The leasing out of England: Shakespeare's second Henriad

Coursen, Herbert R.

University Press of America

The compensatory psyche: A Jungian approach to Shakespeare

The Compensatory Psyche: A Jungian Approach to Shakespeare

Literature & Fiction

Univ Pr of Amer

Watching Shakespeare on Television looks at Shakespeare as a cultural phenomenon and at the videocassette as "text" - that is, as an object fixed in time as well as in its assumptions about its medium. Even films made to be shown at a cinema are also designed to become cassettes for the vast "secondary" market. H. R. Coursen's study of Shakespearean films and television productions includes such classics as Olivier's Hamlet and Brook's and Welles's King Lear, as well as more recent productions such as Kevin Kline's and Mel Gibson's Hamlets, Kenneth Branagh's Henvy V, and Peter Greenaway's version of The Tempest, Prospero's Books.Shakespeare's scripts are designed to be "open to interpretation." That openness is not the invention of disciples of Foucault or Derrida. The "meaning" of a Shakespeare script can never be fixed; rather, it is a temporal quality that shows how a script reflects, reinterprets, or reemphasizes the cultural and ideological assumptions of a particular moment in history. Shakespeare remains popular, as Branagh's Henry V, Zeffirelli's Hamlet, and a proliferation of Shakespeare's festivals prove. The energy known as Shakespeare cannot be isolated from the culture that constantly reappropriates the scripts and creates new audiences for them. Shakespeare "works" on television because television is a linguistic medium, and because we are becoming accustomed to the diminished scale of the television (and the videocassette), as opposed to the grander dimensions of cinema. Shakespeare survives domestication, but in ways that demand investigation about why and how the scripts can work on television, and about the nature of this medium when it is charged with Shakespearean energy.Watching Shakespeare on Television looks at Gertrude, a character often clear in performance even if "unwritten" in the script, and at Hamlet's disquisition to Yorick's skull, subject to a wide range of options and interpretations. Other subjects covered are "style" in A Midsummer Night's Dream, particularly the 1982 ART production; the advantages film has over studio productions; and editing scripts for television, with a focus on the Nunn Othello and the Kline Hamlet. In the latter production, long takes contrast with the quicksilver montage technique of Zeffirelli's film version. Another chapter examines Othello as a script demanding a black actor in the lead, and it looks at the Nunn and Suzman versions as cases in point. Closure in Hamlet is analyzed as well: television, the modern medium of political closure, tends to include Fortinbras, as opposed to film which usually excludes him. Another chapter evaluates Prospero's Books, where the importation of television to film tends to erase film's field of depth and results in no improvement, regardless of the trumpeted "technological breakthrough" of high-definition television. Finally, the book peers into the future of Shakespeare's moving image, with attention paid to Peter Donaldson's Interactive Archive at M.I.T.

Watching Shakespeare on Television

Arts & Photography

Performing Arts

UNKNO

Christian Ritual and the World of Shakespeare's Tragedies

Dramas & Plays

Associated Univ Pr

"... Coursen is an able, professional writer and flier who has dramatized these early air battles with knowledge and authority. His descriptions of the air battles are vivid and convincing. If his pilots seem to have been hermetically sealed from the ghastliness of the trench warfare near the Somme River, totally removed from the million men massacred in the foul-smelling mud and barbed wire of no-man's land, then that perhaps is the way it was. ... "...The Red Baron is a legend around the world. To all those fascinated by this man who epitomizes the weird breed known as the Knights of the Air, Coursen's book After the War will be an enthralling treat." --Bill Caldwell, Portland Press Herald

After the War

Heidelberg Graphics

The Outfielder

This is the sixth in a series of fantasy adventures about the Kingdom of Archerland, constantly threatened by Mazlund, one of the chief among the Fallen Angels. Previously, Mazlund had constructed an alternate nature with which to replace Archerland only to be thwarted at the last minute, and had almost succeeded in finding a zone independent of the will of God from which to combat his great rival, only to lose his opportunity at the eleventh hour. In this novel, he assumes the role of a blind prophet who preaches pacifism, and convinces most of Archerland to abandon its citizen army. Thus, King Paul II is left with only a small cadre with which to combat the invasion of Mazlund’s Darkforce, and, once again, Archerland teeters on the edge of darkness.

The Blind Prophet of Archerland

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Fantasy

Goose River Press

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Books by Coursen, Herbert R.