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Shakespeare on Screen: The Henriad. Edited by Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin. Rouen: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2008. Pp. 358. 21 Euros, paper.
Reviewed by Michael Anderegg
Shakespeare on Screen: The Henriad brings together edited and expanded versions of seminar papers presented at the International Shakespeare Conference in Stratford-upon-Avon in August 1996. The eleven essays, to which an excellent "Filmo-Bibliography" by José Ramón Díaz Fernández has been appended, are roughly arranged to follow the historical chronology of the Henriad itself: three essays on Richard II, two essays on the Henry IV plays, five essays on Henry V, and one essay detailing the ways in which the Henriad has been cited in the popular cultural products of film and television. The focus on Shakespeare's second tetralogy is welcome, given that these plays, apart from Henry V, have not received the kind of attention commonly afforded to the tragedies and comedies in discussions of Shakespeare and the media. At the same time, perhaps inevitably, there is some overlap from essay to essay. More problematic is the range of awareness among the various authors of the distinctions that need to be made when media adaptations of Shakespeare are discussed. In the very first essay, for example, Charles Forker notes that "no one . . . has yet succeeded in capturing the splendor or complexity of Richard II on film, although at least nine attempts to bring this most pageant-like of Shakespeare's histories to the screen have been recorded" (21), words that are partly quoted in the editors' preface as well. This is an odd comment, given that there have been no films of Richard II, period. Forker's essay lumps together live television broadcasting, kinescope, videotape, digital media, and motion...