In Webster’s cameo in Shakespeare in Love, he appears as a young child, reveling in the violence of the play he’s just scene in an unbalanced manner that is both comical and intentionally disturbing.  As we begin looking at this play, this time through the context of Swetnam and Speght’s near-contemporary gender materials, I wonder if framing the play as full of action, violence, themes of incest, and revenge is producing a false sense of the play that appeals to our own sense of what we think makes a play exciting to students and contemporary readers/viewers.  Do we sell students short by failing to draw their attention to the family dramas, gender issues, and history of the modern subject that are likewise important throughout this typical Jacobean play?

This week, in Shakespeare in the Movies, we are looking specifically at religious imagery and figures in the play and relatively recent film adaptation.  As we know, Luhrmann uses the ‘star-cross’d’ image from the opening sonnet as a guide to the kind of religious imagery he uses throughout, from Romeo’s neon-lit walk towards Juliet’s body to the cross formed by the opening sequence’s gasoline fire.  By tracing the character of Friar Lawrence in particular, the students will be trying to construct a sense of Shakespeare’s portrayal of the Franciscan father’s involvements.  Contrasting his speech about the good/evil in each person and each plant derived from nature with Romeo’s procurement of the poison from the apothecary, we will consider whether the Italianate setting of the play might contribute to a critical portrayal of ‘Catholic’ Christianity or the role of money in church matters.  The strangely secular imagery used by the friar (mention of Titan and a devotion to nature that might be unrivaled outside of the Atheist’s Tragedy) might be a way into this that would allow students to point to specific textual evidence as they discover this reading.

Welcome to my academic blog.    This website will be focused on my current research and teaching projects, and it provides a record of my continuing development as a teacher-scholar.  For more information about my background and previous word, please visit the site’s “About” webpage.