Dumbing down Shakespeare

**Beirut** · 06-11-2006, 12:40

Originally Posted by doc_bean

That's part of the problem; shakespeare never wrote high art, he made entertainment.

Agreed, but his entetainment became art, as did many of the works of the old masters, regardless of their art form.

Originally Posted by doc_bean

But wouldn't it be nice if people could be introduced to Shakespeare in a more accessible way? Wouldn't they appreciate it more or at least more easily ? And wouldn't those that were truly interested learn the middle English required to read it in its original form?

Agreed. That's how I learned about it.

The art class, as I mentioned, has artistic license to modernize his plays. Several movies, some of them good, have done the same thing. I prefer these avenues be used to facilitate people's introduction to Shakespeare, and that the educational system remain true to the purity of what he wrote. The problem with the educational system itself "officially" changing the words is that it becomes very hard to change them back.

The kids know that Hollywood Shakespeare isn't right. But if the teachers start pimping low IQ Shakespeare out of convenience and/or an inability to teach the real thing, then the art (entertainment) suffers as well as those exposed to it. Teach a whole generation to say "Maybe I is and maybe I isn't" and they will begin to believe it. A lie repeated often enough can become the truth. This literary tampering is like putting a fig leaf over the exposed areas of a Michelangelo. Convenient to the moment and always a bad idea.

Originally Posted by doc_bean

And those that don't, well, you can force people into a museum, but you can't force them to appreciate it.

Agreed. And we should still force them. Education is often forced. So is teeth brushing to a three year-old, but it's still beneficial. The end justifies the means.

**Marcellus** · 06-11-2006, 13:00

Personally I think that it would be more beneficial to students to see the play they are studying being performed than it would for them to study a 'modern version'. I always found Shakespeare to be much more understandable when performed than when read. After all, they are plays, not books.

**Beirut** · 06-11-2006, 15:53

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Personally I think that it would be more beneficial to students to see the play they are studying being performed than it would for them to study a 'modern version'. I always found Shakespeare to be much more understandable when performed than when read. After all, they are plays, not books.

There be the truth spoken.

**Flavius Clemens** · 06-11-2006, 21:42

Takes me back to my schooldays - I never did Shakespeare as a subject (English Language was compulsory to age 16, but English Lit was an option you could choose from 14) but we did A Midsummer Night's Dream as the school play one year. We did use the technique of translating into modern English in some rehearsals to help us concentrate on the emotion and comedy, but the performance was all the straight original text. The review in the local paper carried a quote they overheard from one of the audience "I always thought Shakespear was meant to be boring, but the way they did it, it wasn't."
Read the poetry sitting at a desk, but treat the plays as plays!

**IrishArmenian** · 06-12-2006, 02:03

Yes, MacBeth would be exceptionally funny.
Upon seeing Banquo's ghost:
MacBeth: I thought I killed you. Why won't you die?
The royal party enters MacBeth's castle as guests:
Duncan: Fair and noble hostess, we are you guests tonight.
Lady Macbeth: Your servants, ever.
Translation-
Duncan: You better have drinks, and half-good looking women, or I am going to crack some skulls!
Lady MacBeth: Don't get violent, you drunk dimwitt!
In my class, we actually performed A Midsummer Night's Dream and MacBeth in English and Armenian. I was Nick Bottom in the former, and Malcolm and a murderer in the former. I think I did trashy, but people tell me I did well. We modernized the first one by setting it in the late 50's. MacBeth, though, was no holds barred, incredibly vicious, or how it was meant to be preformed.