Barthes and the Bard - scriptibilité and two adaptations of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Freiburg (Englisches Seminar), course: Shakespeare on Screen, language: English, abstract: In this paper I discuss two film adaptations of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: Adrian Noble's TV production from 1996 and Michael Hoffman's Hollywood film from 1998. The two versions offer different contemporary readings of a text, so that it is not only Shakespeare we evaluate but also ourselves and what our occupation with his texts signifies.

The methodological key concepts employed are Roland Barthes's critical terms from S/Z, the writerly and the readerly (scriptibilité and lisibilité), as well his own cinematic terminology of 'the third meaning'. Used in the anaysis, these concepts support the critical differentiation of the Hollywood blockbuster and the art house production, their specific filmic properties and their social functions.