In Joss Whedon’s remarkable adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, audiences can’t avoid being struck by how the complexities of love in the early modern age aren’t so far off from foibles and follies of romance in age of Tinder. In fact, Shakespeare’s ideas about and representations of love, sex and desire—from the gender bending homo-erotics of Twelfth Night, to Benedick and Beatrice’s meet-cute slapstick rom com romp in Much Ado, to the heady machinations of the original “House of Cards” power couple the Macbeths—can be used to explore our own understanding of matters of the heart.
This talk will delve into 21st C film adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays to consider how his representation of love and sex can work to help us explore the nature of modern romance today, as well as to examine how constructions of love, romance and sex in early modern England reflect that culture’s complex understanding of gender identity.
“TempleTalks was created as a collaboration between University Housing and Residential Life and Intellectual Heritage to engage students and faculty outside the classroom. We set out to design a series of events with topics that students would find interesting, and allow faculty to talk about their interests and research that may not fit into a class syllabus.”