Ramona Wray

Shakespeare on Film in the New Millennium

This essay offers an appraisal of work on Shakespeare and film in the new millennium, identifying the chief areas of concern and modes of approach while also making some tentative suggestions for future explorations. Criticism on Shakespeare and film has, since the early 1990s, rapidly established itself as an industry and, in the post-2000 period, the volume and pace of publication show no signs of abating. Rarely does an early modern conference unfold without at least one dedicated Shakespeare/film session; conferences tailored to individual Shakespeare plays on film have proliferated; and essays and chapters on Shakespeare and film are a norm in thematically angled larger studies. In addition to a plethora of books, collections and articles, there have been, in the wake of the millennium, numerous journal issues dedicated to the theme (in Colby Quarterly, The European English Messenger, Literature/Film Quarterly, Shakespeare Quarterly and elsewhere), while related journals, such as Shakespeare Bulletin, boast a regular Shakespeare and film slot. All of this would have been unimaginable as little as fifteen or so years ago, yet, with the advent of the Shakespeare-on-film boom, critics have felt justified in working at the interface of what has become a discrete and increasingly canonical discipline. There are several dimensions that characterize criticism on Shakespeare and film in its post-2000 incarnation. In a piece of this scope, one cannot hope to offer a comprehensive survey of every relevant item and must favour instead a synoptic or case-study-driven critique. Selectivity notwithstanding, some broad and salient features are still apparent. In contrast to an earlier phase of writing in the field, criticism on Shakespeare and film is now generally theorized, taking energy from a range of feminist, historicist, materialist and deconstructionist approaches. Increasingly, the tendency is to locate Shakespeare film in relation to a spectrum of comparable cultural practices, whether these be performance, media activity or other forms of representational initiative. Distinctive, too, are the ways in which those commentators in the area pitch their work thematically, electing to privilege a particular method or an individualized perspective. This may take the form of an attention to the auteur, a concentration on a single play

The Morals of Macbeth and Peace as Process:: Adapting Shakespeare in Northern Ireland's Maximum Security Prison

T announcement that a group of serving “lifers” had embarked upon a full-length film version of Macbeth, a play generally acknowledged as the most bloody in the Shakespeare repertory, caused some controversy in the United Kingdom’s press. Reactions were hostile and pejorative, with headlines adopting a sensationalist tone.1 Mickey B (2006), thought to be the first feature film produced by prisoners, continues to provoke sensitive reactions. Until recently, legal injunctions prohibited it from public screening and distribution.2 Filmed in Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Maghaberry, Northern Ireland’s maximum security prison, Mickey B involved forty-two personnel, with parts mostly taken by prisoners, all of whom were well into lengthy sentences. The adaptation credits prisoners Sam McClean and Jason Thompson, as well as William Shakespeare, as authors, while crew work—which extended to building sets, painting, editing, production assistance, sound, and makeup—was also undertaken by inmates. Central to the production was the overseeing role of the Educational Shakespeare Company (ESC), a charity with branches in Northern Ireland and the United States that works with socially excluded groups, including prisoners, ex-prisoners, those on probation, the homeless, and youth at risk. As part of its mission, the ESC operates not only in relation to a reformist

'From the Horse's Mouth': Branagh on the Bard

In the space of an extraordinarily productive career, Kenneth Branagh has rapidly established himself as one of the twentieth century’s foremost Shakespearean interpreters. His major directed cinematic productions span the whole range of the dramatist’s oeuvre, from comedy to history and tragedy. Henry V (1989) offered itself as a seminal demythologization of a work traditionally read as a celebration of the English heroic endeavour; Much Ado About Nothing (1993) breathed new comic life into a ‘problematic’ representation of male-female rivalries; Hamlet (1997) served up the ‘whole text’ in a sumptuous widescreen format; and Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) merged music from the 1930s and spectacular set-pieces in a bold revision of the play. As well as directing Shakespeare, Branagh has also been busy in being directed, chiefly in Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995), in which he played Iago. These film versions of single plays can be supplemented by a body of related work which bears a Shakespearean theme. In the Bleak Midwinter (1995), the tale of a beleaguered repertory company struggling to mount a production of Hamlet, announced Branagh’s continuing interest in the play from a simultaneously farcical and melancholic perpective.

Henry's Desperate Housewives: The Tudors, the Politics of Historiography and the Beautiful Body of Jonathan Rhys Meyers

The mass of published material that accompanies the highly successful Showtime series The Tudors includes a collection of shooting scripts written by Michael Hirst (who also wrote the screenplays for Elizabeth [dir. Shekhar Kapur, 1998] and Elizabeth: The Golden Age [dir. Shekhar Kapur, 2007]).1 In an arresting display of machismo, finery, and insouciance, the cover prioritizes an image of a seated Henry VIII with three of his wives in a row behind him. The arrangement of selective marital history has been cropped: that is, the wives are visible only from the neck down. Hence, it is impossible to guess at the respective spouses’ identities. Each woman is registered only by and through her body—in particular, through the conjunction of cleavage and collar bones, which underscores the series’ reliance on twenty-first-century standards of beauty. The emphasis on nonindividualized forms points up the erotic nature of the televisual enterprise—sexualized bodies will be prominent throughout—whilealso playing upon popular notions of Henry VIII as the ultimate “S & M” lover (see figure 1.1).

“WHAT SAY YOU TO [THIS] BOOK? […] IS IT YOURS?”: ORAL AND COLLABORATIVE NARRATIVE TRAJECTORIES IN THE MEDIATED WRITINGS OF ANNA TRAPNEL

This article argues that, when a printed page is initially orally generated and then transcribed, either at the time or on a subsequent occasion by a listener or an interlocutor, there are important critical implications for the “I” of the account. It takes as a case study Anna Trapnels first published works. Appearing within a few weeks of each other in 1654, The Cry of a Stone and Strange and Wonderful News are both mediated texts, large parts of which depend on the agency of a relater. The article begins by examining the textual traces of the relater, arguing for the centrality of his role and other agencies in the shaping of the works which bear Trapnels name. Situating itself in relation to a current orientation in feminist autobiographical theory that places emphasis on the external requirement to narrate ones life, rather than on the spontaneous production of autobiography by an inner self, the article emphasizes notions of coaxing, witnessing and intersubjectivity to point up an appreciation of womens life writing as a species of cultural production in which various historical actors—male and female—participate. This dialogic process, which persists into the afterlife of transcription, owes part of its genesis to the political vagaries of 1654 and precipitates two contrasting—but equally “authentic”—versions of Trapnels life and self. Mapping this movement, discussion concentrates on the ways in which a critical confrontation with womens oral narrative is as much an activity of disentangling as it is of reconstructing, an activity which is revealing of the extent to which a spectrum of social and cultural networks participates in and facilitates the female writing act.

[Re]constructing the Past: the Diametric Lives of Mary Rich

From the amount of her extant work, it is evident that Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, devoted considerable time to the process of writing and rewriting her own life.2 Her diary runs to thousands of manuscript pages, with almost daily entries beginning on 25 July 1666 and continuing until eighteen months before her death in 1678.3 Rich also composed a short autobiography.4 Only 40 pages in length, it dates from around 1671 and recounts an entire personal history from birth to old age. Both narratives have as their main thrust Rich’s story and both are ostensibly private, although traces of revision, a refusal to detail particularly sensitive issues and signs of self-censorship may suggest that, at some level, a reader was borne in mind.5 The distinction between the texts is additionally blurred since, at one point, at least, Rich was writing them both simultaneously.6

Researching Memory in Early Modern Studies

This essay pursues the study of early modern memory across a chronologically, conceptually and thematically broad canvas in order to address key questions about the historicity of memory and the methodologies of memory studies. First, what is the value for our understanding of early modern memory practices of transporting the methodologies of contemporary memory studies backwards, using them to study the memorial culture of a time before living memory? Second, what happens to the cross-disciplinary project of memory studies when it is taken to a distant period, one that had its own highly self-conscious and much debated cultures of remembering? Drawing on evidence and debates from a range of disciplinary locations, but primarily focusing on literary and historical studies, the essay interrogates crucial differences and commonalities between memory studies and early modern studies.

The Shakespearean Auteur and the Televisual Medium

In the wake offundamental shifts in television, programming and production have seen television creations which rival—even go beyond—standard cinema in scope, length and character development. This essay takes the distinctive approach of applying auteur theory to the small screen, exploring what understandings of the auteur might mean for a new era of television Shakespeare, and, as its case-study, considers the BBC’s Hollow Crown series. Characterized by a feature-film appearance, a multimillion pound budget, and an all-star cast, the series is exemplary of how television is now made; hence, the essay argues, the series needs to be investigated in relation to the most recent understandings of the medium. Central to this investigation is the way in which producer Sam Mendes’s vision imprintsitself upon each of the series’s four episodes, and the first part of the essay is accordingly concerned with his recognizable style and credentials as the series “showrunner.” However, Mendes’s is not the only auteurial stamp on the series, and the essay is equally concerned with how each of Mendes’s three co-directors places his or her auteurial signature on the Shakespearean source material in such a way as to lend each production a unique character. These individualized creative visions, the essay argues, unfold in concert with Mendes’s conceptualization of the series in its entirety. Ultimately, televisual auteurism is understood as a complex phenomenon that allows for more than one creative approach to be entertained.

‘O daughter … forget your people and your father’s house’: Early Modern Women Writers and the Spanish Imaginary

Abstract Holloway and Wray consider the perspectives offered by two very different seventeenth-century women: Mary Bonaventure Browne, or Mother Browne (b. 1615) and Lady Ann Fanshawe (b. 1625) both of whom exchanged Ireland for Spain, and both of whom record journeys both ‘real’ and imagined in their writings. Brownes deployment of hagiographical tropes in her History of the Poor Clares may reveal the potential impact of Iberian conventual culture; her allusions to the markers of sanctity insistent on the immutability of the body, whilst accepting and anticipating spectral presence in the form of bilocation. Fanshawe’s Memoirs are considered alongside the material legacy of her ‘Booke of Receipts of Physickes, Salues, Waters, Cordialls, Preserues and Cookery’. Her impressions both in transit and within the domus are similarly marked by receptivity and sensitivity to the host culture. Amidst a backdrop of religious persecution and political uncertainty, in both cases Spain emerges as a potentially enabling context for creativity and self-expression.

Shakespeare on Film (review)

In its 1997 incarnation, Shakespeare, the Movie was criticized for a lax editorial technique, so it is particularly gratifying that the new work is generally free of error and has corrected the inconsistencies of the earlier volume. Shakespeare, the Movie, II must remain one of the first ports of call for devotees of Shakespeare and film and contains a wealth of wonderful insight and sharp reflection for the critic and enthusiast.