“‘Wherein I am false I am honest; not true, to be true’ (IV.4.50): Updating Deleuze’s Crystal-image with Almereyda’s Cymbeline”.

This article offers a new perspective on Shakespearean adaptation, treating it as an aesthetic practice designed to draw new conclusions from the epistemic machines that Shakespeare’s plays constitute. This new take on adaptation results from the study of a specific case, Michael Almereyda’s Cymbeline, which is seen as the juncture between the play, the film, but also Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical concept of the crystal-image, a third term that is essential to make sense of the director’s adaptation strategy. As the result of an analysis that would benefit from being complemented by the study of similar cases, the article claims that Shakespearean adaptation serves a didactic purpose. In such cases as Cymbeline, adaptation teaches viewers in general that the evolution of visual productions has consequences on reception, and drives readers of Deleuze, in particular, to update their vision of the image-crystal. Where Deleuze taught us to see time in the image-crystal, such adaptations as Almereyda’s show the concept to be in need of an update because of the passing of time.