Monday, January 30, 2023

Book Note: Much Ado About Nothing: Kenneth Branagh's Screenplay

Branagh, Kenneth. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare: Screenplay, Introduction, and Notes on the Making of the Movie by Kenneth Branagh: Photographs by Clive Coote
. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.

I've taught Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing in my Shakespeare and Film class nearly every year. But I somehow failed to realize that the screenplay was availble.

I've found the screenplay for Branagh's Henry V to be very interesting, providing telling details that aren't fully revealed in the script. The Much Ado screenplay has fewer moments like that, but they are telling.

I'm providing a few images of places where the script gives us insight into what's going on in the director's mind.

 
 
 
 
And I'm also providing a few images from the section called "The Shoot"—photographs taken on the set with brief descriptive labels.
 
 

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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