About the Book:

The book Shakespeare in the Cinema is a comprehensive look at film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays.

Offering a comprehensive look at the strategies that filmmakers have employed in adapting Shakespeare's plays to the cinema, this book investigates what the task of Shakespearean adaptation reveals about film in general and focuses on patterns and approaches shared by various cinematic works. Stephen M. Buhler provides concise histories of each general strategy, which include non-illusionistic cinema, documentary interpretations, mass-market productions, transgressive and transitional cinema, and approaches that see film as either distinct from the stage or as an extension of theatrical traditions. The book Shakespeare in the Cinema spans more than a century of film, starting with the 1899 King John and extending through Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julie Taymor's Titus, and later releases.

What people say:

"Buhler's book is comprehensive. He covers just about every Shakespeare film in existence, including some rare silent ones and some in other languages. This is a useful and well-written survey of a large field." — Lois Potter, Professor of English Emerita at University of Delaware

"I like its thorough coverage of many films and its organization of the whole, which avoids a rigid chronology and instead shows the various strategies filmmakers have employed to create Shakespeare films. Instead of treating silent films in isolation, Buhler weaves them into his discussion of other films, exposing relations among films of the whole century." — Bernice W. Kliman, Professor of English Emeritus at Nassau Community College

About the Author:

Stephen M. Buhler is Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has published extensively on John Milton and William Shakespeare, including Shakespeare in the Cinema: Ocular Proof.