Categories Of Shakespeare Essay, Research Paper
Categories of Shakespeare
When dealing with text of Jacobean writers such as
Shakespeare, one has a great deal of freedom in interpreting
it. His words are full of not only meaning, but entendres,
alliterations, and metaphors that allows a great deal of
artistic freedom when actualizing it into performance.
Perhaps that is why his plays have been a longtime favorite
standard performance material, and more recently ( the past
100 years), have become very popular to produce and present
in the film medium.
What allows for Shakespeare to be presented so easily
on film, despite the fact they were written hundreds of
years ago when the very idea of film was nonexistent, is the
utter portability of his works. By portability I mean there
is so much in his plays that can be transposed and realized
so beautifully in the movies. The works give a lot of
visual freedom to the director, as Shakespeare writes few
stage directions. The concept of visual also plays a huge
part in any film, as Peter Holland recognizes in his article
?Two dimensional Shakespeare: ?King Lear on Film?? when he
states that ?Film is primarily a visual medium, a form in
which language accompanies sight but cannot dominate it
(Davies and Wells, pg.59).? Therefore, film provides a
landscape for the enactment of Shakespeare drama?s and allow
them to be realizes in greater proportions than the
restrictions of stage allow.
However, presenting Shakespeare on film, which is a
medium other than which his works are originally intended,
seems to warrant more debate and criticism than ordinary
theatrical presentations. Additionally, because of the
large amount of film versions of each play, it becomes
quickly necessary for a means of categorizing the films of
Shakespeare as an agency to compare, contrast, critique, and
most importantly, understand not only the work itself, but
the value of the work artistically, textually, and in its
materialization as a work as a whole. To solve these
dilemma, ?In 1977 Jack Jorgens offered three categories
into which Shakespeare films can be usefully divided,
categories which mark different and increasing distances
from the forms of theater… He suggested three modes:
theatrical, realist, cinematic (Davies and Wells, pg.50).?
These three modes are very useful at looking at Shakespeare
films and there presentation on film.
Theatrical mode of presentation most generally means a
production that is presented in the same style as would an
actual live theater performance of Shakespeare, and
generally tend to be just that: a filmed performance of his
work. This type of film is characterized by elements of
theater, theatrical lighting, costuming, acting, and most
specifically, tends to have more medium and long range shots
than the realist and filmic modes.
The second category Jorgens determined is the realist
mode. The realist mode is an intermediate ground between
the theatrical and filmic: that is, its intention is for
film, but still desires to stay true to the intentions of
Shakespeare, taking into consideration the time period the
play is written in, and tries not to modify the text too
much. The realist mode is a way of taking a Shakespearean
work and presenting it in an manner that is trying , mostly
to merely represent the works of Shakespeare yet at the same
time enhancing it by making ?use of the full range of
established film techniques (Davies and Wells, pg. 53).?
Grigori Kozintsev?s King Lear falls under this mode of
presentation. The 1970 Russian translation of the work
includes sprawling landscapes in black ad white, whose
presence often seems to rival that of the actors, a danger
Holland realizes when he says ?At times, of course, the
background can take too much precedence over the foreground
(Davies and Wells, pg. 53).? The work also falls into
another danger of cinematic realism and Shakespeare that
Holland says ?is tightly bound up with a traditional
liberal- humanist ideology. It makes assumptions about the
essential truth of the humanism of a tragedy (Davies and
Wells, pg. 55).? Kozintsev?s King Lear is based upon his
definition of reality being emptiness. He demonstrates this
emptiness through his demonstration of the film in a
?Movement of the play from fiction into realism (Davies and
Wells, pg.55)? and a process for Kozintsev that Holland
describes ?as a stripping away of the social mask, the mask
of power, to reveal the ?essential? self beneath (Davies and
Wells, pg.55).? In this, we can see how his production
largely embodies the Marxism statement that Kozintsev was
trying to make, a dangerous move in the corrupt and
Communist Russia he was living in.
Two versions of Macbeth, both Polanski?s Macbeth and
Kurosawa?s ?Throne of Blood?, also fall under this category
of realism, and like Kozintsev?s King Lear, largely
incorporate the landscapes of the play, the background seems
more balanced with the action of the play, and rather than
competing with the action, they seem to actually reinforce
the story. Contrary to theatrical presentations of
Shakespeare, these bigger proportions allow the story to be
presented in grander, yet more definitive terms that seems
to give way to the more realistic style of filmed
Shakespeare.
The third category of Shakespeare film is the filmic
mode. The filmic mode is a method that Jorgen himself
describes as that ??of the poet, whose works bear the same
relation to the surfaces of reality that poems do to
ordinary conversation (Davies and Wells, pg.56).?? Thus the
filmic is a highly visual presentation of Shakespeare, and
with the very nature of film be a fulfillment of the
director?s vision, it allows the director to take more
artistic liberty with a Shakespearean work than the other
two modes. Peter Holland expands ?The filmic mode uses all
the resources if the camera. It makes conscious use of what
the camera can do, rather than what can be built on the
studio sound stage or found on location. It places emphasis
on montage and demands that we observe what it is doing,
what is theatrically impossible and indeed, in some cases,
filmically unusual (Davies and Wells, pg.57).?
Orson Welles?s 1951 version of Othello is the perfect
example of the capabilities that a filmic mode enables to
define it against the theatrical presentation. Holland
gives an example of a specific scene to illustrate: ?Wells
filmed Othello in the senate scene of Act I against
different background from the other characters in the same
scene so that the two worlds never quite match up and the
audience cannot quite see Othello being in the same room as
the Venetian senate; the effect is to demonstrate the
complete separation of Othello from the world of Venice
(Davies and Wells, pg.57).? Obviously, the filmic mode
allows the director to use methods (whether blatant or
subtly sub- conscious) to give the audience the greatest and
more interactive experience in sympathizing with the story.
A fourth mode of Shakespeare that Holland proposed was
that of deconstruction. This method is one that is based
around work(s) of Shakespeare, yet edits the material
drastically, either by taking away or adding to it (or a
combination of both) to make a commentary on the nature of
the work itself as Shakespeare intended it. While this
category is much harder to define than the other three, it
is important to note that this category nonetheless
incorporates the original text as the film?s main basis.
There also a second group of categories that Jorgens
offers as ?defining three ways of treating a Shakespeare
play, three degrees of distance from the original:
presentation, interpretation, and adaptation (Davies and
Wells, pg.57).? The second category varies from the first
because the first category of four modes? main purpose is to
?chart different distances of the film from theater (Davies
and Wells, pg.57).?
I think that all of the aforementioned categories are
very useful and thorough tools in viewing not only a play by
Shakespeare that has been adapted to film but are essential
when making and/or viewing any work whose original text is
meant for the stage. These categories instigate a line of
rational questioning that is necessary in maintaining the
artistic integrity of a work. Tennessee William?s plays are
another favorite of filmmakers to carry over into the film
medium, and they are only one of many examples of the
multitudes of work that is frequently taken from the stage
to the big screen. However, perhaps because of the large
cannon of work that Shakespeare has written or perhaps
because of his brilliant psychological insight of character
that allows for easy demonstration of both the inner and
outer worlds of the character, Shakespeare still reigns
supreme as the playwright whose works are not only most
commonly cited but also commonly enacted, whether in film or
theater, and Jorgen?s and Holland?s categories give us the
viewer and critic an methodical approach at understanding
the artistic and technical accomplishments of a presentation
of the Great Bard?s work.
Davies and Wells, Shakespeare and the Moving Image: the
Plays on Film and Television; Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge, 1994