Search & Browse

Explores the concept of using "metaphorical Rorschach test" as tool for historicization of Othello's many colors. Argues that, although scholarship has revealed how Othello’s skin color serves as barometer for racial attitudes in various periods, not enough attention has been paid to ways playtext's transformation parallels ratification of racial laws in various eras and locations, specifically Jacobean England, Antebellum America, and Imperial Germany, where racial legislation colored audience interpretations of "the Moor." English summary, 280.

Proposes that both Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost and Margaret Cavendish’s Convent of Pleasure respond to virulent plague outbreaks which immediately preceded their depictions of single-sex cloistering and also engage with contemporaneous debates around efficacy of household quarantine as public health response. Argues Shakespeare’s play offers defense of public theater in face of quarantine restrictions that shut down the public playhouses, and argues Cavendish’s work repurposes Shakespeare’s portrayal of infection risk in public theatre for closet drama environment.

Reads Julius Caesar’s account of friendship as illumination of Shakespeare’s broader communitarian political attitudes. Argues that the quarrel and reconciliation scene between Brutus and Cassius sheds new light on Shakespeare’s response to two classical sources: Cicero’s De Amicitia and Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulius, by showing how Brutus and Cassius settle their differences while refusing to believe that the enemy is always occulted within the friend. Concludes that, while play demonstrates how friendship may become serviceable to ambitions and held in bad faith in political life, it may also promote commonalty and reconciliation, though tragedy of play lies in loss of this potential. English summary, 403.

Written by Tom Gustafson and Cory James Krueckeberg. Cinematography by Kira Kelly. Original music by Jessica Fogle. Art direction by Vanessa Conway. 

Film centered on bullied gay student at all-boys school who uses magical flower derived from Midsummer Night's Dream to make community members gay and find love interest. With Tanner Cohen, Wendy Robie, Judy McLane, Zelda Williams, Jill Larson, Ricky Goldman, Nathaniel David Becker, Christian Stolte, and David Darlow.

Contends that surprisingly few films can be considered both queer and Shakespearean, in that few films adapted from Shakespeare plays feature queer characters and meaningfully engage with queer issues. Considers three well-known Shakespeare adaptations: Derek Jarman’s Tempest (1979), Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (1991), and Richard Loncraine’s Richard III (1995), as well as two lesser-known films: Tom Gustafson’s Were the World Mine (2008) and Allen Brown’s Private Romeo (2011), but concludes that these adaptations fall short of fulfilling all of aspects of queer Shakespeare film.

Situates Olivier’s Henry V (1944) within history of media, rather than history of Shakespeare adaptation. Illustrates how film projects not only triumph of England (and its allies) in World War II, but also film genre's triumph over theater and other artistic forms. Demonstrates that Olivier’s movie reveals intermediality at heart of every film, as it captures, encapsulates, and absorbs accumulated media history and its associated medial constraints and possibilities.

Analyzes two indigenized adaptations of Romeo & Juliet in Hindi cinema that play out Shakespeare’s tragedy on foundations of two post-colonial issues of Indian nation-state: linguistic animosity and territorial power dynamics. Shows that films Ek Duuje Ke Liye (Made for Each Other, 1981, q.v.) and Goliyon ki Raasleela: Ram-leela (A Dance of Bullets: Ramleela, 2013, q.v.) manifest their cultural rootedness in “regional” embodiments as well as propagation of pan-Indian regional (rather than national) identity, despite being made in mainstream Hindi industry.

Addresses Macbeth’s own childlessness as factor contributing to his decision to murder Duncan in both Shakespeare’s play and Kurzel’s adaptation. Contends that film gives Macbeth a child who dies, which shapes Shakespeare’s tragedy into story that focuses on power’s connection to patriarchal succession. Concludes that Kurzel’s interpretation throws light back upon overlooked reading of play, whereby Macbeth’s regicide is motivated by desire for male heir.

Contextualizes Shakespeare's use of unrhymed iambic pentameter in the broader history of early modern blank verse, starting with early sixteenth century and comparing Shakespeare's use of blank verse with that of his dramatic and poetic contemporaries. Connects blank verse to theatrical, literary and social aspects of Shakespearean drama.

Argues early modern theatre engaged its audiences by "actively and repeatedly entangling its spectators in uncertainty." Explores indeterminacy of theatrical death through figure of stage corpses (seemingly lifeless but holding possibility of reanimation), through reading of 1 Henry IV and King Lear. Explains how history plays such as Richard II troubled accepted notions of historical past.