Table of Contents

Part I: Doing It “Straight”

Chapter 1—Michael Radford’s The Merchant of Venice

Chapter 2—Kenneth Branagh’s As You Like It

Chapter 3—Julie Taymor’s The Tempest

Chapter 4—Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing

Part II: BBC’s ShakespeaRe-Told—Retelling Shakespeare for Political Correctness

Chapter 5—BBC’s ShakespeaRe-Told Much Ado About Nothing, dir. Brian Percival

Chapter 6—BBC’s ShakespeaRe-Told The Taming of the Shrew, dir. David Richards

Chapter 7— BBC’s ShakespeaRe-Told A Midsummer Night’s Dream, dir. Ed Fraiman

Conclusion: Girl Power or Will Power?

Epilogue: Bridget Jones’s Baby

About the Author

Magdalena Cieslak is assistant professor of English at the University of Lódz.

Reviews

The field of academic research on Shakespeare and screen adaptations has been rapidly expanding over the past decades, and Cieslak’s interdisciplinary study provides a welcome critical addition. . . In a highly topical book, also considering the ongoing #MeToo debate, the author explores the tensions and negotiations between early modern attitudes towards gender and the way twenty-first century adaptations relate to those issues in terms of current gender politics. . . . With all the insightful analysis in her timely book, Cieslak has hopefully also provided an impetus for further research in this highly topical field.
*Sederi Yearbook*

Magdalena Cieslak’s Screening Gender offers insightful readings of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies and their representation in twenty-first-century film. In a comprehensive survey, she identifies the early modern constructions of gender, marriage, and female sexuality embedded in Shakespeare’s texts and illuminates the ways they are replicated and sometimes interrogated in cinematic adaptations.
*Virginia Mason Vaughan, Clark University*