Prospero's Offshoots: from the library to the screen

The article makes a provocative comparison between a recognized major form of literature and a modern technology, implying a metadiscourse on the modes and means of communications and representing a cinematic equivalent to theatrical illusionism and Shakespeare's own self-conscious reflections upon his "art". It analyses two categories of filmic rewritings of "The Tempest". The first includes films that are intended to be direct adaptations of the Shakesperean text: F. McLeod Wilcox's "Forbidden Planet" (1956), D. Jarman's "The Tempest" (1979), "P. Greenaway's "Prospero's Books" (1991). Together with these more obvious choices, the selection also includes several sequences from films only accidentally exhibiting references and hints to the figure of Prospero as a magus and/or a scientist: S. Kubrick's "Doctor Strangelove" (1964), R. Scott's "Blade Runner" (1982), and B. Leonard's "The Lawnmower Man" (1992).