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Claims that reflexive film adaptations are capable of doing more than simply announcing their own constructedness or mimicry of a source text's operation as art holding the mirror up to nature, arguing that such films can also critique and then provide a substitute for the authority and relevance of the source text. Draws on Billy Morrissette's Scotland, PA (q.v.) and Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight (q.v.) to show how both celebrate their ability to surpass their theatrical source texts in the communication of powerful messages.

Compares Orson Welles's adaptation of 1 and 2 Henry IV in Chimes at Midnight (q.v.) to Gus Van Sant's transformation of the same plays in My Own Private Idaho (q.v.), finding that Welles sees Falstaff as both a utopian ideal from a mythic past and a bawdy figure who embodies the grotesque-carnivalesque aesthetic and thereby represents a future-oriented remedy to the realities of market-driven culture, while Van Sant insists upon the impossibility of recovering the utopian past and drains Falstaff's bawdy words of their carnivalesque energy, which prevents the film's Falstaffian politics from appearing to be any sort of guide to a better future.

Deconstructs Hamlet's ontological metaphor "the time is out of joint" to show that Shakespeare implicitly commits to a Kantian conception of time in that Hamlet temporarily identifies with the Ghost's temporal-categorical mind-set but uncharacteristically loses track of time during the prayer and closet scenes. Concludes that Hamlet's identification with the Ghost's categorical sense of what is possible or impossible in accordance with the passage of outer time leads to the prince's inaction.

Applies Martin Heidegger's axiom, "mortals live in the speaking of language," to Shakespeare's use in King Lear of derivatives of the Indo-European root gen- (meaning to "to beget"), which include "kin," "kind," "king," "generation," "gentle," "gender," "native," "nation," and "nature." Argues that this common root serves as an index to two central questions: "Are human beings, by nature, kind?" and "Are the gods kind?"

Through a series of case studies, including an examination of Shakespeare's role in English sonnet tradition, argues the impact of printed English poetry books on early modern poetry.

Adapts John Milton's Paradise Lost as a radio dramatization after examining the history of Shakespeare radio performances.

Arguing that Othello's connection with Heliodorus's Aethiopica "provides us with a more layered and historicized interpretation of" Othello and Desdemona: the former's "nobility and heroic status become more sharply defined, giving us a fuller understanding of the emphasis he places on chastity--both for himself and for Desdemona; the latter is "a courageous, resourceful, witty, and pure heroine . . .--one who lives by the dictates of her conscience [rather] than by the constraints of societal norms."

Examines adaptations of Shakespearean plays in the operatic libretti of Guiseppe Verdi's Macbeth, Otello, and Falstaff, with particular focus on how the triangle between Shakespeare, Verdi, and the librettist, especially in regards to the ways a dramatic crux differs from and relates to an operatic crux.

Utilizing the Nietzschean concept of judicious forgetfulness, Langerian values of comedy, and Andersonian notions of unifying national amnesia, examines the function of forgetfulness in Richard II, 1 and 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

In investigating the distribution and ordering of the speeches in Shakespeare's printed play texts, suggests that speeches can be read as simultaneously performative and authorial artifacts.