Adapting The Tempest

Abstract

ADAPTING THE TEMPEST: JULIE TAYMOR'S REVELS Adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare's plays demonstrate the unending life of a series of canonical texts that still invite numerous forms of interpretation. Simultaneously, they also offer a tool for the (re)interpretation of the English playwright's works. This is definitely the case of Julie Taymor's recent film The Tempest (2010), which partially alters the structure of Shakespeare's last solo play, but also actively engages with the academic debates on the work's thematic concerns. Nevertheless, Taymor's film could be seen as faithful to the original source and as fully realizing on the screen its fantastic elements, especially through the use of the special effects. Taymor's The Tempest utilizes the original heightened language of the seventeenth century - which certainly gratifies those spectators that enjoy what Stephen Greenblatt has defined as Shakespeare's "infinite delight in language"(1) - and maintains the main dialogues of the original...