ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with advertisements based on Shakespeare plays and investigates the nature of the relation between advertising and Shakespeare. It asks in what sense the advertisements for Nextel and iPhone 7 can be considered adaptations of Romeo and Juliet that convey a highly significant message with different possible readings, depending on the familiarity of the receiver with the hypotext and/or with its subsequent adaptations. This chapter focuses on how the advertisements adapt various levels of the source text to new expressive modalities and how the setting, costumes, sound, intertextual references, commodity advertised, and slogans all contribute to the creation of a hybrid product in which art and commerce, entertainment and persuasion, artistic enjoyment and product placement all intertwine. While its hybridity involving commercial and popular aspects is the reason why Shakespearean advertising is rarely the subject of critical examination, I claim that this complexity makes it all the more interesting for debate and analysis, and that it represents the way in which meaning is often constructed in contemporary times.
