Kommentar |
In this seminar, we will consider three tragedies by William Shakespeare that are concerned with political power, upheaval, and war, namely Hamlet, Macbeth, and Coriolanus. We will first read the play texts and relate them to the aesthetic practices and cultural concerns of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. We will then turn to current theatrical productions (at the Schaubühne, the Maxim Gorki Theater, and the Deutsches Theater) and film versions and discuss how they adapt Shakespeare for audiences of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Films to be discussed include Hamlet (dir. Kenneth Branagh), Hamlet: The Denmark Corporation (dir. Michael Almereyda), Shakespeare Retold: Macbeth (dir. Mark Brozel), and Coriolanus (dir. Ralph Fiennes). Discussing the portrayals of political power play in the tragedies, we will pay particular attention to questions of gender: How do Shakespeare’s eponymous male protagonists engage with the ideal of military prowess? How do they interact with their female counterparts, Lady Macbeth and the witches, Ophelia and Gertrude, and Volumnia and Virgilia? And how do contemporary films and theatrical productions deal with the gendered distribution of power? We will also discuss the impact of stage and film practices on the performances of gender, for example by comparing the Elizabethan all-male cast to the all-female cast chosen by Rafael Sanchez’s production of Coriolanus at Berlin’s Deutsches Theater. If you want to purchase individual editions of the plays, buy either the Arden or the Oxford edition. Alternatively, I recommend buying the The Norton Shakespeare, which includes Shakespeare’s complete works. |