Bored silly

I'm sure that you, as many people, were exposed to Shakespeare in school and mightily bored you were as well. It seems very hard to make his plays relevant or exciting without making the story 'modern', whatever that means. To be honest, I have enjoyed many of his plays in the original settings and in particular 'The Scottish Play', Troilus and Cressida' and Julius Caesar. I never found much in Romeo and Juliet until my son had to read it - man, that is a funny play. Some of the lines are just amazing, especially when Romeo first tries to kiss Juliet, 'you call THAT a kiss?' In many cases, just modernizing these classics makes them lose some of the meaning of the original and does nothing to make a viewer want to read or see these plays as they were written. Back in 'the day', the BBC brought many of Shakespeare's plays to the screen specially rewritten to make them more accessible to children and young adults. The absolute best of these was 'Heil Caesar', first shown in 1975. This retelling of the venerable Julius Caesar was set in modern times in a 'banana' republic where Caesar was a military man who was being groomed for politics. His murder and subsequent coup was planned and executed (pun intended) by jealous and scared rivals. Caesar's closest colleague, Mark Anthony, addressed the nation using his right of reply as a political leader. What remains with me after all these years is the scene where, in the play, Brutus falls on his sword. In this variant, he asks an aide to run him through - he can't commit suicide - he's Catholic.

Comments

[Sarah Eriksen]

I'm glad that you're rediscovering Shakespeare through your son! I remember doing a project on Shakespearean puns in college and MAN is his work raunchy! A great site that really captures how funny and edgy Shakespeare was - and still is - is Shmoop (http://www.shmoop.com/literature/). Maybe your son could use it.