The plays by Shakespeare have been adapted countless times. However, the original plays are often themselves based on other stories, or historical accounts. The history plays, for example, are...Show moreThe plays by Shakespeare have been adapted countless times. However, the original plays are often themselves based on other stories, or historical accounts. The history plays, for example, are written on the basis of historical accounts. In this sense, they are already adaptations in their own right. This makes any adaptation of one of his plays a double adaptation; an adaptation of an adaptation. This thesis will take this notion as its starting point. It will take a look at how Shakespeare used his sources in Coriolanus, and after analysing this play, two adaptations for the screen will be analysed, Ralph Fiennes 2011 film and Robert LePage’s 2019 stage adaptation. The focus of the analyses will be on which themes are emphasised in a particular adaptation, and how these themes are informed by the times in which the work was created. Fiennes and LePage move the political arena away from the speeches Shakespeare uses in his play. Instead, they create a modernised, media arena becomes the place where politicians fight for control over Rome.Show less
This thesis tests the premise that there is a connection between bodily trauma and meaning, and thus between words and wounds, reflected in the metaphorical usage of the word ‘wound’ in Shakespeare...Show moreThis thesis tests the premise that there is a connection between bodily trauma and meaning, and thus between words and wounds, reflected in the metaphorical usage of the word ‘wound’ in Shakespeare’s plays Titus Andronicus and Coriolanus. Conceptual metaphor theory, which claims that our thinking is metaphorical in nature, is used to ascertain the underlying metaphorical concepts that demonstrate that ‘wounds’ are indeed connected to the concept of meaning. The linguistic analyses are aided by the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP). Moreover, the metaphor of the wounded body reflects both the language and the political realities of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras.Show less
