It is now appropriate in this final chapter to offer detailed aesthetic comparisons between key scenes from different adaptations of the same play. By identifying distinct visual strategies chosen by film directors to appropriate the same scene, this concluding chapter illustrates how film aesthetics can condition meaning, suggesting some guidelines for the study of sequences in Shakespeare adaptations. Scenes will be closely examined in terms of time, space, camera moves, editing, sound and music, dialogue, focusing and identification, and cultural as well as cinematic codes.

The first case study, ‘Fear on screen’, analyses the scene of the Ghost's appearance in Hamlet, in the productions of Laurence Olivier (1948), Tony Richardson (1969), Franco Zeffirelli (1990) and Kenneth Branagh (1996), putting the stress on the appropriation of codes and techniques from films noirs, thrillers and horror films.

The second case study, ‘Dream on screen’, examines the night preceding the battle of Bosworth in Richard III, as it is represented in the films of Laurence Olivier (1955), Richard Loncraine (1996) and Al Pacino (1996), highlighting the directors' decisions in terms of cinematic alienation and realism.

The third case study, ‘Trance on screen’, considers the ‘ocular proof’ and ‘fainting’ scenes in Othello in the adaptations by Orson Welles (1952) and by Oliver Parker (1995), discussing the choices between metaphorical and literal film-making, as well as between editing and uninterrupted shots.