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Article: Locating the bard: adaptation and authority in Michael Radford's The Merchant of Venice.(Shakespeare on Screen)
- Article from:
- Shakespeare Bulletin
- Article date:
- June 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Johns Hopkins University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Michael Radford's recent adaptation of The Merchant of Venice (2004) starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons returns feature film Shakespeare to period setting and costuming after roughly a decade of radicalized adaptative strategies such as those of Baz Luhrmann, Michael Almereyda, and Julie Taymor. Radford underscores this return to "authentic" Shakespeare with a heavy directorial hand that begins the film with superimposed text recounting the sixteenth-century Venetian context of the original play setting. The watery landscape of Venice, the brothels and courtesans that entertain the Christian inhabitants, and the gates that separate Jew from Christian lend a topographical ...