Taymor’s Tempest has come and gone, and next we’re about to be bombarded by musical animated garden gnomes. But don’t forget that Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus is coming up quickly – it debuts at the Berlin Film Festival next week!

“It’s a political thriller”, he explains. “A story of power-politics centred around one man and his relationship with his mother.” Coriolanus is an unpopular Roman general who, under pressure from his mother Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave), seeks to run for consul. Having won over both the Roman senate and the mob, he is undone by the connivances of two tribunes. As a result he is branded a traitor and banished, before forming a coalition of sorts with mortal enemy Tullus Aufidius (Butler) – and returning to Rome in search of vengeance.

I’m very curious to see how this one does. I’ve got a soft spot for the Tempest, but Coriolanus is a different story. Certainly one of the lesser known plays, rarely taught in school, and a political thriller at that? Certainly a niche audience. Fingers crossed that it makes a good showing.

Imagine you’re in school again. You’re a teenager. For the sake of argument let’s assume you’re also a girl (bear with me :)) You are handed a copy of Cinderella (the text, not the movie!) and told this is what we’ll be studying this semester. There will be a final exam.
What do you do? Groan? Worry? Whine about how hard it is, how you don’t want to do it, how it’s not relevant to kids these days? I mean, really, what’s a “ball”? Sounds dirty. What exactly does “cinder” mean, anyway, and why is this one girl stuck cleaning them? Why doesn’t she call DSS if her stepmom is so bad? I don’t get this story, it makes no sense! Nobody would do the stuff these people do! If this girl is old enough to get married to the prince, why doesn’t she go live on her own? (And so on….)
Or do you laugh about it and then never look at the text until the day of the final, where you waltz through all the questions from memory? After all, it’s a story you grew up on. Everybody knows this story. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have to clean the chimney, you can still have days where you think your mom and your big sisters are being mean to you. And even though fairy godmothers don’t really show up and sing BibbidiBobbidiBoo in real life, it doesn’t stop you from daydreaming about somebody to come along and sweep you off your feet. It’s a *fairy tale*, after all. It’s not about the setting or the vocabulary or the specifics, it’s about the bigger picture. That’s why there’s a cliche about things being “a Cinderella story” and everybody knows what that means.
Now tell me why Shakespeare can’t be like that.    Why doesn’t Disney do a movie about The Tempest, and why don’t kids grow up learning the story of how Miranda avoids the monster Caliban, defeats the pirates who try to take the island from her father (with the help of Ariel), meets the prince and sails off to live happily ever after? The “original” text can come later, just like most children’s experience with Cinderella goes as far as the Disney movie, and only when they are older do they actually get to read “the original”. (If you want a different example try Wizard of Oz, lots more differences between the original and the movie there).
Here’s the big difference that I think is stopping everybody: Every parent out there who reads Cinderella to their kids, also had Cinderella read to them as a kid. It’s almost like a privilege, like a gift you can’t wait to share with them. Most every parent, however, hated Shakespeare in high school, and thus wouldn’t think of exposing their kid to it any sooner than they had to.
If I ever get off my butt and write my book (well, technically, to write a book I suppose I would have to in fact sit back down…), it’ll be to solve that problem, right there. Something to break that cycle. I could use a little help, Disney! Are you listening???
[ This post first appeared June 3, 2008. ]

Everybody knows that Gnomeo and Juliet is coming. What I want to know is, do you care? How much? You could see this as a warning sign of the apocalypse, I suppose – animated musical Shakespeare with talking garden gnomes?
Not me. As I’m sure everybody realizes, I’m downright irrational about this. It’s Disney. Talking about Shakespeare. In wide release. This is the dream! I first mentioned Disney adaptations of Shakespeare back in March, 2006. I absolutely positively dream of a world where children from the time they can be plopped down in front of a television set can watch, over and over again, a DVD of Midsummer Night’s Dream or Tempest or Twelfth Night….or yes, even a tamed Romeo and Juliet. Long time followers of the blog know that I’ve been pursuing that dream down whatever avenue I can. Sure, I think that The Tempest is a much better choice (among other things you can embrace the ending instead of rewriting it!!), but I digress.
Nobody, but nobody, teaches Shakespeare to three year olds. It’s madness. Well, duh, obviously not nobody because you all know that I’m doing it so by definition there could be others as well, that’s not my point. My point is that my kids, at this age, will in all likelihood never meet another child their age that has the kind of Shakespeare exposure they do. As they get older that’s obviously changing, but remember I’ve been at this game for 4+ years now, and when my 4yr old son runs up to one of his friends and says, “Hey Matt! To be or not to be!” I’ve yet to see another little 4yr old say, “That is the question!”
But imagine a scenario where you get to lead with this, instead: “Hey, have you taken the kids to the new Disney movie yet?” Now imagine how many Yes answers you get. Now take every 4 yr old that saw the movie and ask them what it was about, and listen to them tell you how Gnomeo and Juliet want to be together but their parents won’t let them. Well, being 4yr olds they’re more likely to remember the various fart jokes that I’m sure abound, but once you buy the inevitable DVD and they’ve had a chance to watch it 20 times? And buy the merchandise? My 4yr old can tell you the story of Buzz and Woody or Shrek and Donkey at the drop of a hat, so I have no reason to think that the story of Gnomeo and Juliet would be any different.
I know, sadly, that this is almost certainly not going to happen. I may know that this is a Disney-backed production, but that doesn’t mean that they’re leading with the Disney brand. I don’t see a Magic Kingdom logo and Tinkerbell giving that little sparkly blessing. It’s Touchstone. Touchstone is good, don’t get me wrong. But Touchstone isn’t a merchandising machine, and my kids certainly don’t know their Touchstone from their Miramax. I expect that this movie will be average, at best. And when you ask if people have seen it, maybe you’ll get half the number of Yes answers that you would if it was a true Disney production. I highly doubt that we’d ever see merchandising. My kids are unlikely to get stuffed garden gnomes.
….but just imagine if they *did*. It makes me happy to dream about that.

Sir Patrick Stewart CBE is to receive this year’s Pragnell Shakespeare Birthday Prize.
I’m not really sure what that means, but past winners include Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench, so Sir Patrick is in good company.

I love the paradox : Shakespeare is so difficult and irrelevant to modern society that nobody can understand why we even teach him anymore … and yet every time a new movie comes out, inevitably somebody compares it to Shakespeare.
Today’s example is True Grit, the current remake of the old John Wayne western. Although the linked interview is with 14yr old Hailee Steinfeld, she quotes co-star Barry Pepper for the Shakespeare reference.
Combing through the quotes page on IMDB, I found this amusing bit of dialogue that Mr. Shakespeare himself might have penned:

Rooster Cogburn: The jakes is occupied.

Mattie Ross: I know it is occupied Mr. Cogburn. As I said, I have business with you.

Rooster Cogburn: I have prior business.

Mattie Ross: You have been at it for quite some time, Mr. Cogburn.

Rooster Cogburn: There is no clock on my business! To hell with you! To hell with you! How did you stalk me here?

Mattie Ross: The sheriff told me to look in the saloon. In the saloon they referred me here. We must talk.

Rooster Cogburn: Women ain’t allowed in the saloon!

Mattie Ross: I was not there as a customer. I am fourteen years old.

Rooster Cogburn: The jakes is occupied. And will be for some time.