Imagine a production of Romeo and Juliet that opens in the tomb, with both dead. Cue prologue.

One of the most common questions asked about Romeo and Juliet is why Shakespeare gives away the ending (“A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life”) in the first lines. It is the very definition of a spoiler, and it is baked right into the script.

Today on the way to work I was thinking about other stories that open up three quarters of the way through. We’re in the middle of a wedding, or the good guy is being chased by a horde of bad guys, and we have just a moment to wonder, “How’d we get here?” before the scene changes, some sort of “Six months prior…” card appears on screen, and we start the real story. There’s a stake in the ground now. Instead of sitting back and thinking, “I wonder what’s going to happen?” you’re left thinking, “I wonder how we’re going to get from here to there?”

That’s exactly what Shakespeare does. Granted, the modern version usually opens with the good guy in significant peril but, you know, not actually dead yet. Still, though, the point stands. You immediately open with a “Wait, what? How does that happen exactly?” moment where you find yourself thrown into the end of the story, and then suddenly the scene changes and you get to see the story from the beginning.

Don’t forget Paris!  Fine, you know this is Romeo and Juliet, you hear “pair of star-crossed lovers” and see a young man and women entwined in death, you get that.  But who the heck is the random dude on the floor? What’s his story?

Oo! I just thought of something even better. Instead of opening to the scene of them already dead, open to Romeo still alive and holding the poison. Or, I suppose, Juliet holding the dagger.  Play it on alternate nights. Really build up the suspense.  I mean, you know in your head that they both die. But with tricks like this you still have to spend the play wondering if just maybe?

I’m not sure how I feel about The Globe’s decision to rename Cymbeline to Imogen, because in the words of director Emma Rice, “Imogen speaks three times more lines than Cymbeline so it really is her story.”

Ok, let’s go with that. Here’s how the rest of the plays shake up based on the Imogen Rule:

Hamlet gets to keep his play (well, duh). So do Richard III, Lear, Macbeth and Titus. Shame – would have been fun to name the play Lady Macbeth.

Sorry Othello, but I think we’ve all secretly wanted the play to be called Iago anyway.

Julius Caesar is now Brutus, much to the delight of high school students everywhere who never really understood why it wasn’t called that in the first place.

Ok, let’s take a vote, do you pick Antony or Cleopatra? Because under the new rules it can’t be both.  Ready?   … Antony wins.  See, I would have said Cleopatra.

Same deal for the younger said… Romeo or Juliet?  Romeo.  See, again, I would have thought Juliet.

Henry IV Part 2 is now Falstaff, and this pleases the ghost of Orson Welles.

The Tempest is now Prospero, and I’m totally ok with that.

Ok, last one and then I have to go do useful things.

King John shall henceforth be known as?   Bastard.

(* I got all my character line counts here, if you want to expand the list.)

Is it too much to hope that just one of them is any good?

I knew about Shonda Rhimes getting into the act with Still Star-Crossed, based on a young adult novel that picks up where Romeo and Juliet left off. The Prince has decided to unite the families by force, and orders Benvolio to marry Rosaline.

ABC is putting a Muslim spin on their version with Indivisible, where a New Yorker develops a friendship with her (his?) Muslim neighbor, and then all proverbial hell breaks loose when their kids fall in love. I wonder if this one is going to have some sort of ancient grudge? If the parents are friends, does that fundamentally change the original story?

Lastly we have Fox’s Latino version, set against a music backdrop in Los Angeles.  The rumors say it’s hoping to jump on the Empire bandwagon, but from the description is sounds an awful lot like the 1996 Romeo+Juliet Luhrman / DiCaprio version.

I have no idea if all or any of these will see the light of day. At least they’re all backed by one of the major networks. I’m pretty sure that the CW tried some sort of Romeo and Juliet thing (a science fiction thing, maybe?) that I never even saw. I have no idea if it ever even came out.

What do you think, do we want a series based on Shakespeare?  I suppose we should give credit to Sons of Anarchy here, which was always understood to be a version of Hamlet. Never watched it, but I hear it was quite good.

Whenever a new Shakespeare movie comes out, everybody does a list of movie adaptations.  But here’s my problem.  Nobody seems to want to do the research.  Take this one, for example:

Are these the 10 best Shakespeare screen adaptations?

4 of the 10 are from the year 2000 or later (including Julie Taymor’s Tempest.  Really?)

3 from the 1990’s (including 10 Things I Hate About You, grrrrrrr.  Not the same thing!)

1 each from 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s (including Brando’s Julius Caesar, Peter Brooks’ King Lear and Chimes at Midnight)

We’ve been filming Shakespeare for basically about one hundred years. So is it reasonable to believe that 70% of the best versions all come from the last 25 years?

What sort of criteria should we use?  You can’t drop a 1936 Romeo and Juliet into a class full of high school English students alongside the 1996 Leonardo diCaprio version and ask them which one they like better.

The art of movie making, it would seem logical to assume, has gotten better over time. The quality of the equipment that goes into it, the special effects, the scope and budget.  So is it true, then, that the best movies in general have all been recent movies? When we speak of those older movies is there an implied, “…for its time” qualifier tacked onto the praise?

Does anybody have a favorite Shakespeare adaptation from before 1990 that they believe stands up to a more modern adaptation? If a friend asked you for a recommendation, would you dip into 100 years of Shakespeare movies or would you stick to the more modern stuff?

UPDATE : This guy gets it right.