Shakespeare on Screen : The Roman Plays

Book excerpt: Is there a specificity to adapting a Roman play to the screen ? This volume interrogates the ways directors and actors have filmed and performed the Shakespearean works known as the "Roman plays", which are, in chronological order of writing, Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. In the variety of plays and story lines, common questions nevertheless arise. Is there such a thing as filmic "Romanness"? By exploring the different ways in which the Roman plays are re-interpreted in the light of Roman history, film history and the Shakespearean tradition, the papers in this volume all take part in the ceaseless investigation of what the plays keep saying not only about our vision of the past, but also about our perception of the present.