"Hamlet" on television: interfaces between stage and screen

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5902/2176148555196

Keywords:

Shakespeare, Hamlet, Intermediality, Remediation, Adaptation

Abstract

Many British productions of Shakespeare’s plays for television have been adapted from stage performances. These stage-to-small-screen adaptations combine theatrical, televisual and cinematic elements in order to reinvent the performances meaningfully on the small screen. This article examines distinctive features of this specific genre of Shakespearean adaptation. Looking at Gregory Doran’s television adaptation of his stage production of Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company (2008), I will discuss the mechanisms of intermediality and the processes of remediation on which it is grounded. Instead of being simply a record of the stage performance, this adaptation is a hybrid form that not only complicates traditional distinctions between theatre and television, but also challenges assumptions that stage-to-small-screen adaptations are secondary and derivative. 

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Author Biography

Paulo da Silva Gregório, Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste, Irati, PR

Possui graduação em Letras - Língua Portuguesa e Literaturas, pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (2009), Mestrado em Estudos da Linguagem pela mesma instituição (2012), e Doutorado em Shakespeare Studies pela University of Birmingham (2017). Atualmente, é professor colaborador no Departamento de Letras da Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste (UNICENTRO, Irati). Tem experiência de ensino nas áreas de Literatura Inglesa, Língua Inglesa e Português-Língua Estrangeira. Na pesquisa, tem interesse nos seguintes tópicos: Estudos shakespearianos (foco em performance e adaptação); Adaptação teatral, cinematográfica e literária; Literatura e ensino de inglês como língua estrangeira.

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Published

2022-12-06

How to Cite

Gregório, P. da S. (2022). "Hamlet" on television: interfaces between stage and screen. Letras, 1(63), 112–126. https://doi.org/10.5902/2176148555196

Issue

No. 63 (2021): Poéticas interartes e cultura brasileira

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Articles

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