Quoting Shakespeare in Twentieth-Century Film

[Introduction]: " In the twentieth century, Shakespeare’s words began to be quoted in a new way: to create film-worlds. Cinema is itself a re-creation of worlds, which feature details for film-makers’ probing camera lenses to explore, minutely textured to a scale not feasible in the live theatre. Without restrictive laws of man or nature as logistical impediments, film-worlds can take on any form imaginable. Familiar landmarks, accents, fashions and brands might tie film-worlds to our own reality, but there is no risk of an audience mistaking the contents for real life. The phrase ‘In a world’ is so ubiquitous in movie trailers as to invite parody or pastiche, but it points to the truism that films create and re-create worlds, which audiences are invited to interpret. Film-makers position limitless interpretive signifiers to achieve world completion for the audience’s benefit, and ‘in a world’ where Shakespeare is among the most cited figures in the history of cinema – a claim easily verified through Douglas Lanier’s exhaustive ‘Film Spin-Offs and Citations’ – the volume of filmic Shakespearean signifiers in the form of references and quotations bears deeper consideration than it has been given in previous scholarship."