Page 97 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

86 / Shakespeare in the Movies

Shrew, demonstrating how far he had advanced, in a few short years,
as a writer. Now he was in supreme command of poetic dialogue,
plot structure, and in-depth characterization.
In Matteo Bandello's collection of Italian tales (first published in
Lucca in 1554), Will discovered the story of two innocent young
lovers torn apart by a villain's malicious plot to convince the boy
that his chaste beloved secretly invites men to her boudoir. From
Edmund Spenser's popular poetic paeon to Queen Bess, The Faerie
Queene (1590), he borrowed the device of a maid dressed in her mis-
tress's clothing to make the faux indiscretion appear real. Then the
Bard's unique gift kicked in, creating from scratch the couple that
gives this play its distinction: Beatrice and Benedick—Petruchio and
Kate on a more sophisticated level. To please the groundlings, he
added Dogberry and his Watch. In the denouement, these country
rubes save the day, to the delight of lower-class audiences, even as
their betters fail to see through the shoddy conspiracy.
There are no metaphysical elements here (Much Ado About Noth-
ing is a social rather than Green World comedy), but there is a piv-
otal Prince who is good, if flawed. Prince Pedro's bastard brother,
Don John, is the Machiavelli whose dubious ancestry defines him, in
Elizabethan terms, as "unnatural." This may be a dramatic reviving
of Shakespeare's possible fears as to his own children's questionable
parentage. Both good and bad princes manipulate people: Don Pedro,
to arrange a happy marriage between bickering Beatrice and
Benedick; and Don John, to destroy the arranged marriage of naive
Hero and Claudio. In each situation, the "plot," whether benign or
evil, results in life as theater; the characters in the play "performing"
as "actors."
In 1988, while still relatively unknown, Kenneth Branagh had
appeared in a stage production directed by Dame Judi Dench. During
the opening sequence, Branagh winced while watching the show
unfold as high art, imagining Much Ado About Nothing as popular
entertainment. That's what it had been in Elizabethan times, intended
for the enjoyment of ordinary people rather than as elitist escapism.
As someone who grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood, Branagh
knew full well that our modern equivalent of Shakespeare's playhouse
is the commercial Hollywood movie. So as several soldiers politely
marched onstage, suggesting Don Pedro's troops returning to Messina,
Branagh fantasized the scene redone Magnificent Seven style, with
rugged riders hurrying over a hill. When the women prepare to meet
them, Branagh pictured the ladies seminude, as in soft-core porn.