Shakespeare in Contemporary Movies
In the middle of Looking for Richard, Al Pacino's documentary about making Richard III and bringing Shakespeare to the people, there is a moment which illuminates the relationship of scholarship, Shakespeare and popular culture. The director is ranting at Pacino for offering (threatening?) to bring a Shakespearean scholar into the film:
You said you were going to find a scholar to speak directly into the camera and explain what really went down and I'm telling you that is ridiculous, that you know more about Richard III than any fucking scholar at Columbia or Harvard.
Pacino tries to calm his friend down by pointing out that everyone, even a scholar, is entitled to an opinion about Shakespeare and that is the point of the film, to collect all opinions. In response, the director, intensely frustrated, explodes, "but why does he get to speak directly to the camera!?"
If Shakespeare has become a secular bible for contemporary America, then the scholars, at Harvard, Columbia, or anywhere else, are the priests who interpret the holy writ for the uneducated masses. When academics insist that Shakespeare be read without "translation" into modern English, they do so because they believe that a great part of the value lies in the language. But America is a (largely) Protestant country and the masses have long since rebelled against the authority of priests and their interpretations of sacred texts. Shakespeare is respected not just as literature but as a repository of great truths; at the same time, people often mistrust and reject him as too "upper-class."
Pacino does eventually allow a scholar to speak directly to the camera, but this serves only to undercut his autho...
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...est. In each case (and especially in Renaissance Man), what those who use Shakespeare gain is just a way to fit into the world more comfortably. And in Dead Poets Society, Shakespeare is seen as creating a split too wide to be healed, leading to suicide. But even in other cases, the fragmented text is a way into the world of power and privilege, not a radical reordering of that world. Instead, popular culture’s freeing of Shakespeare results only in the individual readers agreeing to take over the task of policing socially acceptable readings and uses of the secular bible.
Works cited
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Farrar, 1972.
Burt, Richard. "The Love that Dare Not Speak Shakespeare’s Name: New Shakesqueer Cinema" in Shakespeare the Movie. Ed. Lynda E. Boose and Richard Burt. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. 240-268.
Shakespeare’s portrayal of power reflects the conflicting influences of Medieval Morality plays and Renaissance literature during the Tudor period, demonstrating that the text is a reflection of contextual beliefs. The Third Citizen’s submission to a monotheistic deity in the pathetic fallacy of “The water swells before a boisterous storm – but leaves it all to God” qualifies the theological determinism of power due to the rise of Calvinism. Pacino embodies Richard’s desire for royalty in LFR through the emphasis on celebrity culture, as he is determined to film himself in close-up, which although emphasizes the importance of Pacino, leaves out the broader scene. Soliloquies are substituted with breaches in the fourth wall, and his metatheatrical aside to the audience “I love the silence. whatever I’m saying, I know Shakespeare said it”, subverts the cultural boundaries which, deter contemporary American actors from performing Shakespeare....
Wilkie, Brian and James Hurt. “Shakespeare.” Literature of the Western World. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992.
Vickers, Brian. 1993. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Vickers, Brian. 1993. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Dutton, R., & Howard, J.E. (2003). A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works.(p. 9) Maiden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.
Cohen, Walter, J.E. Howard, K. Eisaman Maus. The Norton Shakespeare. Vol. 2 Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. New York, London. 2008. ISBN 978-0-393-92991-1
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William Shakespeare has provided some of the most brilliant plays to ever be performed on the stage. He is also the author of numerous sonnets and poems, but he is best known for his plays such as Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet. In this essay I would like to discuss the play and movie, "Romeo and Juliet", and also the movie, Shakespeare in Love.
Knight,G.Wilson. “The Shakespearean Superman: An essay on The Tempest.” The Crown of life: Essays in Interpretation of Shakespeare’s Final Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947. 203-255
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