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    Plan détaillé Texte intégral Text and context, from romance to war, and backwards Let the Stars in, from Shakespeare romance to Hollywood starmania “Oxbridge” oaths and perjuries, “Que la fête commence” visual ironies and comic anagnorisis Hollywood reconstructed: is a happy ending something to be? “Beauty is bound by judgement of the eye”: happy ending for Love’s Labour’s Lost? Notes de bas de page Auteur

    Lectures de Love's Labour's Lost

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    Table des matières

    From Duos to Duets, Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) or the Tempos of Musical Shakespeare

    Anne-Marie Costantini-Cornède

    p. 209-223

    Texte intégral Text and context, from romance to war, and backwards Let the Stars in, from Shakespeare romance to Hollywood starmania “Oxbridge” oaths and perjuries, “Que la fête commence” visual ironies and comic anagnorisis Hollywood reconstructed: is a happy ending something to be? “Beauty is bound by judgement of the eye”: happy ending for Love’s Labour’s Lost? Notes de bas de page Auteur

    Texte intégral

    1Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000), titled in the credits as “a musical romantic comedy1,” recaptures the essence of one of the playwright’s most festive comedies of wit, the “Pleasant Conceited Comedy2”. This is Kenneth Branagh’s fourth cinematic essay in Hollywood-Shakespeare borrowing from the dynamics of Hollywood action movies or comedy conventions, after Much Ado About Nothing (1993), the symphonic comedy of wonders3 perfectly adjusted to the conventions of the 30s screwball comedy, or the swashbuckling Errol Flynn scenes in Hamlet (1996). This time, Branagh opts for a more radical transformation, choosing the musical as well as a “1930s impressionistic setting4” to rejuvenate both the play and the genre5. The odd, “aborted within, unconsummated without6” play was indeed originally rejected by learned writers (Pope, Johnson, Dryden) and neglected by stage directors until the early 20th century. As for the musical, if it successfully boosted the masses’morale when it appeared at the time of the Great Depression, it was clearly forgotten by the “rock generations7” and nineties popular masses.

    2Only about twenty-five per cent of the original text was actually retained. The narrative unfolds, basically propelled up by the song-and-dance routines. The adaptive process is not so much a radical one as one involving displacements or substitutions, a series of shifting, soft transitions operating in a seamless, fluid way from inner (play)-text to musical numbers8, then back again.

    3Despite creative insights, the bold adaptive approach (“a radical ‘appropriation’ or ‘subversion’?9”) somehow failed to convince. This may also be due to the play’s specificities, –a very “problem comedy” itself, as it is not framed after the usual ternary rhythm (“festivity; festivity broken off amid confusion; return to normality and reconciliation amid renewed festivity10”), and one lying on a minimalist script: “[l]e scénario n’est guère prometteur11.” As the lovers’weddings are left pending, the story ends (or does it?) on an unfulfilling ending or unpredictable denouement, a suspended happy ending that allows no ‘wonder’ or clear comic catharsis12.

    4There is also the question of omnipresent poetry. Here, as Michael Edwards puts it, is Shakespeare a poet-dramatist more than ever. Sonnets appear in impromptu or as a spontaneous resurgence in the very heart of dialogues, as if poetry itself was the main topos. The sophisticated verbal magic of this ‘play-poetry’ (“There’s magic in the web of it13”) rests upon the imitation of Petrarch’s conceits or Lyly’s euphuism. This is but a very precious style, a copia and highly stylised mode of writing14 on which Branagh-turned-choreographer ‘in the wild fields’ superimposes the joyful magic of musical. Form for form, the filmmaker (cor)-responds to the original mannerist process of imitation by way of substitutions. This is not so much to deconstruct the play’s sophistications as to capture the essence of the merry and the comic per se in his own way or maniera. The approach represents a clear homage (albeit interspersed with hints of parody) at both the play’s poetics and the genre of the musical.

    5Yet, given that verbal wit or satire of wit are the main objects of the play, resorting to such a conventionally dated genre could be questioned. Does the adaptive process entail a gain or an accretion or else bring new meaning to the original model, or on the contrary, does it entail a loss of authenticity? In other terms, has Branagh this time gone too far and been lost in adaptation?

    Text and context, from romance to war, and backwards

    6As he merges the play and 1930s song-and-dance numbers involving the mythical duo Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers, here orchestrated by faithful Patrick Doyle15, the director borrows from the Gershwin (Ira and George), Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern or Cole Porter, whose lyrics are “as witty, in their own way, as Shakespeare was in his time, and just as full of conceits and verbal trickery16.” The adaptive process entails major changes, cuts or suppressions, such as the Masque of the Muscovites and the Pageant of the Nine Worthies which are replaced by number sets. Popularisation is the key word and the process represents an effective dialogical process also meant to sustain diegetic clarity and fluidity, which are basic formal features of Hollywood cinema. Hollywood art, Pierre Berthomieu explains, is didactic and meant to attract mass audiences. It exalts a sense of the entertainment and the spectacular borrowed from the 30s classical “grande forme17.” Another basic feature is “symphonic” or “narrative” music18 accompanying the action, which in turn acts as a narrative-sustaining technique.

    7The film’s narrative also hinges on a two-part, diptych-like structure that reflects two levels of reality, the fictive (or semi-fictive) kingdom of Navarre and the historical reality, Europe on the eve of war: “[This is] a terrific holiday romance which is interrupted by the real world, by the news that the King of France has died and by the advent of World War II19.” “Newsreels From Navarre Cinetone News”, five inserts in black and white (a parallel with a play’s five-act structure?) present both the characters and the news of the world by means of a duplicative, three-fold (visual, narrative and aural) mode, the reporter’s voice (“September 1939”) and big newspaper headlines fully displayed (“War is Imminent”). As the inserts displace the theatrical, dialogical mode, they serve as an effective summary interspersed with the ironic comments of a chappy reporter heard in voice-over, this supposedly reproducing the journalistic codes of the thirties. The protagonists are first seen returning to Navarre after military operations. This is just after Hitler has invaded Poland. Young Ferdinand of Navarre (Alessandro Nivola) appears shot in a frontal medium close up, silent and solemn, wearing a military uniform. Close ups on the other boys’jackets reveal laconic nicknames, hence “Bad Boy” of course allotted to arch-jester Berowne, the “merrier man” and “mirth-mocking jest” (2.1.66-67) of the play. Branagh, who played a convincing Benedick, is perfectly jubilant in the role.

    8While the play starts somewhat abruptly with Navarre’s solemn oath and legal ordinance to create a “little Academe” (1.1.14-15) and for the court to fast, study and above all shun women for three long years and the pleasant comedy of wit gently mocks the protagonists from the start pointing at the artificial solemnity of the oath, the film opts for a direct narrative mode, the inserts in fact “un-dramatising” the play. Facts and events are orally presented in a “rushing through”, casual and distancing manner: “Ominous clouds of war may be gathering over Europe, but here in Navarre, […] the four intent to retire for a vigorous three years of study; they’ll sleep little, eat and drink less, […] and devote themselves instead to an inspiring programme of self improvement, […] a real feast for bookworms.” The stern, misogynistic proclamation laconically entitled “No Women” then appears, pinned everywhere on Navarre walls. If the didactic, duplicative (showing and telling) technique is an effective way to convey the main information and the formal displacement from stage directness to narrative indirection does achieve narrative clarity, it may also be considered too explicit.

    9Does modern contextualization bring new meaning or such accretion as Bazin refers to (“sur-théâtre”; “surcroît de théâtralité20”) or on the contrary lead to incoherence? Branagh felt that the film needed to convey a “strong sense of reality, […] of location and the world around21” for the King’s motives to be understood. But this may be a problem as regards aesthetic or psychological coherence. As Crowl puts it, “These gentlemen […] are trying to avoid the unavoidable: entanglement with the wider world22,” which may appear somewhat inconsistent. Besides, the realistic construct grounded on the “verisimilitude” effects or “effets de réel23” that partake of an economy of “the plausible”, may not appear quite in keeping with the genre’s strict codes and conventions. Musicals, Jacqueline Nacache explains, are still basically grounded on escapist fantasy, a sense of the spectacular sustained by big budgets and an effective star system: “Malgré le fait qu’il flirte […] avec des sujets plus quotidiens, voire plus sérieux, le film musical américain est resté avec obstination réfractaire à tout réalisme24.” Here however, we may simply have parody or pseudo realism, a stylized convention to be taken as such and certainly not too seriously. This, precisely, is what the play does with pseudo historical names and places.

    Let the Stars in, from Shakespeare romance to Hollywood starmania

    10The Ladies of France’s nightly arrival in exteriors, in the most wild-field-like appropriate way, is a spectacular way of visualising the play’s poetic atmosphere. It partakes of an in-between technique, both imitation and parody, resting on the use and abuse of conventions. As one watches punts peacefully gliding on a peaceful river under velvet dark and moonlit skies and the festival of bright colours and pastels for the Ladies’gowns, red for the Princess (Alicia Silverstone), green for Maria (Carmen Ejogo), orange for Katherine (Emily Mortimer) and blue for Rosaline (Natasha McEhlone). The amiable go-between “lovemonger” Boyet (Richard Clifford) is seen following apart and biking along the shore, one cannot but experiment this “yes, of course” reaction at recognising the conventional aesthetic codes. The all too ostentatious parade also partakes of the usual Hollywood starmania providing for stars’spectacular entrances, which in turn enhances their status as stars. The Hollywood star system (“politique du ‘ star system’25”) not only gives the star most prominent roles, but creates films for his/her very sake: “La star déborde largement le simple ‘personnage du film26’”. The star, Edgar Morin explains, is granted an “extra-personality” (“surpersonnalité27”). Such a star-enhancing effect had already been achieved, albeit in a more conventional way, with the credits proudly displaying famous actors’names on a crimson red velvet cloth: the British, Branagh, of course, Lester, and the Americans, Silverstone, Nivola or Lillard. As usual, the filmmaker resorts to a mixed, multi-cultural and multi-talented cast, with reputed actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company (Briers, Mc Gowan, Tymothy Spall, Clifford, Jimmy Yuill for Constable Dull28) and young cinema ones.

    11The highly poetic sequences also contrast with lowbrow song-and-dance routines. The precious, highbrow euphuism of Berowne/Rosaline’s “Did not I dance” long dialogue (2.1.117 to 2.1.124) seamlessly dissolving into Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields’“I Won’t Dance” after the first, strikingly reiterated line has been uttered, is drastically deflated by rather straightforward lyrics: “I won’t dance. Why should I? I won’t dance. Merci beaucoup!” This clearly responds to Hollywood objectives of mass audience accessibility. Whether this represents a clever adaptive process or one that entails what Walter Benjamin calls ‘a decay of the aura’ of the original model, is left to discussion:

    “[W]hat is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object. […] [T]hat which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art29.”

    12In the same way as mass reproduction may entail the sacrifice of uniqueness, blatant modernisations or postmodern pastiches resorting to debunking or (imitation-parody) standards may entail a sacrifice of authenticity. Here dialogue simplifications and suppressions may entail too great a loss of the euphuistic, sophisticated poetics forming the play. The play becomes a straightforwardly understandable romance. Branagh felt all the freer to reinterpret the text and make decisions in “cutting [difficult] language30,” as he had been a good Bard-pupil so far and the play had been neglected anyway. This last point, precisely, may have been regarded as debatable.

    13Another example of potential loss of authenticity is the systematic curtailing or suppression of comic, farce or burlesque scenes in films (or stage productions for that matter). Comic subplot characters serve as parody counterfoils, mimicking protagonists’ (mis)adventures, or here, debunking highbrow music-and-dance-romance imagery, hence Moth’s allusion: “study three years to two words, the dancing horse will tell you” (1.2.49-50). Tymothy Spall enacts Armado, the commedia dell’Arte Braggart as the “fantastical Spaniard” prone to all malapropisms (“His heart may be at the right place but his language is all over the place”) here extravagantly celebrating country wench Jaquenetta (Stefania Rocca) on a burlesque tuned by Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You” and occasionally gratifying poor Boy Moth (Anthony O’Donnell) with a few kicks. Witty, fool-wise Moth’s role is clearly debunked and reduced to that of a mere counterfoil. Low style, Spall asserts, is a real challenge in cinema: “Low style is thick, broad, theatrical, and I’m trying to push it beyond the bounds of theatricality31.” Costard, enacted by an efficient and “kind of Groucho Marx” Nathan Lane, also acknowledges the difficulty: “This is Shakespeare revelling in language32.” But the comic is here duly retained and the People all duly involved in farce and pastiches. Even the dignified “Academes” conspicuously turned into a couple of pedants Holofernia (Geraldine McEwan) and Nathaniel (Richard Briers) should be indulging in romance and get lost in musical on Kern’s and Dorothy Fields’“The Way You Look Tonight”, no less contaminated than the rest by the festive atmosphere, this represents a clear disruption and deconstruction of the play’s system of direct oppositions: youth/natural love/romance versus experience/erudition/austerity.

    “Oxbridge” oaths and perjuries, “Que la fête commence” visual ironies and comic anagnorisis

    14The oath, perjury and “counter-oath” of love and wooing climactic sequences take place in the lush Navarre library, “a sort of fantasy Oxbridge […] [meant for] the audience to enjoy a visual escapism33.” The sequences oscillate between homage and parody. The four competitors in oath, King, Dumaine (Adrian Lester), Longaville (Matthew Lillard) first utter their oath (or part of it, the first ten lines are missing), then naturally shift into (friendly) competition in musical as is performed the first collective number I’d Rather Charleston, drawn from Gershwin’s 1926 Lady, Be Good! with Astaire and his sister Adele. Ironically the song’s title and very basic lyrics34 de facto deconstruct the quartet’s superficial resolutions in a wink. The self-reflexive mood is prescient throughout.

    15In the play, the perjury scene starts with Berowne’s description of lovers being “none but minstrels like of sonneting” (4.3.154), an ironic image of a lover-poet-singer that ultimately turns into a positive one when the four finally admit their love and the necessity of perjury. Here the sequence starts with an allusion to the delicious love disorder by means of an ostentatious visual cliché, Cupid’s arrow incongruously hit in a statue head’s helmet, a comic, literal visualisation of the line “This love is as mad as Ajax” (4.3.5-6). In the same way, the textual image of an all-destructive Cupid, “it kills sheep, it kills me, I a sheep” (4.3.6-7), is here rendered by such another incongruous anamorphosis, the image of a sheep falling dead on its side outside. These purely gratuitous images cannot be understood without full knowledge of the text. This is yet another self-reflexive element and wink at the highbrow audience, and also an indirect homage paid by the careful screenwriter to gratuitous, comic images of the play.

    “This love is as mad as Ajax” (4.3.5).

    The library sequence DVD Pathé Distribution Limited, 2004. TDR.

    16The film follows Hollywood conventions throughout, but it does so in such a deliberate way that this obviously appears as a second level of meaning approach. The systematic wink-at-the-spectator technique creates a comic distance, which avoids the flaws of “soap opera” or caricatural representations. The sub-genre also perfectly epitomises the sense of the spectacular and the self-reflexivity proper to the whole Hollywood genre. Indeed, the musical was a successful genre sense of the spectacular specific to Hollywood: “ll se pose en conscience du cinéma hollywoodien dont il est le miroir. Genre réflexif entre tous, la comédie musicale n’en finit pas de refléter l’institution qui la produit35.”

    17The merry now prevails and the sequence unfolds on a two-fold, “musicomic” adaptive mood. Berowne is turned into a jubilant witness and omniscient voyeur indeed, “like a demigod here sit I in the sky” (4.3.75), as, concealed behind a gliding panel and more than once about to fall under the shock of surprise, he can watch the torments of his new companions in love and perjury: “The triumviry, the corner cap of society” (4.3.49). Each protagonist is allowed to perform his number, King first, Longaville then, and finally Dumaine, his own perjury tuned by Gershwin’s “I Got a Crush on You” smartly executed on tables and chairs turned stairs steps, the quartet is now made complete “Four woodcocks in a dish!” (4.3.78). The protagonists indulge in hide-and-play games, disappearing behind tables and furniture. Impish Berowne pretends to fustigate his companions, “With moon-like men of inconstancy” (4.3.172-176) and is even seen trying to swallow the lie-revealing sonnet letter brought by the two intrusive “turtles” Costard and Jaquenetta. Once the evil admitted and the turtles duly sent away, all jesting is over, and he is left with the gratifying task of excusing the perjury and discharging the four of their obligations: “now prove/Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn” (4.3.250). The definitely defeated man of mocks now seen from behind, his face unseen, solemnly tap-dances full assessment of love and necessary perjury. The first lines of the iambic pentameter soliloquy (“Have at you, then, affection’s men-at-arms,…” [4.3.289]), definitely tolls the bell of austerity and introduces a new tempo: “Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young” (4.3.289). The satirist-turned-legal-representative of the new love credo may now conjure up the central image that will revert and subvert the previous, misogynist one: “They are the books, the arts, the academes” (4.3.325).

    18As the four swiftly pass outside, women join in and the four couples find themselves magically gathered for the first time to perform the next fantasy number, Berlin’s most lyrical Top Hat’s “Dancing Cheek to Cheek” (“Heaven, I’m in heaven…”). This is escapism, from reality as well as the play’s fiction, and poetic anticipation of the Happy Ending. With the boys back to the library and ‘real fiction’ again, the shifting transitions from play-text to musical signal the playful subdivisions defining the film’s specific dialogism yet another time.

    19The sequence hinges on movement as well as enhanced comic effects as it displays a full panoply of Hollywood slapstick: farce or burlesque tricks gags. Deriving from the burlesque beginnings (Keaton), Hollywood soon became a true slapstick machine (“véritable usine du slapstick36”), brimful with gags or equivocal situations. The gag (“mutant de la comédie37”), a most prominent Hollywood comedy figure, often plays on spatial mise en scene effects and is thus prone to impart rhythm and momentum to the narrative. Both Branagh and Joss Whedon (2013) used slapstick a lot in their versions of Much Ado38, resorting to hide-and-play equivoques, spectaculars falls, or turning the protagonists into ridiculous “sprayed Springlers”-voyeurs inevitably seen and mocked.

    Navarre (Alessandro Nivola) and Longaville (Matthew Tillard): hide-and-play slapstick

    Dumaine (Adrian Lester) in perilous equilibrium on… “I Got a Crush on You”

    20Due to the dizzying succession of musical numbers, the sequence is also featured by the dynamics of exacerbated movement and propelled by such action images typical of Hollywood cinema action. As Gilles Deleuze explains:

    “The action-image inspires a cinema of behaviour (behaviourism) […] [O]n the one hand the situation must permeate the character deeply and continuously, and on the other hand the character who is thus permeated must burst into action, at discontinuous intervals39.”

    21Characters are definitely “permeated” before they get fully involved and “burst into” action (“acting-out”). As the sequence ends with the lyrical image of the four supernaturally soaring into the air (“Heaven…”), this represents yet another of these comic, literal visualisations or anamorphoses the film indulges in, albeit this time an internal, self-reflexive one, not about the textual model but the imported song.

    22With the second four-coupled, extrapolative number, Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” the film marks a clear escalation in the representation of romance, from the gently humoristic (Charleston) to the lyrical (Cheek to Cheek) and now sheer eroticism. This “soft porn” vein, Rothwell remarks, is “[n]ot really gratuitous for the sake of sex”, but actually correlates with the bawdy puns of the play: “Harmless words like ‘thorn’ and ‘gate’ take on phallic and vaginal significance; ‘prick,’ and ‘pricket’ set off an avalanche of smutty associations40.”

    “Saint Cupid, then! And, soldiers, to the field!” (4.3.339) Colourful harmonies

    Comedy gone wild

    Hollywood reconstructed: is a happy ending something to be?

    23With the announcement of the King of France’s death, the comedy ultimately plays a bad trick on the protagonists. The brutal intrusion of Mercade (Daniel Hill), the grim Mercury of the play, marks a structural counterpoint (“the scene begins to cloud”) or the main offbeat or jarring note by which is introduced the melancholy vein: “suddenly the cool wind of realism blows into the play41.” In a circular movement, the foolish youths who had unwisely boasted of their abilities to chaste austerity are forced by an abrupt turn of fate to accept the originally self-imposed and soon rejected penance, now requested by the ladies as a token of true love: “Then at the expiration of the year,/Come and challenge me…” (5.2.803-804). François Laroque sees here an example of subverted traditions: “The period of penitence and austerity to which Berowne (Biron) and his friends are sentenced at the end of the play is as unexpected in the world of comedy as winter’s triumph over summer would be in a folk play. It is a good example of the way Shakespeare has of making use of traditions yet at the same time subverting them42.” Here, “Shakespeare has actually upset the threefold sequence of the festive comedy, […], only to stick more closely to the binary rhythm of the old popular calendar, in which one moves ritually from one extreme to another, with Lent inevitably taking over Carnival43.” Such a succession of extremes, winter and summer, melancholy and joy, are primary oppositions also expressed in the final Cuckoo/Owl song. The film’s two-part structure could also evoke such an opposition between winter and spring, lightness and sadness, Apollo and Mercury.

    24If the final song is suppressed, the central opposition Apollo/Mercury, pleasures and revels versus grim austerity is here effectively rendered by the last main number, Gershwin’s nostalgic “O No They Can’t Take That Away from Me”. The departure sequence links the realistic mode with period details (the typical 30s DC-3)44, then expands on the nostalgic mood by quoting Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca famous farewell sequence, the moving face to face in the misty airport of the other mythical Hollywood duo Bogart/Bergman, alias Rick and Ilsa. The men, crushed by the events, are shot in (slight) high angle shots. A succession of close-ups shows their saddened faces turned up towards the “Ladies above”, waving at them and irremediably disappearing. The film seems to be responding to the play’s (Mercury) demands of austerity and ambiguity.

    25But this suspended denouement, an unwilling suspension of happiness, bears such excessive uncertainty (will the weddings actually take place?) as could hardly beset the classical Hollywood film. Serge Chauvin discusses Hollywood Happy Endings in such terms:

    “No matter what genre they belong to (except for some all-male war or prison movies), classical Hollywood films usually are, or at least contain, romances. Therefore, unless the story is inherently tragic or the characters prove to be too transgressive, marriage or its prospect seems to be the most typical closure45.”

    26This, even if, as Dominique Sipière remarks, “Of course, everybody knows that Hollywood endings were not all that happy. But they tended to afford some sort of happiness for the spectator through rather diversified means46.” A return to the usual Happy Ending, or at least to “some sort of happiness” may be what is expected by or even owed to the Hollywood spectator. The final sequence reworks the play without subverting the tradition. As Branagh coins a happy ending, he clearly re-establishes the wonder mood seemingly forgotten in the ‘problem comedy’. As a starting point, we mentioned a diptych-like structure and the parallel, coexisting dimensions of story/History, the private and the public spheres but temporarily coalescing. Now Branagh will extrapolate and operate a clear merging or superimposition of the two dimensions, making fiction and reality coalesce in global harmony and a kind of final comic coincidentia. This may also correlate with the Cuckoo/Owl final song’s implicit ambiguity. The song could indeed be interpreted as one containing a reversible truth, either a direct opposition between the two principles of the gay and the sad as the successions of stanzas about the two seasons would suggest, or could, as Edwards contends, imply the ultimate union of the merry and the melancholy, the equal handling of winter and spring seemingly enhancing a circular pattern and imparting the meaning of endless reversibility and mutability: “Les deux parties de la chanson correspondent même aux deux parties de la pièce, avant et après l’intervention de la mort: aux jeux à la cour de Navarre et au vrai amour à gagner dans les ermitages et les hospices47.”

    27A visual summary in strikingly accelerated (‘cormorant-devouring’) time technique then shows the full four-year war, “Fall of France”, the Princess’s arrest, the Boys actively involved as parachutists or doctors nursing the sick. Rosaline’s sophisticated penance (“Visit the speechless sick and still converse/With groaning wretches” [5.2.831-832]) meant to amend the arch-mocker, the “man replete with mocks” (5.2.824), is here displaced by a realistic anamorphosis and the most improbable penance commuted into a common labour: a collective love’s labour by no means lost since the idle aristocrats have now left the Navarre-Arcadian cocoon to work for the good of all.

    28The film narrative thus reaches the ultimate apotheosis, intermingling public History and private story to signify universal harmony: the couples finally reunited amidst Victory Day exhilarating scenes and a general Liberation of happiness. The optimistic note of victorious romance is also signalled by the final shift to colour and oral duplication of the central metaphor by Berowne heard in voice-over: “From women’s looks, this doctrine I derive. […] They are the books, the arts, the academes” (4.3.323-325). The ostentatious happy ending only partly corresponds to the play’s original circular pattern, as romance is not suspended but made effective. This could be seen as too big a transgression and a sacrifice of authenticity to meet Hollywood standards. Again, does this entail a gain or a loss?

    “Beauty is bound by judgement of the eye”: happy ending for Love’s Labour’s Lost?

    29This essay in “Hollywood-Shakespeare” was a commercial failure. The film made less than 284.291 dollars at the box office in the United States and only 527 000 pounds in the United Kingdom48. If the adaptive process was found effective, the public and some critics saw there an unfinished, confusing and hybrid product flawed by cuts, amateurishness or formal indecision: “Shakespeare’s text only survives in fragments, [the songs]’lyrical wit approximates the play’s linguistic invention. […] Music and theme coalesce in facilitative fashion. As Michael Anderegg observes, ‘music and dance reinforce or at least complement the characters and action’49.” Historical evolution, Crowl suggests, may be at stake. The musical genre was “swallowed by Elvis, Rock’n’roll, and Hair50.” Indeed, as the still prevailing 30s classical form experienced a strong revival with 70s space opera (Stanley Kubrick) or neo-realism (Scorsese), then with 80s-90s gigantic super-productions and blockbusters (Spielberg, Lucas’s Star Wars…), this entailed an escalation in the mode of representation of the spectacular: lush sets, bigger budgets and a profusion of special effects. The romantic musical comedy adapted from an “obscure” play (Branagh’s words) was then bound to pass unnoticed. But as Hollywood cinema endlessly revisits itself, “demythologizing” and “re-classicizing” its own myths and forms, the musical, by now a classic, could become a profitable (“Hollywood”) commodity again.

    30The Shakespeare-in-musical adaptation represents a modern, mannerist imitatio process mirroring both Shakespeare’s self-conscious, mannerist imitation of precious euphuism and Hollywood’s self-conscious, mannerist imitation of its own forms, an aesthetic stand that Claude-Gilbert Dubois would refer to as “differential imitation” or “imitation in difference51.” After all, it is the privilege of filmmakers-adaptors-auteurs to impose their maniera and fully assert their bold creativity. Asian, Japanese or Finnish Shakespeare exporting or importing directors did so before (Kurosawa, Kaurismäki, Abela…) by truncating, reversing, subverting, cross-culturally re-appropriating or re-writing the text.

    31Branagh is not merely the Bard-lover and fame-seeker trying to out-Olivier Big Brother Olivier. Far from yielding to the “mocking tongues” of success, he had another go with As You Like It (2006), with Lester and Blessed (Henry V’s Exeter) in–not a box office success either, but never mind, the genre has survived. Today, Branagh is by no means done with Shakespeare. He has just directed Macbeth for the stage, a tragedy this time52. More will certainly follow.

    Notes de bas de page

    1See also Branagh Kenneth’s interviews, DVD, “Special Features”, Pathé Distribution, 2004, as well as the comments in the “Original Theatrical Trailer” and “Out-Takes”. All quotations not explained by notes will be taken from DVD interviews. This is “A Shakespeare Film Company” production, the independent company created in 1999 by Branagh and David Barron.

    2Shakespeare William, “A Pleasant Conceited Comedy Called Love’s Labour’s Lost /Comédie plaisante et spirituelle intitulée Peines d’amour perdues”, Déprats Jean-Michel et Venet Gisèle (ed.), Shakespeare. Comédies I (Œuvres complètes, V), Paris, Gallimard, coll. «Bibliothèque de la Pléiade», 2013, p. 609-853. All the quotations are taken from this edition.

    3Edwards Michael, in Shakespeare et la comédie de l’émerveillement, Paris, Desclée du Brouwer, 2003, describes the “mirth” or “merry” or the first movement of comedy as the principle of gaiety; it is followed by the sombre movement, chaos or uncertainty, then the merry (“allégresse”) again and final wonder: “un monde nouveau […] l’émotion qui accompagne cet accès à l’imprévu, en la nommant wonder, l’émerveillement”, (p. 15).

    4Branagh’s Shakespeare’s cinematic career and productions range from 1989 to 2006. He acted for the stage and also played Iago in Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995). See Jackson Russell, “From Play-Script to Screen-Play”, Jackson R. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, (2004), 2007, p. 15-34.

    5“Well, here’s one [a comedy] that Shakespeare wrote and wasn’t performed for 200 years after his death and […] a genre that really hasn’t worked for the last forty years. You know, tough sell”. Branagh Kenneth, in Crowl Samuel, The Films of Kenneth Branagh, Wesport, Connecticut/London, Praeger, 2006, note 2, p. 197. The author reports an interview of the director by Mark Caro, “Top Hat—and Tales”, Chicago Tribune, Sec. 5 (June 22, 2000), p. 6. See also chapter 9, p. 149-165.

    6Whitworth Charles, “Love’s Labour’s Lost: Aborted Plays Within, Unconsummated Play Without”, Laroque François (ed.), The Show Within: Dramatic and Other Inserts. English Renaissance Drama (1550-1642), Montpellier, Université Paul-Valéry, coll. «Astraea 4», vol. 1, 1992, p. 109. See also Venet Gisèle, “Notice”, Shakespeare, Comédies I, op. cit., p. 1326-1327.

    7Crowl Samuel, Shakespeare at The Cineplex: the Kenneth Branagh Era, Athens, Ohio University Press, 2003, p. 40.

    8Crowl Samuel, in The Films of Kenneth Branagh, ibid., explains that Astaire sang these songs “either on stage (Lady, Be Good!), or in movie musicals (Swing Time, Roberta, Top Hat, and Follow the Fleet).” For a list and historical precisions on numbers as well as details on the cast and actor’s careers, see also Crowl Samuel, The Films of Kenneth Branagh, op. cit., p. 153-154, or Shakespeare at the Cineplex …, op. cit., p. 29-46.

    9Branagh Kenneth, interviewed in Thornton Burnett M. and Wray R. (ed.), “From the Horse’s Mouth: Branagh on the Bard”, Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle, Houndmills/Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000, p. 174.

    10Laroque François, Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage, Lloyd Janet (trans.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 204.

    11Edwards Michael, Shakespeare: Le poète au théâtre, Paris, Fayard, 2009, p. 59. See also Venet Gisèle, “Notice”, op. cit., p. 1325.

    12“Un messager ayant annoncé la mort du roi de France, les Françaises s’en vont, laissant en suspens la question des mariages.” Edwards Michael, Shakespeare: Le poète au théâtre, ibid.

    13Ibid.

    14See Venet Gisèle, “Notice”, op. cit., p. 1333-1334: “[Une] écriture hautement stylisée et critique […], la satire du bel esprit symbolisé par Eupheus, […] l’imbrication d’intrigues multiples, un goût de la répétition par la multiplication d’exemples parallèles” The People of Navarre, Holofernes “the pedant”, or Don Adriano de Armado are the objects of satire, but so are the aristocrats, even Berowne himself is a satirist.

    15patrick Doyle was already in charge of the score in the previous films. The technical team includes the usual collaborators apart from Branagh (the screenwriter) and David Barron as co-producers, Tim Harvey for the settings, Alex Thomson for the photography, or Anna Buruma for costumes. Editing is left to Neil and Dan Farrell. Here the new names are Stuart Hopps the choreographer and Ian Adam, in charge of supervising the singing.

    16Branagh Kenneth, in Crowl Samuel, op. cit., p. 39.

    17Berthomieu Pierre, Le cinéma hollywoodien: Le temps du renouveau, Paris, Nathan, 2003, p. 30-31.

    18Ibid., p. 32-33. Chion Michel, in La Musique de film, Paris, Fayard, 1995, p. 207-208, comments on the role of “synchrèse”: music may either accompany the action harmoniously and clarify the narrative or be in “dissonance”, with it, thus producing disruptive effects. See also the notions of “empathy”-“anempathy” (“effet emphatique”; “anempathique”, p. 228).

    19Branagh Kenneth, “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, Official Web Site, [htpp://guildpathe.co.uk./LLL/docs/cont2.html].

    20Bazin André, Qu’est-ce que le cinéma?, vol. 1, Paris, Éditions du Cerf, 2000, p. 140, p. 148. The expression is used about Olivier’s Henry V. See also Bazin’s realism discussed, in Aumont Jacques et al., op. cit., p. 99-100.

    21Branagh Kenneth, “From the Horse’s Mouth”, op. cit., p. 174.

    22Crowl Samuel, Shakespeare, op. cit., p. 43. Crowl Samuel, in The Films, op. cit., p. 16, quotes and analyses Ramona Wray, in “Nostalgia for Navarre: The Melancholic Metacinema of Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost”, Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 30, no 3, 2002: “the protagonists’flight into romance seem self-indulgently irresponsible. […] Such a with-drawal is at least partially politicized” (p. 171). Wray also regrets the untrained cast’s “self-conscious” amateurishness (p. 175).

    23See Aumont Jacques et al., Aesthetics of Film, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1992, p. 123, or “The systematic economy of the plausible”, ibid., p. 115.

    24Nacache Jacqueline, Le film hollywoodien classique, Paris, Nathan, 2001 [1995], p. 93.

    25Nacache Jacqueline, op. cit., p. 46.

    26Ibid., p. 48-49. The italics are in the text.

    27Morin Edgar, Les Stars, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1985 [1957], p. 20. See Nacache Jacqueline, op. cit., p. 49.

    28Silverstone was famous for her role as Cher Horowitz in Clueless (1995), Nivola for Face Off, and Lillard for Scream. Lester was known for his role in Nichols’Primary Colours, but he also played a successful Rosalind in the 1990s As You Like It Jowl’s original all-male stage production. Critics have noticed Silverstone’s rather poor performance and difficult text restitution. Lester and Lane have generally been praised. Two Anglo-Africans (Ejogo and Lester) were included in the cast (but conspicuously not matched).

    29Benjamin Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, (1936), Arendt Hannah (ed.), Illuminations, Zohn Harry (trans.), New York, Schocken Books, p. 221.

    30Branagh Kenneth, “From the Horse’s Mouth: Branagh on the Bard”, op. cit., p. 172.

    31Spall Tymothy, DVD interview, op. cit. The long, tedious Muscovites and Pageant sequences originally shot have been happily suppressed if one can judge from the Out-Takes, incidentally not to be skipped, as they show the actors’enthusiastic work during festive rehearsals.

    32Lane Nathan, DVD interview, op. cit.

    33Branagh Kenneth, “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, Official Web Site, [htpp://guildpathe.co.uk./LLL/docs/cont2.html]. See also French Emma, Selling Shakespeare to Hollywood: The Marketing of Filmed Shakespeare Adaptations from 1989 into the New Millennium, Hatfield, University of Hertfordshire Press, 2006, p. 92-93. She sees here “a kitsch Hollywood pastiche of Englishness, and safe ‘authentic’ creative decisions regarding sets and costumes” (p. 92).

    34See Crowl Samuel, The Films …, op. cit., p. 154.

    35Nacache Jacqueline, op. cit., p. 91.

    36See Nacache Jacqueline, op. cit., p. 25.

    37Ibid., p. 29, and p. 30.

    38Hence Benedick and Beatrice are turned into voyeurs, but watched and mocked by others.

    39Deleuze Gilles, Cinéma I–The Movement-Image, London, The Athlone Press, 2005 [1986], p. 159-160.

    40Rothwell Kenneth S., A History of Shakespeare on Screen: A Century of Film and Television, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004 [1999], p. 250-251.

    41Branagh Kenneth, interviewed by Burnett M. and Wray R., in “From the Horse’s Mouth...’, op. cit., p. 166.

    42Laroque François, op. cit., p. 204.

    43Laroque François, ibid., p. 215.

    44This is also an example of the heritage tradition. See Richard III by Richard Loncraine and Ian Mc Kellen (1996) set at the same period shows similar details, hence Queen Margaret flees at the end in such a typical 30s plane.

    45Chauvin Serge, “‘And they lived happily ever after… Or did they?’ Matrimony and False Ending in (Post-) Classical Hollywood Fictions of Re/Marriage”, Parrey A., Robin I. and Sipière Dominique (ed.), Happy Endings and Films, Paris, Michel Houdiard Éditeur, 2010, p. 40.

    46Sipière Dominique, “‘How do you mean, happy?’ Towards a Typology of Classical Hollywood Endings”, Parrey A., Robin I. et Sipière Dominique (ed.), Happy Endings and Films, op. cit., p. 28. See also Chauvin Serge, op. cit., p. 40-52.

    47Edwards Michael, Le poète au théâtre, op. cit., p. 87.

    48See French Emma, op. cit., p. 91.

    49Wray Ramona, “Shakespeare on Film, 1990-2010”, The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2011, p. 504. The author quotes Michael Anderegg, in Cinematic Shakespeare, Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, 2004, p. 127.

    50Crowl Samuel, The Films …, op. cit., p. 164, p. 165.

    51Dubois Claude-Gilbert, Le Maniérisme, Paris, Nathan, 1979, p. 28. The principle of imitation is omnipresent, «Le maniériste refait “à sa manière”. C’est donc, une fois encore, un problème d’identité qui est posé», p. 24, p. 25.

    52Macbeth, directed by Branagh and Rob Ashford, was first performed at the National Theatre for the Manchester International Festival from 5 July to 20 July 2013, before the company toured in New York.

    Auteur

    • Anne-Marie Costantini-Cornède

      Professeure agrégée à l’université Paris Descartes. Elle a écrit une thèse portant sur les enjeux esthétiques et historiques des adaptations de Shakespeare au cinéma. Elle est l’auteur de plusieurs articles et chapitres d’ouvrage portant sur des films adaptant plusieurs pièces – les « classiques » (Olivier, Welles), les modernes (Branagh, Loncraine, Luhrmann, Rohmer, Brozel), les liens entre peinture et cinéma (Jarman, Greenaway), les regards transhistoriques (Axel, Hytner, Eyre, Radford) ou les réappropriations locales et transnationales (Abela, Kurosawa, Kaurismäki) – publiés dans Shakespeare en devenir, Revue Lisa, Ligeia, PU Sorbonne, Rennes, Rouen et du Havre, Michel Houdiard, L’Harmattan, The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts.

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    1See also Branagh Kenneth’s interviews, DVD, “Special Features”, Pathé Distribution, 2004, as well as the comments in the “Original Theatrical Trailer” and “Out-Takes”. All quotations not explained by notes will be taken from DVD interviews. This is “A Shakespeare Film Company” production, the independent company created in 1999 by Branagh and David Barron.

    2Shakespeare William, “A Pleasant Conceited Comedy Called Love’s Labour’s Lost /Comédie plaisante et spirituelle intitulée Peines d’amour perdues”, Déprats Jean-Michel et Venet Gisèle (ed.), Shakespeare. Comédies I (Œuvres complètes, V), Paris, Gallimard, coll. «Bibliothèque de la Pléiade», 2013, p. 609-853. All the quotations are taken from this edition.

    3Edwards Michael, in Shakespeare et la comédie de l’émerveillement, Paris, Desclée du Brouwer, 2003, describes the “mirth” or “merry” or the first movement of comedy as the principle of gaiety; it is followed by the sombre movement, chaos or uncertainty, then the merry (“allégresse”) again and final wonder: “un monde nouveau […] l’émotion qui accompagne cet accès à l’imprévu, en la nommant wonder, l’émerveillement”, (p. 15).

    4Branagh’s Shakespeare’s cinematic career and productions range from 1989 to 2006. He acted for the stage and also played Iago in Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995). See Jackson Russell, “From Play-Script to Screen-Play”, Jackson R. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, (2004), 2007, p. 15-34.

    5“Well, here’s one [a comedy] that Shakespeare wrote and wasn’t performed for 200 years after his death and […] a genre that really hasn’t worked for the last forty years. You know, tough sell”. Branagh Kenneth, in Crowl Samuel, The Films of Kenneth Branagh, Wesport, Connecticut/London, Praeger, 2006, note 2, p. 197. The author reports an interview of the director by Mark Caro, “Top Hat—and Tales”, Chicago Tribune, Sec. 5 (June 22, 2000), p. 6. See also chapter 9, p. 149-165.

    6Whitworth Charles, “Love’s Labour’s Lost: Aborted Plays Within, Unconsummated Play Without”, Laroque François (ed.), The Show Within: Dramatic and Other Inserts. English Renaissance Drama (1550-1642), Montpellier, Université Paul-Valéry, coll. «Astraea 4», vol. 1, 1992, p. 109. See also Venet Gisèle, “Notice”, Shakespeare, Comédies I, op. cit., p. 1326-1327.

    7Crowl Samuel, Shakespeare at The Cineplex: the Kenneth Branagh Era, Athens, Ohio University Press, 2003, p. 40.

    8Crowl Samuel, in The Films of Kenneth Branagh, ibid., explains that Astaire sang these songs “either on stage (Lady, Be Good!), or in movie musicals (Swing Time, Roberta, Top Hat, and Follow the Fleet).” For a list and historical precisions on numbers as well as details on the cast and actor’s careers, see also Crowl Samuel, The Films of Kenneth Branagh, op. cit., p. 153-154, or Shakespeare at the Cineplex …, op. cit., p. 29-46.

    9Branagh Kenneth, interviewed in Thornton Burnett M. and Wray R. (ed.), “From the Horse’s Mouth: Branagh on the Bard”, Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle, Houndmills/Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000, p. 174.

    10Laroque François, Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage, Lloyd Janet (trans.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 204.

    11Edwards Michael, Shakespeare: Le poète au théâtre, Paris, Fayard, 2009, p. 59. See also Venet Gisèle, “Notice”, op. cit., p. 1325.

    12“Un messager ayant annoncé la mort du roi de France, les Françaises s’en vont, laissant en suspens la question des mariages.” Edwards Michael, Shakespeare: Le poète au théâtre, ibid.

    13Ibid.

    14See Venet Gisèle, “Notice”, op. cit., p. 1333-1334: “[Une] écriture hautement stylisée et critique […], la satire du bel esprit symbolisé par Eupheus, […] l’imbrication d’intrigues multiples, un goût de la répétition par la multiplication d’exemples parallèles” The People of Navarre, Holofernes “the pedant”, or Don Adriano de Armado are the objects of satire, but so are the aristocrats, even Berowne himself is a satirist.

    15patrick Doyle was already in charge of the score in the previous films. The technical team includes the usual collaborators apart from Branagh (the screenwriter) and David Barron as co-producers, Tim Harvey for the settings, Alex Thomson for the photography, or Anna Buruma for costumes. Editing is left to Neil and Dan Farrell. Here the new names are Stuart Hopps the choreographer and Ian Adam, in charge of supervising the singing.

    16Branagh Kenneth, in Crowl Samuel, op. cit., p. 39.

    17Berthomieu Pierre, Le cinéma hollywoodien: Le temps du renouveau, Paris, Nathan, 2003, p. 30-31.

    18Ibid., p. 32-33. Chion Michel, in La Musique de film, Paris, Fayard, 1995, p. 207-208, comments on the role of “synchrèse”: music may either accompany the action harmoniously and clarify the narrative or be in “dissonance”, with it, thus producing disruptive effects. See also the notions of “empathy”-“anempathy” (“effet emphatique”; “anempathique”, p. 228).

    19Branagh Kenneth, “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, Official Web Site, [htpp://guildpathe.co.uk./LLL/docs/cont2.html].

    20Bazin André, Qu’est-ce que le cinéma?, vol. 1, Paris, Éditions du Cerf, 2000, p. 140, p. 148. The expression is used about Olivier’s Henry V. See also Bazin’s realism discussed, in Aumont Jacques et al., op. cit., p. 99-100.

    21Branagh Kenneth, “From the Horse’s Mouth”, op. cit., p. 174.

    22Crowl Samuel, Shakespeare, op. cit., p. 43. Crowl Samuel, in The Films, op. cit., p. 16, quotes and analyses Ramona Wray, in “Nostalgia for Navarre: The Melancholic Metacinema of Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost”, Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 30, no 3, 2002: “the protagonists’flight into romance seem self-indulgently irresponsible. […] Such a with-drawal is at least partially politicized” (p. 171). Wray also regrets the untrained cast’s “self-conscious” amateurishness (p. 175).

    23See Aumont Jacques et al., Aesthetics of Film, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1992, p. 123, or “The systematic economy of the plausible”, ibid., p. 115.

    24Nacache Jacqueline, Le film hollywoodien classique, Paris, Nathan, 2001 [1995], p. 93.

    25Nacache Jacqueline, op. cit., p. 46.

    26Ibid., p. 48-49. The italics are in the text.

    27Morin Edgar, Les Stars, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1985 [1957], p. 20. See Nacache Jacqueline, op. cit., p. 49.

    28Silverstone was famous for her role as Cher Horowitz in Clueless (1995), Nivola for Face Off, and Lillard for Scream. Lester was known for his role in Nichols’Primary Colours, but he also played a successful Rosalind in the 1990s As You Like It Jowl’s original all-male stage production. Critics have noticed Silverstone’s rather poor performance and difficult text restitution. Lester and Lane have generally been praised. Two Anglo-Africans (Ejogo and Lester) were included in the cast (but conspicuously not matched).

    29Benjamin Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, (1936), Arendt Hannah (ed.), Illuminations, Zohn Harry (trans.), New York, Schocken Books, p. 221.

    30Branagh Kenneth, “From the Horse’s Mouth: Branagh on the Bard”, op. cit., p. 172.

    31Spall Tymothy, DVD interview, op. cit. The long, tedious Muscovites and Pageant sequences originally shot have been happily suppressed if one can judge from the Out-Takes, incidentally not to be skipped, as they show the actors’enthusiastic work during festive rehearsals.

    32Lane Nathan, DVD interview, op. cit.

    33Branagh Kenneth, “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, Official Web Site, [htpp://guildpathe.co.uk./LLL/docs/cont2.html]. See also French Emma, Selling Shakespeare to Hollywood: The Marketing of Filmed Shakespeare Adaptations from 1989 into the New Millennium, Hatfield, University of Hertfordshire Press, 2006, p. 92-93. She sees here “a kitsch Hollywood pastiche of Englishness, and safe ‘authentic’ creative decisions regarding sets and costumes” (p. 92).

    34See Crowl Samuel, The Films …, op. cit., p. 154.

    35Nacache Jacqueline, op. cit., p. 91.

    36See Nacache Jacqueline, op. cit., p. 25.

    37Ibid., p. 29, and p. 30.

    38Hence Benedick and Beatrice are turned into voyeurs, but watched and mocked by others.

    39Deleuze Gilles, Cinéma I–The Movement-Image, London, The Athlone Press, 2005 [1986], p. 159-160.

    40Rothwell Kenneth S., A History of Shakespeare on Screen: A Century of Film and Television, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004 [1999], p. 250-251.

    41Branagh Kenneth, interviewed by Burnett M. and Wray R., in “From the Horse’s Mouth...’, op. cit., p. 166.

    42Laroque François, op. cit., p. 204.

    43Laroque François, ibid., p. 215.

    44This is also an example of the heritage tradition. See Richard III by Richard Loncraine and Ian Mc Kellen (1996) set at the same period shows similar details, hence Queen Margaret flees at the end in such a typical 30s plane.

    45Chauvin Serge, “‘And they lived happily ever after… Or did they?’ Matrimony and False Ending in (Post-) Classical Hollywood Fictions of Re/Marriage”, Parrey A., Robin I. and Sipière Dominique (ed.), Happy Endings and Films, Paris, Michel Houdiard Éditeur, 2010, p. 40.

    46Sipière Dominique, “‘How do you mean, happy?’ Towards a Typology of Classical Hollywood Endings”, Parrey A., Robin I. et Sipière Dominique (ed.), Happy Endings and Films, op. cit., p. 28. See also Chauvin Serge, op. cit., p. 40-52.

    47Edwards Michael, Le poète au théâtre, op. cit., p. 87.

    48See French Emma, op. cit., p. 91.

    49Wray Ramona, “Shakespeare on Film, 1990-2010”, The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2011, p. 504. The author quotes Michael Anderegg, in Cinematic Shakespeare, Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, 2004, p. 127.

    50Crowl Samuel, The Films …, op. cit., p. 164, p. 165.

    51Dubois Claude-Gilbert, Le Maniérisme, Paris, Nathan, 1979, p. 28. The principle of imitation is omnipresent, «Le maniériste refait “à sa manière”. C’est donc, une fois encore, un problème d’identité qui est posé», p. 24, p. 25.

    52Macbeth, directed by Branagh and Rob Ashford, was first performed at the National Theatre for the Manchester International Festival from 5 July to 20 July 2013, before the company toured in New York.

    Lectures de Love's Labour's Lost

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    Lectures de Love's Labour's Lost

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    Costantini-Cornède, A.-M. (2014). From Duos to Duets, Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) or the Tempos of Musical Shakespeare. In D. Lemonnier-Texier & G. Winter (éds.), Lectures de Love’s Labour’s Lost. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes. https://doi.org/10.4000/14mz5
    Costantini-Cornède, Anne-Marie. « From Duos to Duets, Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) or the Tempos of Musical Shakespeare ». In Lectures De Love’s Labour’s Lost, édité par Delphine Lemonnier-Texier et Guillaume Winter. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014. doi:10.4000/14mz5.
    Costantini-Cornède, Anne-Marie. « From Duos to Duets, Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) or the Tempos of Musical Shakespeare ». Lectures De Love’s Labour’s Lost, édité par Delphine Lemonnier-Texier et Guillaume Winter, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014, https://doi.org/10.4000/14mz5.

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    Lemonnier-Texier, D., & Winter, G. (éds.). (2014). Lectures de Love’s Labour’s Lost. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes. https://doi.org/10.4000/14mzb
    Lemonnier-Texier, Delphine, et Guillaume Winter, éd. Lectures de Love’s Labour’s Lost. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014. doi:10.4000/14mzb.
    Lemonnier-Texier, Delphine, et Guillaume Winter, éditeurs. Lectures de Love’s Labour’s Lost. Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014, https://doi.org/10.4000/14mzb.
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