Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen, and: Shakespeare's Violated Bodies: Stage and Screen Performance (review)

Adaptations of Shakespeare's works have become the subject of an increasingly eclectic scholarship. Theatre and performance studies, textual studies, cultural studies, and critical theory have all set up camp within the dialogic space created by the translation of Shakespeare from text to stage to film. A recent spate of books and articles scrutinize, analyze, and essentially deconstruct such adaptations on the basis of their degree of canonical conservatism or radical subversion. Therefore, while questions surrounding canonicity and the cultural capital of Shakespeare are particularly relevant, other avenues of interrogation, such as the practical problems and aesthetic impact of adaptation, beg further exploration. Sarah Hatchuel and Pascale Aebischer take up the outcomes and implications of adaptation both inside and outside of canonical issues. Hatchuel briefly outlines the history of revision and rewriting of Shakespeare for the stage, before launching a detailed description and analysis of the difficulties and advantages of filming Shakespeare. Aebischer also details particular examples of cinematic adaptations, but is more specifically interested in the consequences and repercussions of transposing the textual body into the literal or physical body through the use of visual media.

Hatchuel's book is a slim volume divided into six chapters that chart the return to realism in recent film adaptations of Shakespeare. Realism, as the term is employed by Hatchuel, refers not so much to the dramatic content of the films, but rather to the use of elaborate sets, costuming, locations, cinematography, and special effects to produce an implicit reality almost indistinguishable from life. Subdivisions within each chapter further organize more general topics such as "Masking Film Construction" and "Screenplay, Narration and Subtext," providing a carefully determined, linear text that prevents a very large topic from spiraling out of control. Meticulously researched and densely footnoted, Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen relies heavily on a multitude of concrete examples to illustrate each point. At times, Hatchuel's text is nearly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of detailed information pertaining to every aspect of the films she cites, but her lucid language and tight structure maintain an overall clarity. The book includes an extensive bibliography, and the logical arrangement of her subject matter makes it a quick and useful reference for students and academics alike.

Hatchuel's work opens with a historical survey of the drive to create a virtual reality for Shakespeare. Beginning with the bare Elizabethan thrust stage, Hatchuel plots changes in stage design, audience positioning, and technological effects in theatrical productions. She then moves on to the inception of cinema, tracing original single-camera recordings of actual stagings of Shakespeare's plays, early attempts at interpolation and realism, avant-garde representations, and finally the return to realism she finds in the work of directors such as Kenneth Branagh, Baz Luhrmann, and Julie Taymor. This is followed with "From Theatre Showing to Cinema Telling," a chapter that unpacks the narratological issues that arise when translating text or theatre into cinema. This latest medium, Hatchuel argues, merges the showing and telling of a story by its ability to mix narrative devices generally restricted to text with the visual opportunities of performance. For example, the use of flashbacks for moments of retrospection, or of editing to fragment space through time, are difficult to develop on stage but integral to film. How cinema's narrative/visual collaboration transforms audiences' perceptions of Shakespeare's work serves as the crux of the book. In addition, Hatchuel also delves into the realms of semiotics and psychoanalysis as she addresses the aesthetic consequences of directors' strategies in making the transition to film. She clearly outlines each of the concepts and theories, explains their application, and concludes with a chapter of case studies. The cases are organized by theme, rather than by film, employing several adaptations to illustrate such considerations as how fear, power, and wooing transpose to the screen...