Shakespeare Adapted

Course content

Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted into other media of expression since the Renaissance. Even contemporary stagings can be read as undergoing processes of adaptation, transforming written scripts into multimedial stage events. As Linda Hutcheon observes, adaptations are acts of interpretation (cf. 84). Adapters are consumers and creators at the same time, whose readings of the respective (Shakespearean) works are the inspiration for new autonomous creations, reflecting not only the playfulness of interpretation but also that of historical and medial contextualization.
In this seminar we will discuss adaptations of several Shakespeare plays and sonnets in a wide range of medial forms, ranging from films, (web-)series, musical- and dance versions to video- and board games, as well as AI experiments. Our examples can also include (meta-)fictional constructions of William Shakespeare’s biography and Renaissance stage conventions in films such as John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love (1998), Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous (2011), or Jessica Swale’s multimodal play All’s Will that Ends Will (2014). A final selection of examples will be agreed upon together with the course in the first weeks of the term. Please get informed about Shakespeare’s life and times, and (re-)read his A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, as well as Hamlet before the term.