Film Adaptations of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on the Arab Egyptian Screen

Abstract

This article examines the adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1597) in four Egyptian films: al-Badāwiyah al-Ḥasnā’ (A Beautiful Bedouin Woman, 1947); Ḥassan wa Na‘īmah (Hassan and Naimah, 1959); al-‘Alamein (Two Icons, 1965); and Qiṣat al-Ḥai al-Garbī (West Side Story, 1979). The Egyptian screenwriters employ Shakespeare's text to address local anxieties at home, such as patriarchal control of daughters’/sons’ perception of love and marriage, the crisis of unemployment, illiteracy, class conflict, and the discourse of honour. The shifting of scenes from Shakespeare's Verona to local settings in Egypt – varying from Cairo to the desert and rural areas – reflects the significance of reproducing Shakespeare in the Egyptian film industry during the twentieth century. This study fills the gap left by modern scholarship that focuses on analysing the adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in Arabic literature (‘high’ culture), which has overlooked Arab Egyptian films or what might be called ‘New Arab Shakespeare’.