Shakespeare and the Media of Film, Radio and Television: A Retrospect

Summary

When in 1916 Hugo Münsterberg claimed that the photoplay overcomes ‘the forms of the outer world . . . by adjusting events to the forms of the inner world’, he perceived the major shift from the theatre stage to the cinema screen as being psychological rather than technological. Any survey of available criticism in the field of Shakespeare and film tends not only to confirm that perception but to suggest that it persists not merely as an aesthetic issue but as an issue affecting the collective critical mind. While theatre remains the legitimate expressive medium for authentic Shakespeare, kept alive by a scattering of theatrical companies playing to audiences for whom theatre is both accessible and familiar, only comparatively recently has it become respectable to concentrate serious discussion on the media of cinema, radio and more especially television. These media have become the most practical means of making Shakespeare’s plays in performance a world heritage rather than a national one passed on through educational systems.