Revengers Tragedy : Jacobean Drama, Kenneth Branagh's Cinema and the Politics of the Not-Shakespearean

Abstract

This essay argues that the film, Revengers Tragedy, an adaptation of Middleton's play of the same name, locates itself as a 'not-Shakespearean' undertaking. Director Alex Cox sees in the Jacobean provenance of Middleton's play an opportunity to parody the 'heritage model' Shakespeare film adaptations of the 1980s and 1990s popularized by Kenneth Branagh and his ilk. In particular, Cox develops his unique vision by deploying local registers that contest traditional sites of Shakespearean production and interpretation. Via specific settings which undermine expectations about the English Renaissance, the film shows itself acutely responsive to the challenges posed by globalization. Crucially, the essay argues that Cox's political vision is bodied forth in the film's cinematography, dark humour and original soundtrack. Music written especially for the film by the British band, Chumbawumba, for instance, draws energy from the band's status as a recalcitrant global phenomenon in the same moment as it puts into play disjunctive motifs vital to the film's political imperatives. Elsewhere in the film, the essay argues, Branagh's Shakespearean oeuvre is countered by scenes of post-apocalyptic urban blight, by resolutely postmodern camerawork, by pastiche versions of ceremonial occasions. And, perhaps most suggestively, the film's anti-capitalist orientation is conveyed in the representation of a country suffering from north-south divisions and a general malaise. The film's end, combining, as it does, images of implosion and suicidal revenge, brings its multiple elements into focus, highlighting in a politically resonant way the gulf that separates Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean categories.