From the Folcher Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger's director.

This podcast is called Every Tongue brings in a several tale.

Shakespeare, of course, is not just performed in English, and his work is not just acted on stage.

Foreign language adaptations of Shakespeare

on film have a tradition that goes back as long as talking pictures have existed. For the past 20

years, these films have been the career focus of Mark Thornton Burnett, a professor of English

at Queen's University, Belfast. Mark's book, Shakespeare and World Cinema,

takes a close look at some of the best Shakespeare films

of the past decade in Portuguese, Mandarin, Maliolam, Singlish, and more.

We invited him to share some of the highlights from this collection.

He's interviewed by Neva Grant.

You were raised in the United Kingdom. This is the land

of Shakespeare. No doubt you watched plenty of Shakespeare films and maybe teleplays when you

were growing up. What drew you to this body of work? Well, I've always been very interested in

Shakespeare on film. That's been an abiding concern of mine,

ever since I first saw Olivier's Hamlet as a student. Then again, I suppose my interests were

restimulated when I moved to Northern Ireland, and I saw Kenneth Branagh's films, his Hamlet,

which I saw in 70mm was an absolutely wonderful and transformative experience.

But paradoxically, being English and living in Northern Ireland,

I've often addressed in myself questions about identity and affiliation

and also addressed how the implications of teaching a dramatist associated with Englishness and

...