Shakespeare, Cinema, China
《莎士比亚 · 电影 · 中国》
Monday 16th February 2026
13:00-14:00
Auditorium, The McClay Library
Speaker:
Professor Mark Thornton Burnett is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. He is the author of Masters and Servants in English Renaissance Drama and Culture: Authority and Obedience (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), Constructing ‘Monsters’ in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007; 2nd ed. 2012), Shakespeare and World Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) and ‘Hamlet’ and World Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). He is series editor of the Arden Shakespeare series, ‘Shakespeare and Adaptation’.
Full profile
Abstract:
In this talk, I explore the deep connection between the uses of Shakespeare in cinema and China’s evolving cultural, economic and social significances. Shakespeare figures variously in Chinese cinema – as echo and adaptation, as allusion and full-blown transposition, as semi-quotation and vernacular rewrite, as prompt for comic business, and as an exercise in nostalgia. Introducing a broad sweep of historical examples, and centring on two recent Hamlet adaptations – The Banquet (dir. Feng Xiaogang, 2006) and Prince of the Himalayas (dir. Sherwood Hu, 2006) – I argue that Shakespeare and China share a fruitful and exciting relationship, one allied to the past, rooted in the present, and enlivened by continuing intercultural exchange.
