What dost thou speak of?

There is something that really p*sses me off. Modern adaptations of Shakespearean plays.

Why the hell do they keep the same style of language? Do you really expect me to believe this story is real when teenagers in 1996 are speaking in iambic pentameter with words and phrases that have died out before George Washington was born? No, I don’t.

I don’t like sitting through an hour and a half movie and not understanding what the hell is going on. Every Shakespearean Play that I read in High School had annotations written in the margins to tell us what the hell they were saying. So Hollywood Producers, do you think I’m going to understand the movie without notes explaining what every line is? It only makes sense to speak like that if it is taking place in the period or 200 years ago. And even then people didn’t speak like that in Elizabethan times.

I saw a High School play of As You Like It when I was in Middle School. It was updated to 1968 and that idea was shoved down your throat. It could have taken place in any other year as I saw no reason why it mattered so much that it takes place in 1968, besides the occasional song number done in the style of the time by someone dressed up as an artist from that time. It was still spoken in Elizabethan garbage. I sat there two hours bored and confused, wondering why my mom didn’t take me home when she took my grandmother home for falling asleep a quarter of the way through.

I’m sure the students put a lot of effort into the production and tried really hard, but I hated it.

West Side Story is a great example of how you modernize one of Shakespeare’s plays. Although, did it have to be a musical? (I know the movie was based off of a musical.) Also, the gangs dancing in sync really made it hard for me to think of them as threatening. (Though the dancing was done well).

So listen up Hollywood. If Hamlet is on a plane and Romeo drives a car, HAVE THEM SPEAK MODERN ENGLISH!