History and/as Adaptation: MacBeth and the Rhizomatic Adaptation of History (original) (raw)

Adaptation Before Cinema: Literary and Visual Convergence from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century, 2023

Abstract

Positing an understanding of history as an adaptational practice, this article reconsiders the forms and functions of historical writings in the pre-cinematic period. Drawing on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606), which is conventionally categorised as tragedy rather than history play, it examines the drama’s adaptational approach to history and biography. Inspired by Douglas Lanier’s concept of rhizomatic adaptation, the article investigates the complex network of stories at the heart of Shakespeare’s play. Shakespeare’s idiosyncratic version of the story of MacBeth, which collapses distinctions between fact and fiction and history and reality to critically comment on the events of Shakespeare’s time, and the play’s reception over the centuries show how intricately history and adaptation are intertwined in this drama. Macbeth offers a compelling example of pre-cinematic adaptation that prefigures significant contemporary trends in the field of adaptation studies and that testifies to the power of adaptation to shift our understanding of the past as well as our relation to history.

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