Last Saturday marked the quadricentennial of William Shakespeare’s death: four hundred years of students being force-fed Shakespeare as moral-broccoli; four hundred years of arguing about the source of Hamlet’s delay and four hundred years of incredible drama. It was a day for bardolatrists, misobardians and even the uninterested to at least spend a few seconds acknowledging the bard and his work.

Some of us spent a great deal longer than a few seconds. On Wednesday night, in a premature flourish, the University of Queensland commenced its Shakespeare series (The Delighted Spirit) with a public lecture by leading Shakespearean scholar Indira Ghose. Spoken in Customs House, accompanied by a string quartet and interviewed by Radio National’s Sarah Kanowski, the evening would have been parodic had it not been so joyous, earnest and accessible. Indira Ghose argued for Shakespeare as a modern, relevant writer and thinker. Traversing Shakespeare’s diffusion throughout the world and revealing the influence the bard still has on modern drama – notably Netflix’s House of Cards where the Machiavellian Frank Underwood is best described as a bastard child of Richard III and Macbeth – Ghose brought an encyclopaedic knowledge, flair and freshness to the bard and his work. 

Just as Shakespeare permeates one of television’s most gripping, bloody and watched shows, so too does he pervade cinema. GOMA and the University of Queensland have teamed up to celebrate the breadth and diversity of adaptations of Shakespeare to the screen. Spanning from 1923-2015, the series features reverent and irreverent, canonical and lowbrow, and English and international Shakespearean films. If the dizzying array of films testifies anything it is that Shakespeare’s work is not just dead on a page, but endlessly mutable. 

The film series opened on Friday with the obligatory, if a tad uninspired, Romeo + Juliet (directed by Baz Luhrmann) but has quickly moved into much more interesting territory: the bard’s birthday/deathday saw a 1923 German, silent film adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. Delightfully, the film was accompanied by a live organ performance by David Bailey on the museum’s Wurlitzer Organ. Feeling your bones vibrate as the deepest tones of an organ resound through a dimly lit theatre whilst Antonio bears his chest for Shylock’s blade (or the Jew of Mestri as he was in this film), is one of the most intense cinema experiences I have ever had. With a seminar and discussion on Shakespeare’s works and film adaptations of his works that afternoon, even the most ardent Bardologist was sated. One comment on the seminar: I have never seen a film so thoroughly and humorously destroyed in so shorter space of time as Shakespeare in Love was. 

And yet the Shakespeare revelry and the showing of his films marches on. The Shakespeare on Screen series will continue to show at GOMA until Wednesday the 25^th of May. No tickets are needed and all film screenings, as well as other Shakespeare events run by the University of Queensland until November, are free. The lecture by Indira Ghose was recorded and can be found on Radio National’s website. 

For those who still have the bad taste of being force-fed Shakespeare in school, this next month provides an opportunity to cleanse your palate.

- Damian Maher