...Events, personalities and situations are portrayed in an inevitably ambiguous light to challenge the angle at which the responder views the text from. This allows for an increased understanding of human attitudes and behaviours as depicted in Shakespeare’s play ‘Julius Caesar’ and Phyllida Lloyd’s film ‘The Iron Lady’. The personal and public displays of one’s personality can cause the audience to develop a sense of confliction. In ‘Julius Caesar’, Caesar was portrayed as a man who was loved by the populace of Rome, but the target of jealousy of the conspirators as those who achieve greatness in society become the target of those who are incapable of emulating their achievements. The masses admiration for Caesar was the result of his successes as a politician and military general. This outlook of Caesars popularity with the common people is demonstrated in the opening scene as people made ‘holiday to see Caesar and rejoice in his triumph’ after annihilating the sons of Pompey. The audience is left to question whether or not the conspirators really did have Rome’s best interests at heart. Additionally, a Shakespearian audience would’ve known the military history behind Julius Caesar and sympathised him due to the characters of the play thinking ill of him. Therefore the conspirators had to justify their actions and decision to assassinate Caesar in order for the audience to think righteously of the conspirators. So for the first act of the play, the conspirators employ the use...
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...When we think of legendary playwright William Shakespeare, we would normally think of the many plays he has written and seeing them being performed on stage. But today, long after his time, his work has revolutionized the way we see and learn about Shakespeare by being portrayed in all types of media. Shakespeare is not longer exclusive to the stage; we see his works in modern day media such as film and TV now more than ever. The way we learn about Shakespeare today had to be conformed to the way our modern society has advanced. I will discuss the history of Shakespearean theatre and its rapid diffusion into modern day films as well as the specific elements originated by Shakespeare that are seen in those films. Beginning somewhere around...
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...Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare Pre-reading 1. Vocabulary: Match word and definition. Words that may come in handy. Match the words in the left column with the explanations in the right column, and write the word over the definition. imagery | Word: Simile a comparison using “like” or “as” | soliloquy | Word: Run-on lines which the sense runs from one line to the next; lines which are not end-stopped. | blank verse | Word: Assonance the repetition of vowel sounds | tragic flaw | Word: Imagery language that produces pictures in the imaginations of people reading or listening | scene | Word: Blank verse unrhymed verse written in iambic pentameter | personification | Word: Dramatic irony difference between the situation as known to the audience and as supposed by some or all the characters of the play | stage | Word: Rhyming couplet two lines of verse of equal length that rhyme one after the other | assonance | Word: Dialogue verbal exchange between two or more characters on the stage | antithesis | Word: Iambic Pentameter a ten syllable line of verse with five stresses: di dum, di dum, di dum, di dum, di dum | metaphor | ...
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...has achieved considerable popular and critical success worldwide with his two adaptations of Shakespeare,Maqbool(Macbeth) andOmkara(Othello). Both films are very different from those postcolonial adaptations that tend to "talk back" to Shakespeare; instead, Bhardwaj represents the strain of a transcultural adaptation of Shakespeare whose beginnings lay in the nineteenth-century Parsi theater's first forays into indigenizing Shakespearean plays for local audiences. WithMaqbool, Bhardwaj creates a film that is unique among those few global cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare that have successfully indigenizedMacbethat the level of setting, plot, language, and generic conventionswithout diluting the complex issues raised by Shakespeare's play.Asian Shakespeares on Screen: Two Films in Perspective, special issue, edited by Alexa Huang,Borrowers and Lenders4.2 (Spring/Summer 2009).Vishal Bhardwaj, who began his career as a composer of Bollywood film scores, is now regarded as one of India's most innovative young directors.1Based onMacbeth,Maqboolis Bhardwaj's second film and his first adaptationof a Shakespearean play. Although it is set in themurky underworld of Bombay (Mumbai), featuresBollywood actors, and draws freely upon the conventions of the Bollywood film, the film remains close to Shakespeare. In its extremely complex and successful reworking ofMacbethin a different medium (film), language (Hindi/Urdu), time and setting (present-day Bombay), Bhardwaj's adaptation is comparable...
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...difference in version or perspective they still have the same underlining meaning to the play. There are many similarities and differences referring to the views of the original play written in the 1500’s by “Williams Shakespeare”, ‘Romeo + Juliet’ in 1996 directed by Baz Luhrmann and ‘Gnomeo and Juliet’ in 2011 directed by Kelly Asburgis. All of which became indulged and in love with the breathe taking romantic love story. The original play written in the 1500’s in Verona (cities in Northern Italy) and was based upon an Italian tale translated inverse as “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet” by...
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...Shakespeare: An Observation of Life What is it about Shakespeare’s characters and stories that make us all able to relate in some way or another 400 years after they are written? Maybe it’s his take on inner conflict, or is it how he never portrays a hero as perfect, or a villain as all evil? There is a certain universal truth about the human condition in every story. Whether it is the tragic outcome of unchecked greed and ambition, an unrelenting desire for revenge, or the pursuit of love, his representation of human nature is just as real and as relevant today, as it has been through the centuries. Most of Shakespeare’s characters are complex personalities led into tragedy by their shortcomings (Johnson). Even Shakespeare’s heroes are never just heroes; Shakespeare tends to build his stories through “false heroes” such as Othello, Anthony and Brutus, and “good villains” or “villains with a conscious” like Macbeth (Johnson). It is this type of inner conflict that makes Shakespeare’s stories so insightful and relatable. People love to identify with the hero. They like to think of themselves as heroes in their own lives and the success of a hero in a story makes them feel better about their chances of success in their own lives. While a hero may be the object of any story, a hero is only as great as the obstacle he can overcome (Pattison). The obstacle can be almost anything, it could be a tornado ripping through a city or a killer great white shark, but it is the human villain...
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... or engaging as some of Shakespeare’s other works but it has a strong combination of all the elements that makes Shakespeare stories so unforgettable. It has a standard rom-com plot with a bit of strong drama and meditations on nihilism, shame, and honor that keeps your engagement. It has memorable characters across the board as well as some of the best Shakespearean language and quotes of all of his plays. It’s also a hilarious play with some truly fantastic banter and humorous slapstick moments and in my honest opinion has the best Shakespearean romance in all of his plays in the form of the older couple Beatrice and...
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...pictures became commercial, the play has been incorporated into many films throughout the century. Films such as Franco Zeffirelli's “Romeo and Juliet” follow the traditional route of attempting to create a carbon copy of the play, but instead is in film. Many films of the play attempt to stick extremely close to the text written by Shakespeare, through both dialogue and setting. There is one movie, however, that is different from all the other movies, is Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet,” set in a modern 1990s city named Verona. The atmosphere Baz Luhrmann...
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...The notion that the works of Shakespeare are still relevant to modern audiences is put to the test in Andy Fickman’s 2006 film, She’s the Man. Amanda Bynes plays the lead role of Viola in this present-day adaptation of the seventeenth-century Shakespearean play Twelfth Night. Similar to most adaptations of previous works, the film retains certain elements from the original narrative while introducing elements to present the story in a new way. Most of the characters from Twelfth Night are represented in She’s the Man. Additionally, the focus on humor and commentary on gender stereotypes remain constant between the two works. Despite retaining these core aspects, She’s the Man takes questionable measures in an attempt to appeal to younger audiences and loses a lot of its meaning along the way. While it is a good idea in theory, the fumbled execution of She’s the Man causes it to horribly miss the mark as an adaption to Twelfth Night....
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...Shakespeare’s ‘King Richard Third’ and Al Pacino’s docudrama ‘Looking For Richard’, where composers portray, through literary and film techniques, texts which reveal to their respective audiences valuable insights into their differing contexts. ‘Looking For Richard’ is based on ‘King Richard Third’ and adapts Shakespeare’s values to a modern context. Exploration of connections between the texts enhances the understanding of the values and contexts of each text. Connections enhances context, character and perspective as these values intensify connections. Through exploring context and character connections between texts, new perspectives of each text are possible, creating textual integrity. Richard Third - Context Richard Third was written to a superstitious Elizabethan audience. It was written as pro-Tudor propaganda, whereby the representation of Richard as a sly and deformed character perpetuates the Tudor Myth, within the context of the War of the Roses. Richard exudes traits of a Machiavellian villain, with imagery exaggerating Richard as a “Deformed, unfinished” man who was “Sent before his time” in order to maintain his discontent. Furthermore, Richards evil characterization and relentless pursuit of power is highlighted to his audience through his opening soliloquy “since I can not prove to be a lover….. I am determined to prove a villain.” Shakespeare cleverly depicts the association between evil ones and lust for power in such a context that is appropriate to his audience...
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...Shakespeare himself once described the state of humanity, “Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” He applied this profound observation to the characters of his play Othello, the story of an interracial marriage destroyed by manipulation. In this tragedy, the title character Othello falls from his status as a respected, even glorified, leader to an incredulous murderer, while his “friend” Iago thrives on Othello’s downfall. Shakespeare’s original script illustrates Othello’s vulnerability and destruction quite obviously, while more modern interpretations take a vaguer approach. The 1995 feature film Othello and the video adaption of Verdi’s opera Otello both serve as prime examples of how Othello’s demise can be interpreted, and present all characters in varying light. Between these three versions of Shakespeare’s play, the original work presents Othello’s change most clearly. In it, Othello’s transition from “good” to “bad” is very apparent. Shakespeare portrays Othello as a simplified human, perhaps to make him more relatable in vagueness, and in so doing makes his deterioration obvious. At the beginning of the play, the Duke addresses Othello as “Valiant Othello,” and values his advice on political matters (1.3.50). At this time, Othello (though disrespected on the issue of race) is a prized presence in his country and among his peers. His bravery is matched by his character, as he loves his wife and “puts [his] life upon her faith!” (1.3.293). He represents the...
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...Brilliant! Kenneth Branagh's version of the timeless William Shakespeare classic is a great rendition of the film, making it accessible to everyone, even those who do not like Shakespeare. Let me first say that I am a great fan of Shakespeare's works. In college I was an English literature major, with a minor in theater, and so Shakespeare is found in both. Theater people state that Shakespeare was never literature at all, which in the purpose of the plays is true, however because of the prose that he wrote in is a poetic form, he is literature as well. Whatever you do, never get in between two people arguing this point, your head might blow up! Reading the comments on this page, the basic attack on this movie is that Branagh cuts lines and shaved parts. Yes, of course he did. Nothing is sacred, not even the works of Shakespeare, people. I myself was in a Shakespeare play, and over half the script was cut from it. With a Shakespeare play, the question is what to cut. If this play had been presented in it's entirety, it would have been close to five hours long. And today's movie audience just does not have that kind of patience. "Titanic" was stretching it a little, in terms of time. Shakespeare's original audience would have had no problem, because they...
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...was Branagh’s second attempt at turning a Shakespearian classic into a box office phenomenon. Brannagh first adapted a Shakespearian play in 1989 with Henry V. “Branagh's "Henry V" emerges from the darkness with the rip and sputter of a struck match. It's a magnificent beginning and a startling metaphor -- an inspired equivalent for Shakespeare's "muse of fire" -- and the first stroke of brilliance in this audacious, resonant, passionate film” … Well that’s what Hal Hinson of the Washington Post thought anyway. Some might say that Brannagh therefore had a lot to live up to with Much Ado, his second Shakespeare adaptation. Do I think the film lived up to the expectations? Well I guess that depends upon your motives for watching, for fun? Or like me in an attempt to understand the complicating language and humour found within Much Ado, if the latter sigh no more students, Branagh’s film makes the understanding of Much Ado far easier. If you wanted a nice night in with a film, however, under no circumstance would I recommend this film, plagued with wooden acting, confusing, casting and more over a boring, predictable and somewhat unbelievable plot. Brannaghh’s decision to cast Denzel Washington as Don Pedro, the heroic, noble fighter is somewhat bewildering, considering traditional audiences’ connotations of a black man; however as a contemporary audience we are able to look beyond the colour of Don Pedro’s skin. I however was unable to look beyond Washington’s poor, unconvincing...
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...Essay: What atmosphere does Kenneth Branagh create at the start of his film version of much ado about nothing and where in the play is the source of his ideas? In the act 1 of the scene 1 of much ado about nothing by William Shakespeare, a messenger arrives in the Italian town of Messina, with a letter that informs the kindly Leonato that he will welcome to Messina some soldier friends who are coming from a victorious battle. These friends are Don Pedro of Aragon, a nobleman, and Claudio, a warrior. Hero, Leonato’s daughter and Beatrice, her cousin, accompany him. Beatrice and another soldier of Don Pedro’s army, Signor Benedick, are in a “merry war” but they never saw each other. Beatrice cleverly mocks and insults Benedick. There are no stage directions so this leaves the stage director lot of freedom to achieve the adaptation. The opening of the film version isn’t the same as the book version; the film starts with a poem recited by Beatrice, but Shakespeare original version starts directly with the messenger that arrives. Firstly, in the film adaptation of much ado about nothing by William Shakespeare, at the beginning, Kenneth Branagh creates conviviality and a merry atmosphere that isn’t really described in the play thanks to: - The landscape and the climate, the bright light of the sun. They live in Messina, in Sicily, and Sicily is known for the hot climate. After the poem of Beatrice, at the beginning, we see a painting of Messina; it shows that Messina is picturesque...
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...The Anti-Stratfordian Movement Interestingly, there are many people who believe that Shakespeare was a fraud. In fact, there was a movie produced in 2011, titled Anonymous, directed by Roland Emmerich, which illustrated a plausible conspiracy. Besides that, there have been additional theories as to who the works really belonged to, with candidates including: Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby. The most widely accepted possible author is Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Because he occupied a high social rank, he could not openly broadcast his plays as his own, as playwrights were considered lowly jobs. Adding to the evidence is the fact that Shakespeare’s...
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