Romeo and Juliet, Adaptation and the Arts: ‘Cut Him Out in Little Stars’

Romeo and Juliet is the most produced, translated, and re-mixed of all of Shakespeare’s plays. This volume takes up the iconographic, linguistic and performance layers already at work within it and tracks the play’s dispersal into neighbouring art forms – including ballet, opera, television, and architecture – and geographical locations, including Italy, Ireland, France, India, and Korea.
Chapters trace Shakespeare’s own acts of adaptation and appropriation of sources and the play’s subsequent migrations into other media. Part One considers reworkings of Romeo and Juliet in Berlioz’s 1839 choral symphony and ballets choreographed by Sir Kenneth MacMillan and John Neumeier. Part Two explores the afterlives of Shakespeare’s lovers in the narrative forms of fiction, film, and serial television, including Joyce, Beckett, and HBO’s series Westworld.
Part Three examines dramatic adaptations of the play into other languages, dialects, and cultural contexts. Authors consider Hindi translations and the complex and changing status of Shakespeare’s work in India, and productions of the play in Korea set against its evolving history. The volume ends with a first-person account of staging Romeo and Juliet at an HBCU (historically Black college/university), documenting the fundamentally alienating presence of Shakespeare for oppressed communities.