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10 - Screening Shakespearean Fantasy and Romance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest

from Part II - Genres and Plays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2020

Russell Jackson
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Summary

This chapter explores representations of fantasy and romance in Anglo-American screen productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. It is particularly concerned with how filmmakers of these plays make the fantastical and the romantic believable yet sufficiently otherworldly. Films of A Midsummer Night’s Dream discussed include those by directors Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle (1935), Peter Hall (1968), Adrian Noble (1996), and Michael Hoffman (1999). Each uses numerous elements from the cinematic toolbox to create plausible versions of Shakespeare’s faerie world. Films of The Tempest considered include those by Derek Jarman (1979) and Julie Taymor (2010). Airy spirit that he is, Ariel in The Tempest is kin to the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Thus directors of The Tempest are faced with similar challenges of crafting verisimilitude as their counterparts face working on A Midsummer Night’s Dream; each meets those challenges with their idiosyncratic aplomb that does justice to Shakespeare.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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