Vanessa Gerhards: Shakespeare Reloaded. The Shakespeare Renaissance 1989–2004

• Nick Walton

Vanessa Gerhards’ ‘Shakespeare Reloaded’ charts the surge in Shakespearian filmmaking that occurred between 1989 and 2004. Gerhards suggests in her conclusion that ‘the flood of Shakespeare films has [now] ended’ (p. 213), which supports her thesis that the fifteen years focus of this work represents a remarkable period of productivity and invention in the field of Shakespeare on film. Whilst this is indeed true, Gerhards’ work offers little in the way of insight into the artistic and cultural contexts that lie behind this revolution in filming Shakespeare. All too often Gerhards resists the challenge of providing her own commentary, and reiterates tired statements of ‘fact’: ‘It is an acknowledged fact that the Shakespearian Renaissance started in 1989’ (p. 1). Gerhards states in her prologue that ‘this dissertation is concerned with both the reasons for such a sudden emergence of this Renaissance and especially with the films’ (p. 1). In practice, this study is almost exclusively concerned with describing the action of the films under consideration. Ultimately, Gerhards privileges description over analysis, and as a result the writing lacks precision.