws as Billy Crystal (first gravedigger), Robin Williams (Osrie), Charlton Heston (the Player King), and Jack Lemmon (Marcellus). Yielding to the implicit logic of such casting, Baz Luhnnann simply invited the stars of his Romeo and Juliet '‘to speak the famous linos in their own American accent."11

Jn what seems relatively new to British filmed Shakespeare (albeit certainly not to stayed productions), the plays were also being cut loose from the tradition of the pseudo-“Elizabethan’* setting and relocated in the viewer's own milieu: a 1991 British Film of As You Like It featured Rosalind in lev is, and 1995 saw Britain rchistoricizing its own history by taking Richard III into the modernized territory that 1980s stage productions of the histories (especially the English Shakespeare Company’s “Wars of the Roses” extravaganza) had shown to be highly viable. Thus, shortly after Great Britain solemnly celebrated the fifty-year anniversary of the end of World War II, Richard III replayed that history by re inscribing it into the cycle of dark days that had eventually led to the Tudor triumph, British mythology now promising an Elizabeth for an Elizabeth . By the end of 1995, it was increasingly clear that the trademarks of pop culture were determining the productions of not only such well-known pOpularizers as Zeffirelli, but had caught up with the Shakespeare industry at large and were putting it into the fast lane.

§2. CHARACTERS

Catherine  –  The daughter of the king of France. Catherine is eventually married off to King Henry in order to cement the peace between England and France. She speaks little English. Hostess  –  The keeper of the Boar’s Head Tavern in London. Mistress Quickly, as she is also known, is married to Pistol. We hear news of her death from venereal disease in Act V, scene i. Sir John Falstaff –  The closest friend and mentor of the young Henry, back in his wild days. Falstaff doesn’t actually appear in Henry V, but he is a major figure in the Henry IV plays. He is a jovial and frequently drunken old knight, but his heart is broken when Henry breaks his ties with him after becoming king. We hear news of Falstaff’s offstage death in Act II, scenes i and iii. Alice  –  The maid of the French princess Catherine. Alice has spent time in England and teaches Catherine some English, though not very well. Montjoy  –  The French herald, or messenger. Monsieur le Fer –  A French soldier and gentleman who is captured by Pistol at the Battle of Agincourt. French noblemen and military leaders –  The Constable of France, the Duke of Orléans, the Duke of Britain, the Duke of Bourbon, the Earl of Grandpré, Lord Rambures, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Governor of Harfleur are French noblemen and military leaders. Most of them are killed or captured by the English at the Battle of Agincourt, though the Duke of Burgundy survives to help with the peace negotiations between France and England. Like the Dauphin, most of these leaders are more interested in making jokes about the English than in taking them seriously as a fighting force, a tendency that leads to the eventual French defeat at Agincourt. Sir Thomas Erpingham –  A wise, aged veteran of many wars who serves with Henry’s campaign. Captain Gower  –  An army captain and a capable fighter who serves with Henry’s campaign. Captain Fluellen, Captain MacMorris, and Captain Jamy –  The captains of King Henry’s troops from Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, respectively, all of whom have heavy accents reflecting their countries of origin. Fluellen, a close friend of Captain Gower, is the most prominent of the three. His wordiness provides comic relief, but he is also very likable and is an intelligent leader and strategist. Ancient Pistol –  A commoner from London who serves in the war with Henry, and a friend of Nim and Bardolph. Pistol speaks with a blustery and melodramatic poetic diction; he is married to the hostess of the Boar’s Head Tavern in London.

Bardolph –  A commoner from London who serves in the war with Henry, and a friend of Pistol and Nim. Bardolph is a former friend of King Henry from his wild youth. A thief and a coward, Bardolph is hanged in France for looting from the conquered towns in violation of the king’s order. Nim  –  A commoner from London who serves in the war with Henry, and a friend of Pistol and Bardolph. Like Bardolph, Nim is hanged in France for looting from the conquered towns. Boy  –  Formerly in the service of Falstaff, the nameless boy leaves London after his master’s death and goes with Pistol, Nim, and Bardolph to the war in France. The boy is somewhat touchy and embarrassed that his companions are cowardly thieves. Michael Williams, John Bates, and Alexander Court  –  Common soldiers with whom King Henry, disguised, argues the night before the Battle of Agincourt. Though he argues heatedly with Williams, Henry is generally impressed with these men’s intelligence and courage. Chorus –  A single character who introduces each of the play’s five acts. Like the group of singers who comprised the chorus in Greek drama, the Chorus in Henry V functions as a narrator offering commentary on the play’s plot and themes. King Henry V –  The young, recently crowned king of England. Henry is brilliant, focused, fearless, and committed to the responsibilities of kingship. These responsibilities often force him to place his personal feelings second to the needs of the crown. Henry is a brilliant orator who uses his skill to justify his claims and to motivate his troops. Once Henry has resolved to conquer France, he pursues his goal relentlessly to the end. The Dauphin  –  The son of the king of France and heir to the throne (until Henry takes this privilege from him). The Dauphin is a headstrong and overconfident young man, more inclined to mock the English than to make preparations to fight them. He also mocks Henry, making frequent mention of the king’s irresponsible youth. The Dukes of Exeter, Westmorland, Salisbury, and Warwick –  Trusted advisors to King Henry and the leaders of his military. The Duke of Exeter, who is also Henry’s uncle, is entrusted with carrying important messages to the French king. The Dukes of Clarence, Bedford, and Gloucester Henry’s three younger brothers. –  Clarence, Bedford, and Gloucester are noblemen and fighters. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely  –  Wealthy and powerful English clergymen. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely do not go to fight in the war, but their urging and fund-raising are important factors in Henry’s initial decision to invade France. Cambridge, Scrope, and Grey Three conspirators against King Henry.  –  Cambridge, Scrope, and Grey are bribed by French agents to kill Henry before he sets sail for France. Scrope’s betrayal of his king is particularly surprising, as Scrope and Henry are good friends. York and Suffolk –  Two noble cousins who die together at the Battle of Agincourt. The King of France Charles VI. –  A capable leader, Charles does not underestimate King Henry, as his son, the Dauphin, does. Isabel –  The queen of France, married to Charles VI. Isabel does not appear until the final scene (V.ii), in which her daughter, Catherine, is betrothed to King Henry.

The debate over the ‘staying entry’ and its four plays was generated by the question of ‘piracy’ and the so-called ‘bad’ or memorial quartos, the ‘divers stolen and surreptitious copies’ w hich Heminges and Condell deplored in their preface to the Folio in 1623.The ‘staying entry’ has been thought to be part of an attempt to prevent piratical printers from printing unauthorised copies of the plays. This view is complicated by the evidently authorised nature of the copy for the quartos of Much Ado and 2 Henry IV which appeared in the same year. Judging from the texts as printed, the copy for both of them was of a similar character, the authorial drafts given to the company from which the prompt-book and parts were customarily made, similar to most of the copy for the Folio plays, including F Henry V. Evidently the 1600 quartos of Much Ado and 2 Henry IV were not printed from stolen copy. Every Man In, entered on 14 August, was also printed from an ‘authorised’ text in 1601. Of the four marked in the ‘staying entry’, only the 1600 Quarto of Henry stands out as a ‘stolen’ text.

It seems, however, quite likely that the transfer of the Hairy V rights ten days after the ‘staving entry’ was a coincidence. It reads like a regular transfer by a printer who had rights to the play from the previous entry for The Famous Victories in 1594, and who evidently had already obtained and printed Shakespeare’s play before the transfer on 14 August to Pavier. Quite possibly the ‘Henry V' noted in the ‘staying’ memorandum was not the Agincourt play but 2 Hairy IV, which was waiting along with the other plays from the Chamberlain’s for an official entry and subsequent publication. The succinct name ‘HENRY the FFIFT' could have been a summary note of the title taken by the derk from the manuscript’s title-page.1 The published Quarto’s full ride reads: ‘THE/ Second part of Henrie the fourth, continuing to his death,/and coronation of Henrie/ the fift. With the humours of sir John Fit/ stqffe, and snwggcring Pistol' The clowns’ parts would not have supplied a main tide, but the new King I lenry coming at the end of the main ride might. His reading of the entries has some significance for the question of the Stationers’ concern about stolen copy. If the clerk’s note on 4 August about staying the four ‘bookes1 was merely in anticipation of their being subsequently registered for printing for the first time, it is reasonable to assume that the three plays entered in the fortnight that followed, and which were printed in 1600 and 1601, were part of a routine transaction noting plays that had just been released by the Chamberlain’s Men for the press, and which were to be officially entered later. They were not part of any dramatic intervention by the players either to stop publication of the Henry V Quarto or to ensure that the players, rather than Crccdc, profited by the publications, lire text named in the 14 August transfer, ‘The history e of Hen rye the \th w th the battell of Agencourt’, copies the Quarto’s title-page closely, and was almost certainly taken direedy from it, because the btiok was already in print and the transaction w^as merely a routine transfer of the rights. Nonetheless, the copy for the Quarto of Henry i is not likely to have been an 'authorised1 text. It seems to have been made up from memory by two or three of the players, possibly the same players who gave the printers the equally unauthorised Quarto of Meny Wives printed two years later- The concept of 'memorial or 'reported’ texts has been a subject for much debate throughout the twentieth century,2 The debate itself gave rise to the concept of ‘pirated quartos, and the recent questioning of that concept has thrown some doubt on the theory of ‘memorial’ transmission. Despite those doubts, it docs seem almost certain that the copy for Q Henry V was made up by some of the players. What is unclear is why they did it, since the money they would have been paid by the printer would not have been substantial, and the labour of making up the Transcript was not a small one. Doubts over the motive have fed the supposition that it was made first as an acting text, and only handed to the printer subsequently.

Richard himself could not help but appear detached, he understood that Bullingbrooks capacity for what we in our day call “working the crowd” contributed to his success. If we temporarily separate ourselves from the fifteenth century to reflect on recent American elections, we realize how some politicians clearly have this ability, which becomes even more valuable when they run against those who lack it. Like Richard, the latter figures appear unfeeling and thus usually lose, while candidates who can communicate empathy tend to be elected. This empathy need not be genuine, nor does it bear any relation to intellect or ideology Indeed, the ability to make a crowd believe that a candidate sympathizes with their values and problems crosses party lines. To borrow another current sentiment that has been attributed to many: “The most important thing is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’re set" Lest we doubt the wisdom of this cynical expression, why else would contemporary pollsters regularly inquire about which candidate voters prefer as a drinking companion? If we apply such a standard to Shakespeares characters, Ilenry IV would do well, but his son, as wc have already seen, would triumph by a far greater margin. Here is one instance when Shakespeare anticipates the state of current politics with stunning accuracy. Henry IV also possesses another quality necessary for successful governance: severity with his adversaries. When Worcester challenges the Kings reluctance to apportion authority, Henry docs not brook discord: “Worcester, get the gone, for I do see/ Danger and disobedience in thine eye” (I, iii, 15-16). Whatever he owes the men who helped him capture the kingship, I Ienry has no inclination to weaken either himself or the institution. Thus he “meets the sixteenth-century demands of a ruler who can and will exercise his power for the maintenance of unity in his kingdom” .Yet although this expulsion may seem to be a gesture of strength, it also manifests vulnerability. A monarch truly in charge would not need to expel a fractious subordinate. In fact, that subordinate would likely not dare raise his voice. Thus we feel Henry’s position is not secure, and as soon becomes apparent, it never will be. When, however, his son gains the throne, he will crush potential rebellion by exerting not only his father’s harshness, but Hal’s own brand of political practice. The rest of this scene dramatizes growing opposition to Henry from Hotspur, Northumberland, and Worcester. Two moments arc of special interest, first, the three men who in Richard II so despised the King now consider him, in Hotspurs words, “that sweet lovely rose” (I, iii, 175), while Henry himself is belittled, again by Hotspur, as “this thorn, this canker, Bullingbrook” (I, iii, 176). Hotspur will not even grant that the new King warrants his title. Such resentment anticipates how questions of legitimacy will haunt Henry’s reign, an issue that his son will have to address. We also recognize a familiar political pattern. How often citizens expel a hated official, then after the successor proves a disappointment, look back on the previous officeholders tenure with longing for what they imagine was a happier time. The other moment we must consider is Hotspur’s confession of his own relentless ambition:

By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap,

To pluck bright honor from the pale-fac’d moon,

Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fadom-linc could never touch the ground,

And pluck up drowned honor by the locks,

So he that doth redeem her thence might wear Without corrival all her dignities …

(I, iii, 201-207)

Heiny V is a play which portrays a typically English view of heroism and seeks to portray Homy as both warrior and hero; die development of Henry becoming, for Shakespeare, ail apologetic nlmosl, for I he thorougliness of his warfare. The play dramatizes (he maturation of a niler, Irom die begriming when the Chorus describes Henry a.s "the war-like Henry" through introspective utterances where II emy contempilates the harshness of being King, lo the overpowering ruler with a view to taking both die French throne and Katherine.

Henry states that he is "not a tyrant, but a Christian King. ” [Act.1. Scene 2. Line 2. He is the Star of England, an inirospeetive Prince, who develops into the epitome of all Christian Kings; heroic and brine in die lace ol adversity, an ullage ol 1 L'lirv lhat has become extremely popular ill times of war and received criticisms lor over-zealous jingoism. Howeverj tlie horrors ol war are figured in tins play and the heroic image is excdlciidy portrayed, in Act 3 Scene I, where Henry begins, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends once more, or close the wall up with our English dead. "As a call to arms, the speech is an incitement to action, calling on the noblest and worthy of the English army lo imitate the ways of the Tiger and make war on Hardfleur. The battle cry of “cry God for Harry! England and St. George"- Act 3 Scene 1 L34, emphasises the patriotis and rationalistic pride that the English have as they stand firm behind their heroic figure of the king. After Harfleur, Henry walks through the camp incognito, encountering Pistol. Bates, Court and Wiliams, talking to them and learning what they think about the King. Then, in a soliloquy, Henry meditates on the harshness of being a King and commits all his soldiers into God’s hands for the forthcoming battle at Agincourt. His reliance upon God emphasises how the audience si Shakespeare's day would perceive the King as the hero. Curtis Bright, in Critical Quarterly, Volume 33 [1991] slates that a prince should appear a man of compassion, a man with good faith, a man of integrity, a kind and religious man. Henry’s trust in God to win the battle for them helps depict him ns the real hero oi the play. His victory complete, he gains the French throne and the hand of Katherine, a goal which the reader feels he has from the first secene.

CONLUSION/RECOMMENDATIONS

Shakespeare on film as a subject worthy of study has a history almost as long as Shakespeare films themselves do. And it is perhaps appropriate that educational and economic ambition should have joined forces early in the launch of Shakespeare on film as a discipline; it was, after all, just such a cocktail that had given birth to Shakespeare films themselves in the early years of the new medium.

The attempt to describe and evaluate a Shakespeare play ‘as presented in the pictures’ has animated a plentiful supply of critics since 1911. Although largely sidelined by serious criticism before the 1970s, Shakespeare on film has now long been sanctioned as part of the legitimate performance history of a Shakespeare play. As a subject, it has carved out a space for itself both within Shakespeare performance studies as part of the history of the ongoing life of a play, and within film studies as part of the debate about adaptation and the encounter between differing cultural registers. Jacobi’s decision to designate Branagh’s film Hamlet the performance of his generation adds a symbolic layer of legitimacy to the medium as a vehicle for Shakespearean production. Whether on stage or screen, all performances that begin life as a script are acts of recreation. Even when the formal properties of the words remain the same across productions, their meanings may be transformed. Translating a scripted line into a specific performance involves a set of intricate negotiations between the words and the actor, the actor and the production, the production and its audience, the audience and its wider contexts. Performance words, as Feste reminds us, are ‘but a chev’ril glove to a good wit’ capable of being turned inside out in a trice. The mutability of a text’s meanings in performance therefore alerts us to the provisional character of that originating text. It is inherently a document of possibilities that can ambush us anew in performance as iLs multiple points of collaborative interaction come together in ways not before experienced- This book makes it its project to map some of the adjustments and transformations of the meanings of Shakespeare's words, and the adjustments and transformations of the contexts in which they are sited, across cinematic productions.

But the brief is necessarily wider than this, extending to productions that appropriate extra-linguistic material (plots, themes, characters) from Shakespeare's plays while rejecting the language itself- If the meanings of a single line may prove pliably subject to multiple interventions across productions, the meanings of a plot when divorced from the linguistic particularities of its original composition are yet more so. The films considered here include versions of Shakespearean plots reconched in different idiom, different registers, different languages, or even different communicative systems (such as a language of gesture rather than of words). The chapter on "American Shakespearean offshoots’ also considers some films whose points of correspondence with a Shakespeare plot may not necessarily depend upon a conscious strategy on the part of the producers. The films discussed in the pages that follow therefore testify to a wide variety of processes of interpretation, modification, reconception, translation and even accidental collision with Shakespeare plays.

The Shakespeare plays from which the films derive are dynamic, performance-inflected and in many cases surviving in variant textual forms. The source material for the films is therefore far from being a stable given. Since the nature of the engagements between a film and its source may not only be interpretively transcriptive, but also oblique, unpredictable, playful, tangential, parodie and even accidental, what constitutes a ‘Shakespeare filmJ is therefore by no means a self-evident category. It is part of the project of the book to explore ways of demarcating the territory.

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ANNEXES

Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet in the film directed by himself (1996) which received four Academy Award nominations for the 69th Academy Awards included for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

Kate Winslet, as Ophelia

Billy Crystal as the First Gravedigger

Michael Flasbender and Marion Cotillard in 2015 version of Macbeth

Kenneth Branagh in 1989 version of Hamlet