Shakespeare the Illusionist
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In Shakespeare the Illusionist, Neil Forsyth reviews the history of Shakespeare’s plays on film, using the basic distinction in film tradition between what is owed to Méliès and what to the Lumière brothers. He then tightens his focus on those plays that include some explicit magical or supernatural elements—Puck and the fairies, ghosts and witches, or Prospero’s island, for example—and sets out methodically, but with an easy touch, to review all the films that have adapted those comedies and dramas, into the present day. Forsyth’s aim is not to offer yet another answer as to whether Shakespeare would have written for the screen if he were alive today, but rather to assess what various filmmakers and TV directors have in fact made of the spells, haunts, and apparitions in his plays. From analyzing early camera tricks to assessing contemporary handling of the supernatural, Forsyth reads Shakespeare films for how they use the techniques of moviemaking to address questions of illusion and dramatic influence. In doing so, he presents a bold step forward in Shakespeare and film studies, and his fresh take is presented in lively, accessible language that makes the book ideal for classroom use.
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SHAKESPEARE THE ILLUSIONIST
MAGIC, DREAMS, AND THE SUPERNATURAL ON FILM
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The distinction between the Lumière and Méliès tendencies is really between, on the one hand, the art that conceals its own artifice beneath the pretense of quotidian realism, the kind of illusionism that developed in the nineteenth century and that we see in wax museums and photography or, at a more interesting level, in George Eliot’s homage to Dutch realist painting in the seventeenth chapter of Adam Bede or to John Constable in the opening paragraphs of The Mill on the Floss, and on the other hand, that which celebrates its own artifice even though it may, like a conjuror (an “illusionist”), deliberately mystify the spectator about how its magic is performed. As Peter Wollen puts it, “Lumière and Méliès are not like Cain and Abel: there is no need for one to eliminate the other.”32 Indeed, because Antoine Lumière, father of the photographic brothers, rented a studio above the Robert Houdin theatre where Méliès performed, it is possible Méliès knew about the new invention before the famous viewing of the street scene in Lyon.
In addition, the transformation scenes strongly suggest that Bottom is a werewolf or something similar. He becomes a frightful creature of the greenwood, dressed in green weeds and with an enormously long snout—with which he soon begins to roger Titania, who in her drug-induced state is more than willing. A general orgy follows, and the scene is punctuated by close-ups of the hornèd Puck (Kemp himself) sensuously eating an eloquent bunch of grapes.
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