Julius Caesar • 2013 - Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Additional adaptations of plot, characters and setting include four plays in the BBC series, entitled Shakespeare Re-Told
(2005): Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A second type
of adaptation shifts the plot and characters to another genre, such as the musical (West Side Story/Romeo and Juliet or
Kiss Me Kate/The Taming of the Shrew), science fiction (Forbidden Plant/The Tempest) or the Western (Broken Lance/
King Lear). Royal Deceit (aka Prince of Jutland, 1994) tells the story of the “historical” Prince Hamlet using Danish source
material to differentiate the story from Shakespeare’s approach. Akira Kursosawa produced the best-known adaptations of
Shakespeare’s plays placing them in a different cultural context with his films Throne of Blood (1957) based on Macbeth
and Ran (1985) based on King Lear. Soviet filmmaker Grigori Kozintsev adapted both Hamlet (1964) and King Lear (1991),
which have been restored and released recently on DVD. For film historians and real curiosity seekers, a collection of adaptations,
which run from a few minutes to over an hour, showcase the earliest eras of cinema, entitled Silent Shakespeare.
Sharing these adaptations, in part or in full, can facilitate the discussion of the relevance of Shakespeare’s themes, conflicts
and characters across time, cultures, and cinematic traditions.
FILMS CAN BE USED AFTER READING...
…for culminating projects and summative assessment
Students can successfully engage in their own film production as a collaborative project. A movie trailer can tout
an imagined film adaptation of the play they have just studied. The necessary steps involved can be found in
Lesson Plans for Creating Media-Rich Classrooms (NCTE 2007), which includes Scott Williams’s lesson, “Turning
Text into Movie Trailers: The Romeo and Juliet iMovie Experience.” Creating a trailer requires that students: first focus
on the essential elements of plot, character and theme in order to convey excitement; and second, develop an imagined
version in a highly condensed and persuasive form, which comes to life in a minute or two.
TERMS TO EXAMINE THE PAGE-TO-SCREEN PROCESS
(adapted from , ed. James Naremore)
SHAKESPEARE ON FILM
Fidelity Much discussion in film adaptation criticism focuses on how faithful a film is to the source material. Obviously,
film and literature use very different narrative strategies and tools of composition. A fruitful way to have students approach the
question of fidelity is to ask them to list the scenes, characters, motifs, and symbols that are essential to telling the story of the
source text. Then as they watch a film adaptation, they can keep track of how those elements are handled by the film version.
Film as Digest This concept acknowledges that the written text is far more detailed and comprehensive in its ability
to set a scene, develop a character, reveal a narrative point of view, or create a symbol. Film works best in developing
plot and showing action.
Condensation Due to the “film as digest” phenomenon, characters and events need to be collapsed or composited
in order to fit the limitations and conventions of the film adaptation. Students can explore this term by determining which
characters can be combined based on their common functions in the text.
Immediacy Viewing a film is a far more “immediate” experience cognitively than reading a book. We decode
visual images much faster and more readily than the printed word.
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