Page 25 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

14 / Shakespeare in the Movies

Should Romeo and Juliet be set in an authentically rendered fif-
teenth-century Renaissance Verona, though Shakespeare obviously
knew little about that era? Is it correct, as Franco Zeffirelli did, to
mount a film of that play in precisely accurate historical costume
but cast British stage actors, since audiences expect English accents
from anything by the Bard? Is it permissible, as in the case of Baz
Luhrmann's hip-hop variation, to cast popular teenage stars and set
them in modern Miami while keeping the iambic pentameter intact?
Should a dramatization of Julius Caesar be set against an accurately
rendered vision of Rome, though Shakespeare's characters hear
anachronistic clocks ringing?
Literary critic Maynard Mack once considered "the world of
Hamlet," and he insisted that the imaginary place had less to do
with ancient Denmark than with Elizabethan England. Shakespeare
also delved into what can only be considered existential terrain:
Man, as Kurt Weill put it centuries later, lost in the stars, surviving
in what he dreads may be a God-abandoned universe. That holds
true for each of Shakespeare's plays; all take place in a universe that,
locations of individual stories aside, are part and parcel of the world
according to Will. Today, then, the difficult but fascinating task of a
filmmaker is to decide how that philosophical and psychological ter-
rain can best be visualized.