I’ve been thinking about adaptation lately, and not just because Bardfilm keeps dumping homework in my lap.  This idea has been a recurring theme here on the blog all the way back to the Lion King / Hamlet debate.

(For the sake of terminology, when I speak of “adaptation” I refer to telling the story using modern language.  Kenneth Branagh’s work, using original text in a modern setting, is what I’d call “interpretation”.   10 Things I Hate About You or She’s The Man or, yes, even Lion King are adaptations.)

When you take this approach, a new telling of Shakespeare’s stories, what you’re really doing is deconstructing the story and building it back up from its elements.  Start with a king, have his brother kill him and take over his kingdom, and the son is left to avenge his father?  Is that all you need to be Hamlet?  What about Lear?  If you start with a powerful landowner and his three assumed heirs, and add a misunderstanding and a falling out with the one good one, do you have a Lear story?

I don’t mind modern adaptation.  When people talk about Shakespeare no longer being approachable or relevant the first thing they trot out is how it’s all about kings and ghosts and swordfights and we don’t have any of those things in any meaningful capacity, so you have to switch it out.  Instead of a king we have the president of a company.  Instead of Montagues and Capulets with swords we have Jets and Sharks with guns.  Lear’s “heirs” don’t have to be his children, and Claudius doesn’t have to be Hamlet’s uncle.  You can work at the edges of those relationships (you want approachable Shakespeare?  How many young people out there right now do you think have to call mom’s new friend “uncle” and it drives them insane?)

So how far back can you take it?  Is there a minimum where, if you don’t take at least that much, you no longer have the story?  You’d think there must be.  If King Hamlet isn’t out of the picture at the start of the play, it’s a different play.  If Macbeth doesn’t make his move on his superior officer, it’s a different play.

Of course there’s no rules for this, so what I’m really talking about it something between being recognizable, and “getting a bump” as they say in political/media circles.  Whether something is recognizable as having elements of X is entirely dependent on your audience’s familiarity with X. Only recently did somebody point out to me that Lion King has elements of Cymbeline.   I don’t think that the recognition factor is something that writer/directors can control.  They can hope, but they can’t control.

It’s the “bump” thing that’s more interesting, and it’s very similar to how people quote random things on the internet and stick “-Shakespeare” at the end.  It makes people think twice, and think better.  Oh you wrote a love story? Big deal, there’s lots of those.  Oh you wrote a Romeo and Juliet story?  I know that story, that’s a great story!  I’ll check out your version.

Did Tommy Boy or Strange Brew ever market themselves as Shakespeare remakes? Maybe if they did, they’d have been more critically received.  Or, worse, maybe they would have been crucified as terrible Shakespeare adaptations.

In the drive in to work this morning I thought of something.  In Lion King, Simba doesn’t realize that his uncle Scar killed his father until the very end.  This is entirely different from the world of Hamlet where his father *tells* him that, and he first has to prove it, and then has to do something about it.  Yet another reason why I will continue to argue down the “Lion King Is Hamlet” theory to the day I die.

Let’s talk about the new trailer that was released for Julian Fellowes’ adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, starring Hailee Steinfeld (which we first reported back in 2011).

First of all, as far as trailers go, I really liked it.  I think it’s paced well, I think the soundtrack is excellent, and I think it does a good job of capturing what your typical audience knows of the “greatest love story ever told.” Special note of attention to Paul Giamatti as Friar Laurence at 2:00, by the way.

Now, let’s talk about the Shakespeare.  This is not a true interpretation of the original source. Fellowes has gone off on his own in some places (and I’m not always sure how far or how frequently). I’m pretty sure Tybalt never said, “Romeo! Come settle with me, boy!”  Nor did Romeo say something about “I have murdered my tomorrow.”   Is all the dialogue Fellowes’ creation, and not Shakespeare’s?  Not necessarily.  The trailer also has Juliet’s “cut him out in little stars” speech, which appears to stray not too far from the original (although it is acted pretty poorly).

What do we think? Are you going to be in line for this one?  It feels like it’s going in the same bucket as the 1996 Romeo+Juliet did – namely, you either hate it as an interpretation of Shakespeare, or you love it for its attempt to bring Shakespeare to a modern young audience in the way that their receptive to.  Personally I’m for that.  If a movie like this comes out, and I hear random people talking about Shakespeare because of it?  That’s a win.

I love it when you’re so deeply involved with something that you start dreaming it.  This often happens to people in my day job (writing software) where you spend so much of your waking time thinking in code that you dream in code.  It is amazing.  That reinforcement that you’re so intensely focused on a subject that even your subconscious has gone that way?  Great feeling.

Even more so when a Shakespeare dream shows up!

I’ve blogged about this phenomenon before (here in 2005, here in 2010 and here in 2012).  Here’s the latest installment in this series:

It’s late, it’s snowing, and I’m out on my back porch when I clearly hear what sounds like someone reciting Shakespeare.  I try to place the sound and I see my neighbor walking around his yard (his back to me), definitely speaking what, in my dream, I recognize as “the crowd scene from Romeo and Juliet.”  Suddenly my neighbor turns around and I realize that he appears to be snowblowing his front yard (yes, his front yard, not his driveway or something) and speaking on a bluetooth headset to someone at the same time (while it is snowing).  The snowblower is not making any noise, all I can hear is Shakespeare.  He then wraps up with some sort of professorial something or other and I realize that he’s been presenting on some sort of conference call.  Shortly after, I wake up.

Upon waking my first thought is to capture what scene that was, but it’s too late – it’s already gone.  This is one of the most fascinating aspects of dreaming to me, that I never dream in specifics.  If I’m reading a book in a dream?  I’ll have the knowledge that I’m reading a book, but I never get specifics about seeing the words on the page.  Same here.  I have a very strong memory still of hearing my neighbor reciting what I clearly recognized as Romeo and Juliet, but for me to say “It was probably the opening where the Prince disperses the crowd” would be me trying to fit the dream to what I know to be the text, rather than any direct evidence that this was the scene.

My second thought is to wonder, “Ok, did I somehow hear some Shakespeare in my sleep and my brain inserted that into a dream?”  I fall asleep with headphones (typically listening to the Pandora streaming service).  But that hasn’t happened — I put the phone in “airplane mode” during the middle of the night so I don’t stream music all night long that I can’t listen to.  My nightstand radio is not on, although it would be awesome if I had a device that randomly played Shakespeare without me telling it to.

So, I have no idea where this particular dream came from.  I was speaking to that neighbor yesterday so that probably explains his presence.  But everything else?  No idea.

I’m always on the lookout for “children’s” versions of the plays that don’t lose the essence of the original or dumb it down to the point that my kids will barely realize that it’s Shakespeare.  So I was more than pleasantly surprised when Bardfilm sent me a scanned page out of Tales from Shakespeare
by Marcia Williams.

Unfortunately I do not have pictures from inside the book (I don’t feel that I have permission to republish the single scanned page that I do have), but I can point you to this other blog that reviewed this series, with pictures.

Imagine a simple novelization of the play, first of all.  Maybe half a dozen small paragraphs per page.  Now, for each paragraph, you get an illustration of what’s going on.  But wait, it gets better!  Within the illustration, the characters are speaking lines from the original!  Very cool way to do the whole “original text side-by-side with modern translation” thing.

But then it gets better!  Decorating up and down the margins of each page are an audience, each sitting in their own box seat, shouting over the “performance”.  Sometimes it’s just random color (“This is too spooky, tell me when it’s over!” someone shouts from the side of Macbeth), or actual hints about context (“That’s not Aliena, that’s Celia in disguise!” is shouted at As You Like It).

When they arrived, my older geeklet jumped right in (to Antony and Cleopatra, no less!)  “How do I read this?” she asked, overwhelmed by the amount of text on the page.

“Read the paragraph parts,” I told her, “Like you’re reading a story.  The pictures will show you what’s going on.  Once you understand the story, you can see what they were saying to each other in the original Shakespeare.”

“What about the people up and down the side?” she asked.

“They’re there for hints,” I told her.  “As you read down the side, you may catch them asking the same questions that you’re asking yourself, like how come the Duke doesn’t recognize his own daughter, even if she is disguised, in As You Like It.  You can ignore them if they’re not helping.”

She read A&C in a matter of minutes.  I like that each book has seven plays, so there’s lots of opportunity to experience plays they might otherwise never get to enjoy.  Many times I’ll find a single play done like this, or a “great tragedies” edition.  In this volume alone we got Romeo and Juliet, Dream, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, Winter’s Tale and The Tempest.  When I write it out like that I realize that my kids know all of those stories, except Julius Caesar. 😉  More Tales provides us with As You Like It, King Lear, Much Ado about Nothing, Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night, Merchant, and Richard III.  More there to work with.

I’m very glad I found these.  The illustrations are nothing to write home about, but I’m very excited about the format.

This year’s Shakespeare Day Celebration is sponsored in part by Shakespeare Is Universal: Shakespeare truly is for everyone, and nothing demonstrates that sentiment better than his most famous quote of all, translated here into languages from around the world.   In celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday, show that you believe his works are just as relevant, powerful and important as they’ve ever been!