This course will teach you how to read Shakespeare by studying the texts of four plays alongside eight cinematic adaptations. We will discuss Shakespeare's great subjects, such as love, tyranny, revenge, and redemption, and we will analyze how the medium of film reimagines Shakespeare's drama across vastly different settings in time and space, from mansions in Verona Beach and chicken rice stalls in Singapore to feudal Japan and outer space in the 23rd-century. We will learn about the performance conventions of Shakespeare's time, examine interpretive choices in the films and propose our own, and develop our skills of attention to various forms of media as we write about the plays, act them out, and try our hand at making short clips. Plays will include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Tempest.