Abstract:
This thesis examines the role of the soundtrack in screen interpretations of a selection of Shakespearean plays, an area that has not come under the same critical scrutiny as the filmic visualisation of the dramatic text.
Aural components, particularly the component of intra-and extra-diegetic music, in particular productions of Shakespeare on film, are analysed for their contribution to the construction of the narrative and the integration of text and image, emphasising the co-dependency of aural and visual codes of representation. The thesis examines conventions to do with sound production and reception and the possibility of radical or conservative deployment of these conventions, while interrogating what effect music, in particular, adds to interpretations produced in a given time, place and cultural moment.
Attention to the aural element of film-making shows clearly the extent to which music is a vital "instrument" in transmitting ideas of theme, genre, gender, characterisation, style and structure, and in engaging audience response and complicity in the film's interpretative project.
The examination of both Olivier's and Branagh's versions of Henry V makes clear that music is significantly implicated in the construction of nationalism and masculine identity. In the films of Hamlet made by Olivier, Zeffirelli and Branagh, the use of music and musical language signals historically and culturally inflected degrees of madness, and clearly marks gender difference. In Romeo and Juliet (Zeffirelli and Luhrmann), the use of song as the dominant motif of the love story opens up a new perspective for examining the representation (in either naturalistic or postmodern terms) of this. The discussion of a growing tendency to use music as a foregrounded structural device is illustrated by tracing this development through tree films made over two decades, The Tempest (Jarman, 1979), Much Ado About Nothing (Branagh, 1993), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (Hoffaman, 1999)
The thesis brings to attention the immense significance aural/musical material adds to the visual element of realising Shakespeare on film, highlighting the ways in which the potential for exploring strategic combinations of text, image and music can be realised.