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Introduction
Self-reflexivity is a defining feature of Shakespeare's works, to such an extent that, as Mary Ann Frese Witt recently pointed out, "most late-twentiethcentury work written in English on metatheater, metadrama, or the play in the play concentrated on Shakespeare" (5). This metadramatic auality is an issue for film directors adapting Shakespeare's plays, who must be prepared to "wrestle with the challenge thrown up by ... reflexive techniques" (Stam, Literature 112; see also Rasmus 147). Meeting the standards of Shakespearean reflexivity on-screen consequently leads directors to devise various solutions, most of which seek to "duplicate" Shakespeare's reflexive techniques by resorting to "cinematic equivalents" for a play's metadramatic features (Rasmus 161), in the hope of "substituting" metacinema for metatheater (Rasmus 157; Hatchuel 160).
Because of the comprehensive scope of its specular patterns, The Tempest heightens the challenge of adapting Snakespearean reflexivity. One particular film, however, has received acclaim for finding appropriate solutions to adapt the reflexive motifs of The Tempest: Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books (1991). The film centers on Prospero's library, treating it as the source of his knowledge, but also as the origin of the world of pictures that, Marlene Rodgers notes, "come out of [his] inkwell" (15). Walter Moser goes even further in his interpretation of the film, as he argues that Greenaway presents "the reality that emerges from the book" as "a mere theatrical setting resulting from [Prospero's] magically efficient Word" (57, my translation).
My contention is that Julie Taymor's recent adaptation of The Tempest (2010) improves on Greenaway's strategy thanks to one main change. As my title suggests, Taymor's approach has a lot in common with Greenaway's specular structures. Taymor, however, draws new conclusions from a similar pattern by selecting another nexus than Prospero's books. The film's major innovation is not the gender switch from Prospero to Prospera, but the choice to present an elaborate apparatus of articulated lenses and planetary models as the fountainhead of Prospera's powers (Fig. 1). By displacing the focus to Prospera's optical machine, Taymor's adaptation proposes a new "take" or "grid" (Stam, Literature 364) on the play. Whereas Greenaway treats reading and writing activities as the foundation of the play's drama and metadrama, Taymor reshuffles the play's stakes by foregrounding visual issues rather than verbal/oral ones.
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