A Local Habitation and a Name: Television and Shakespeare

Summary

In a world where feature film production has increasingly become an international enterprise, television Shakespeare is often positioned as more local than global. Feature filmmakers and producers must now take into account the foreign market that will generate important global earnings; they frequently extend their imaginative reach into different lands and incorporate filming on location in different countries. By contrast, television production is more embedded in national or regional contexts because those performances must appeal to viewers and sponsors who inhabit the same cultural and geographical space as the TV producers. As a result, television writers and producers embrace situations and settings of immediate local relevance, a tendency that has significant implications for televised Shakespeare.

Although some Shakespearian television productions like the BBC Shakespeare and Shakespeare: The Animated Tales are presented as international in intended audiences and, in the case of The Animated Tales, in collaborative production, television nonetheless still retains the potential for ‘local’ programming. ShakespeaRe-told makes this trait of television explicit by transposing Much Ado about Nothing into the office politics of a local British news show, Wessex Tonight. The topical immediacy of local news as well as the eavesdropping potential of the TV station audio equipment recontextualize the slandered maiden and quarrelling lovers. US, UK and Canadian television localize Shakespeare by positioning the plots within national political, historical and artistic contexts.