Your first paper should develop a thesis about how a film or films offer(s) an interpretation of Shakespeare's script.  You should offer an account of how the film or films interpret the Shakespeare play at hand, and you should certainly offer descriptions of specific details that support the interpretive pattern you see.  You should particularly avoid writing a review:  focus on describing some pattern of interpretation at work in your film(s) that is not immediately obvious to a casual viewer, and not on evaluating the film(s).  I will expect you to use many, if not all, of the skills you've been practicing with the first four written exercises in this class.

One caution:  this paper is only 6-7 pages long (do not exceed the page limit).  You should probably identify something quite specific to focus on, so that you can be relatively thorough in explicating it.  You might focus, for example, on:

• how two filmmakers address a single significant Shakespearean passage (the strangling of Desdemona) or character (Cassio);
• a single important visual image (water in Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet);
• a significant element of film style (skewed angles in Welles's Othello);
• a particular way in which the film builds upon, revises, or changes a specific feature of Shakespeare's script;
• or on some other significant element.