Cinematic offshoots of Romeo and Juliet

Abstract

As Anna K. Nardo writes, "the Shakespearean 'offshoot' has become a popular film genre that dispenses with the plays' language altogether, while radically recontextualizing character, setting, and action". This dissertation works on such 'offshoots' of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, aiming to demonstrate how they allude to the play while maintaining their own original work and idea. After a brief study on a number of 'offshoots' of the "star-cross'd lovers", the two films chosen to be analysed in detail are Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins's West Side Story and John Madden's Shakespeare in Love. Both are different genres, the former being a musical while the latter is a postmodern film, set in two different eras with two completely different stories, motifs, and themes. However, both are united in one aspect, their references to Romeo and Juliet. Hence, through a study of these two films the dissertation should also reflect Shakespeare's universality.