Can Shakespeare’s plays be made into detective stories? On certain “upgrading” makeovers of the great playwright’s works

Abstract

The paper discusses selected screen adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays: Hamlet (dir. M. Almereyda, 2000), Coriolanus (dir. R. Fiennes 2011), Macbeth (dir. G. Wright, 2006), Cymbeline (dir. M. Almereyda, 2014), Macbeth (an episode of the BBC series Shakespeare Re-Told, 2005) as well as episodes 3 and 4 from Yevhenіy Zviezdakov’s series Diekoracyi ubijstwa (2015). The common feature of these screen adaptations is moving the plot to modern times and emphasising those elements which resemble typical components of crime dramas. The paper points to the difficulties the directors had to overcome to make such “upgrading” makeovers viable.