Page 100 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

Sophisticated Comedy I 89

Denby also noted that Emma Thompson's delivery of Beatrice's
"O that I were a man!" speech came "as close to a feminist reading
of the play as [possible] without altering the meaning of the text."
Most critics reserved their warmest praise for Thompson. Stanley
Kauffmann of the New Republic gushed: "I'll try to restrain myself.
She has elegance. She has the finest command of inflection and
style. She has spirit and soul. She is the first film actress since
Katharine Hepburn to make intelligence sexy."
If there was a flaw, most reviewers agreed with Anne Barton of
The New York Review of Books when she lamented Branagh's deci-
sion to "transform Michael Keaton, as Dogberry, into a menacing,
sadistic, and profoundly unamusing thug." Branagh eliminated Dog-
berry's most significant speech in which he reveals himself as "a
man who has suffered losses," once wealthy but now reduced to pro-
tecting the wealth of others, which he does to the best of his humble
abilities. Others found the darkness of Keaton's approach a nice foil
to the brightness of all the other goings-on. Keaton, as an Eliza-
bethan Beetlejuice, prowls the alleys just outside this timeless realm
where, as in Romeo and Juliet and other more serious plays, roman-
tic love must—if a relationship is to survive—be transformed into
true friendship.

Love at First Sight
As You Like It
Inter-Allied-Film, 1936; Paul Cinner

Shakespeare drew stories from varied source material, adapting
freely; here he closely followed the structure of a popular poetic
novel from about ten years earlier. Thomas Lodge's posthumously
published Rosalynde began with an opening statement that the
reader should finish this "booke" only "if you like it." Will took the
title, the female lead, and the pastoral plot and romantic entangle-
ments from Lodge. He added another element, the English outlaw
ballad, which enjoyed revived popularity in the 1590s. The Lord
Admiral's company, a key competitor, had great success with a
Robin Hood play. So Burbage persuaded Shakespare to add Merrie
Men the next time he whipped up a Green World confection.
Will had already written comedy with strong romance; now it was
time to try a pure example of the romance genre. He addressed the