Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted thousands of times from generation to generation, each with updated settings, plot points, and concepts to mirror the values of the current society and critique social issues, as Shakespeare’s works did with Elizabethan England— setting Romeo and Juliet in Verona, California with mobsters; reversing the racial roles of Othello into an all-black cast with a white Othello; transforming Twelfth Night’s Viola from a shipwrecked girl working for a duke into a high school soccer player. While these updated adaptations offer unique insights into the cultures that produce them, they often draw their lines solely from the original text. Therefore, the changes these adaptations make to Shakespeare’s work focus on changing settings, music, and costumes; the emphasis is on the spectacle of theatre and film rather than on the text itself. However, there is a growing niche of Shakespeare adaptations in a variety of mediums that toy not just with elements of staging and production, but with the text as well. Because the text is considered as some of the finest English work, changes to the text are widely discouraged. Modernizing the text is recent trend that has been growing as the millennial generation has begun discovering Shakespeare. When changes to the text with the intent of modernizing it occur, they are often critiqued as simplifying timeless classics for the lazy readers of today. However, I argue that 21st century adaptations of Shakespeare that translate the text into modern terms include our changing, growing millennial vocabulary, similar to Shakespeare’s invention and inclusion of many then-new words and phrases.
First, I will examine Shakespeare’s infamous wordplay. He prolifically generated new words, compound words, and phrases that have become commonplace, traditional-sounding English words. We rarely trace them back to their origins nor realize how untoward the caliber and frequency of his new words. Understanding how Shakespeare “simultaneously mauled and energized [the English language] with such brilliance and such brio” allows us to the revolutionary aspect of such wordplay— never before had words been combined in such innovative ways (Prose 1).
Then I will explore the changing language of Shakespearean adaptations, both formal and informal. I plan on drawing parallels between current modernizing of the texts and Shakespeare’s original remixing of the English language and explaining that doing so is a tribute to Shakespeare’s wordplay rather than a desecration of the best English writing.
From there, I plan on explaining the impact of modernizing Shakespeare’s language and how it used in schools to make his works more interesting, accessible, and enjoyable for young adults. I plan on looking at Twitter and Facebook posts in the style of Shakespeare (particularly exchanges between Romeo and Juliet characters written by students as part of their high school projects), the YOLO Juliet project, Sassy Gay Friend, and Oregon’s Shakespeare Festival project to modernize five plays texts’ and perform them in 2016. As Aaron Scott explains about modernizing the text, “Playwright Kenneth Cavandar says that people came up to him after the world premiere of ‘Timon of Athens’ at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in 2014 to say this was the first time they’d fully understood the Bard” (Scott 4).
Bibliography
Benet, William Rose. “William Shakespeare.” Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia. 3rd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Print.
Mabillard, Amanda. “Why Study Shakespeare? The Reasons Behind Shakespeare's Influence and Popularity.” Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
Prose, Francine. “‘Everything Is Illuminated’: Back in the Totally Awesome U.S.S.R.” New York Times. The New York Times Company, 14 Apr. 2002. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
Scott, Aaron. “Oregon Shakespeare Festival To Modernize Shakespeare's Canon.” OPB News. Oregon Public Broadcasting, 28 Sept. 2015. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
No comments:
Post a Comment