Egyptian Screen Adaptations of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Abstract

This study explores the screen adaptations of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in Egyptian cinema and television, focusing on the 2004 film Ḥobak Nār ( Your Love Is Like Fire ) written by screenwriter Ehāb Rādy, and the recent 2025 fifty-episode Egyptian television series Ḥarb Al-Gebālī , written by Samāh Al-Ḥarīrī. Drawing on screen adaptation theory, Shakespeare scholarship and feminist theory, the study delves into how these adaptations reflect and interpret themes of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in the context of Egyptian culture and society through cinema and television. Shakespeare's plays, which appeal in various ways to the social and political circumstances of all cultures, have been indigenised as screen adaptations in many languages, thus creating a rich tapestry of local, intercultural or foreign Shakespeares around the globe. The universal appeal of Shakespeare's plays has made them relevant to be localised in nearly every major language because their cultural, political and social themes resonate with a wide range of contemporary ideologies of concern to modern audiences. More than any author of any tongue, Shakespeare has been used as an instrument of feminist, colonial and postcolonial critique of misgovernment and patriarchy across almost all major cultures.