Learning Outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this module, students will have demonstrated the ability to:
1. Understand adaptation and appropriation as a form of reading and interpretation, and evaluate different readings of Shakespeare's comedies for film and television.
2. Identify key considerations in adapting or appropriating Shakespeare's comedies for the big and small screen, weighing up various options, and imagining other possibilities.
3. Critically assess how modern television and film adaptations have addressed key topics and controversies in the performance of Shakespeare's comedies.
4. Analyse how Shakespeare's comedies have been used to interrogate pressing social concerns, such as changing attitudes to gender and sexuality, through modern film and television adaptation.
5. Critically examine how Shakespeare's dramatic comedies have been adapted for the big and small screen in a range of television and film genres, utilizing genre as a key lens of interpretation.
6. Evaluate the extent to which film adaptations and appropriations of the comedies borrow, question, or subvert the cultural capital of Shakespeare.
Indicative Module Content:
Plays
Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
Film and television adaptations
Zeffirelli, The Taming of the Shrew (1967)
Junger, 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
BBC, ShakespeaReTold, The Taming of the Shrew (2005)
Hall, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968)
Hoffman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1998)
Kerr; BBC, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2016)
Branagh, Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Whedon, Much Ado About Nothing (2012)
BBC, Upstart Crow 3.4 (2018)