"Updating" Shakespeare, Part Two

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the short films that adapt/stage/body forth Shakespeare's sonnets. Now, there's an interesting new plan for a different kind of adaptation. Novelists are signing on to "novelize" Shakespeare's plays--and the series will begin to be published in 2015. Two plays have already been chosen, by established novelists who have won awards in their own right. Intriguingly, Jeanette Winterson (who is both a novelist and a screenwriter) has chosen The Winter's Tale; Anne Tyler will adapt The Taming of the Shrew. (The best part of the article, though, isn't necessarily these details: it's the fabulous portrayal of a "hipster" Shakespeare, who looks exactly like someone from our creative writing department!)

Again, this project calls up really interesting questions about genre and accessibility. Unlike the sonnet-film project, though, this project adds the dimension of cultural translation: a sixteenth-century art form is giving way to a twenty-first-century one. Depending on the project's overall guidelines, and on the authors' individual choices, anything from complex Italian names to economic background information, character gender roles, family structures or mythological references could be "translated"--in addition to the language itself. As a translational project, then, this project has fascinating implications: What does it mean to study "Shakespeare," and what does it mean to "translate" his works? How is this process similar to what Shakespeare himself did, as an adapter of source material, and how is it different? (And what do these similarities and differences tell us about the changing cultural status of a "translation?")

Staging the Blazon has landed!

I'm really excited to announce that Staging the Blazon in Early Modern English Theater has just been released! (I know this, because I got a mysterious cardboard package from Sweden today, and my contributor copy was inside.) The essays in the book explore how the blazon--which is a physical description of a person, often head-to-toe, usually found in written poetry--translates onto the stage in Renaissance England. It was a lot of fun to take part in the SAA seminar on Staging the Blazon in Chicago, and also a lot of fun to contribute to the book project.

Filming Shakespeare's... Sonnets?

When I heard about the new project to film Shakespeare's sonnets--all 154 of them--on the streets of New York, I had a mixed reaction. On one level, what a great idea: drawing attention to the sonnets in a completely different cultural context from the one that students usually expect; enlisting respected actors and actresses; using Kickstarter and the app format to get the public involved. On the other hand, the lyric poet in me went... well, are sonnets actually filmable? I mean, they're not plays, and they're mostly not written for explicit, embodied performance (unless you're writing them as a set of song lyrics, or unless you're Romeo and Juliet--in which case, have at it). But most sonnets aren't drama, after all, and part of their point is that they speak in a different generic mode; one of their voices, for better or for worse, is always the one that you hear in your own head. From that angle, I'm a little worried that the project mashes two distinct art forms together without interrogating their differences, or even pointing out to the public that the differences exist.

Now, I have to admit, I feel a little pedantic writing that. After all, anything that appifies the Bard is a fabulous idea, and it generates discussions like these in the first place. So, I've decided to sign up for the app. There's only one sonnet-film available at the moment, but (for some reason) I haven't been able to access it on this machine. I'll check back once I've figured out the difficulty, and I'll keep you updated on my reactions. For the moment, though, I'm thinking that the sonnet-films are going to be, at the very least, fabulous conversation starters about genre, drama, and inwardness--particularly in the Shakespeare classroom.