Yesterday my boss told me that he’d watched the ending of Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus with his wife the previous night.  Apparently it was on one of the movie channels, or they were channel surfing or something, but the general gist was that he only saw the ending.

He then asked me whether he should take the time to watch the whole thing.

It’s a trickier question than you might first think.  I am careful in my Shakespeare recommendations.  I do not blindly say “ABSOLUTELY YES ALL MUST SEE ALL PLAYS AT ALL OPPORTUNITIES.”  On the contrary, I’m well aware that to the unitiated, sitting through a Shakespeare play can be a chore.

Here’s what I told him, first about Coriolanus and then about Shakespeare recommendations in general:

“Keep in mind that the ending is different from the source text, and this upset some people greatly.  If you don’t know the text that may not matter, but keep in mind that your expectations are now set for the movie, not for what Shakespeare wrote.  Having said that, I think the ending is the best part.  I love the way Coriolanus stands up to Aufidius at the end and hurls his ‘Boy!’ back in his face in legendary fashion.

“Whether you should watch the whole thing? That’s different.  See, I watch them to see different interpretations of my knowledge of the text.  I mean, I don’t know the text inside and out, but I do know enough to compare one version to another and the focus in on why they are different.  I have my scenes that I look for and pay close attention to.  Without that? For the casual movie goer who has no knowledge of the text?  Then I’m not really sure I recommend sitting through it. I think it will be difficult to follow.”

Is that sacrilege?  Even now writing it I feel bad, like I should go seek out the boss and say “I changed my mind.”

Note a couple things.  I’m not talking about live theatre.  I think the experience of live Shakespeare is a must see and I always recommend going.  But we’re talking about movies here, and I think that sitting on your couch with a remote control sitting through two hours of special effects and soundtrack and camera cuts is a different beast.

Second, I would not say the same about Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet.  I think that both those places are so deeply ingrained in popular culture that even if you’ve never read them, you’ve got a significant head start on what’s going on.  But Coriolanus?  That’s a different story.  If somebody hasn’t explained it to you up front (or, even better, while you’re watching it), I think it’s a harder sell.

Thoughts?  Somebody with no knowledge of play X asks whether he should watch a movie of play X.  What do you say?

(Spotted first by @FolgerLibrary!)

American Songwriter gives dddus the chance this morning to talk about one of the great moments in “Shakespeare put to music” — Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet.  Acknowledging that “Knopfler just used those iconic names as a jumping-off point for a portrait of a modern romance,” the author of the piece goes on to examine (with ample Shakespeare references) just where the similarities lie.

What the piece does not do is ask the all important question that we ask ourselves whenever this song comes up.  Who had the best version?

First we have Dire Straits’ original, from Making Movies.

Next up is the version I think I’m most familiar with (well, besides the original) — Indigo Girls.  I don’t think they’ve got an official music video for the song, so the best I could find was this live clip.

Now here’s the version that everybody else but me seems more familiar with — The Killers.  I’ve got a bunch of their stuff in my regular playlists, but this one just never seemed to find its way to the list.

For a bonus, here’s a couple I never knew existed.  First, Edwin McCain (“I’ll Be”, “I Could Not Ask For More”, …)

And, finally, somebody named Dan Hardin?  I don’t know anything about him, but I spotted people talking about his version on the YouTube comments so I thought I’d give him a shout out.  Warning, the video’s awful.  But the singing is good.

Which version is your favorite?  Or do you have another version that you prefer, that I missed?  Let us know!

There’s a new trailer up for the Hailee Steinfeld Romeo & Juliet movie, and I was very excited to see it.  I’m of the believe that that DiCaprio Romeo + Juliet movie may not have been high art, but was an important step in bringing Shakespeare to young “MTV” audiences.  So when I saw the trailer posted by MTV News I had high hopes.

There’s a soundtrack, and it’s a cool trailer, I’ll give it that.

But … oh, oh god.  It’s not Shakespeare. They just went ahead and wrote their own dialogue.

Let’s play a game.  Watch the trailer, and mark two points – the first time you hear dialogue that is so very clearly NOT Shakespeare that you can’t stand it … and the point at which you hear so much of it you can’t watch anymore.

For me the first time is the bit at the ball where somebody says, “The Capulets and Montagues are mortal enemies!”

REALLY?  What genius script writer felt the need to add that little bit of exposition?  Show me don’t tell me, isn’t that what they teach in writing 101?

As for the second, my finger was hovering over the STOP (for the love of god, STOP!) button when Tybalt shows up, uttering such Shakespearean classics as, “Don’t let that name be spoken in this house!”  and my favorite, which I knew was coming from an earlier trailer, “Come settle with me, boy!”

But out of my love for Shakespeare and for you my loyal geeks, I had my coworkers tie me to down to the armrests of my chair and forced myself to watch through to the end.

The trailer ends with Hailee doing a voiceover of the “Give me my Romeo” speech that just sticks a fork in the entire thing, because it’s just plain bad.  It sounds like somebody handed her a complete works (perhaps the No Sweat version) and told her, “Read this.”

Am I overreacting?  Will we be talking about this one 20 years later like we do with Luhrman’s version?  Maybe by then at least Hailee Steinfeld will be old enough that I won’t look at her like a babyfaced child when she flops herself down on the bed under Romeo. Ewww.

A lifetime ago, before this blog existed and I was searching around for a place to hang out and talk about Shakespeare, I saw only one place –  News on the Rialto, a Shakespeare magazine run by Michael LoMonico, who has got so many Shakespeare and education credits to his name that I don’t know how to list them all.

Well, Mike’s written a young adult novel called That Shakespeare Kid, and he’s got a Kickstarter going to get it published.  You know me and you know my desire to get my kids introduced to Shakespeare as young as possible, so I’m all over a project like this.  In fact, I got an early review copy and let my 11yr old have at it.

The plot surrounds Peter, a 12yr old boy who gets hit on the head with a Complete Works (Riverside, because I know the geeks will be curious), and wakes up only able to talk in snippets from Shakespeare.  With the help of his friend Emma he manages to make his way through the regular middle school adventures until a viral video gets him onto the Today Show and he starts to wonder if he’ll be a freak forever.  This being a young adult Shakespeare novel you just know that the two will find their way into Romeo and Juliet. Which if you think about it makes perfect sense because that’s the play that our young adult reader is most likely to be studying.

I’ve not yet read the book through, because I did not want to inadvertently influence my daughter’s opinion (by saying things like “What chapter are you on? Oh, I loved the part when he said….”)  My daughter quite liked it.  I asked whether the Shakespeare bits were all the usual stuff that she’s heard around the house a hundred times (Wherefore art thou, to be or not to be, double double, etc….) she said, “Oh, no, absolutely not.  Most of it I’d never heard before.”  Which is good!

In truth I’m an easy audience, and almost any project that has Shakespeare and kids in it is going to get an upvote from me.  When you’ve got somebody with the credentials of Mike LoMonico and all the years he’s spent honing his craft with the resources of the Folger at his disposal, how can you go wrong?