It feels like a bit of a basic thing to say as an English major, but I LOVE Shakespeare.
For some, their experience with Shakespeare is limited to the highs and lows of high school English, but I find myself constantly coming back to his work. And, because I’ve been inexplicably allowed to write about whatever I want for yet another week, I figured I’d tally up some of my favorites.
(My qualifications? Verve, mostly. Well, that and the Shakespeare and Film class I took with my friends last semester.)
10 Things I Hate About You, She’s The Man and Warm Bodies: The Teen Movie
I wouldn’t dream of applying modern feminist framing to a text from the 1500s (mostly because I don’t have the time or the willpower), but I will say that 10 Things I Hate About You reframes Taming of the Shrew in a way that is easily digestible.
10 Things I Hate About You’s Kat is a strong yet vulnerable character who you grow to root for, and she is certainly not “tamed.” The film takes the famous play and turns it into a celebration of dismantling expectations and learning to trust again.
It’s also hilarious, and there are so many Easter eggs to the original text, and to Shakespeare in general. Kat and Patrick’s last names, for example, are both references to Shakespearean locations: Stratford, as in Stratford upon Avon (the birthplace of Shakespeare), and Verona (the setting of Romeo and Juliet).
She’s the Man follows the trend of 10 Things I Hate About You in that it modernizes Shakespeare in an empowering and extremely entertaining way. Amanda Bynes’ performance as Viola is iconic, and to this day is the Halloween costume of choice for many, many cool girls.
Twelfth Night’s Viola is disguised as a man for her own survival, but She’s the Man‘s Viola is there to prove she’s capable of being a successful soccer player after her school denies her the right to play.
She’s the Man keeps the basic structure and comedic tone of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, but applies it in a way that is entertaining for the average audience (and has a really nice love story).
Warm Bodies is a guilty pleasure of mine. My favorite Shakespeare play is and always has been Romeo and Juliet. Warm Bodies takes it and creates something that would have made Shakespeare himself upset he didn’t think of it first: a zombie apocalypse story.
R, a zombie obsessed with music, falls in love with Julie, a human girl. That’s the premise. It’s insane, and I love it dearly. Along with a few other crazy worldbuilding details (like the fact that eating a human’s brain gives zombies access to their memories), Warm Bodies takes forbidden romance and misspent youth and creates something more hopeful: the zombies are revitalized the more they connect with one another. R and Julie are able to have what Romeo and Juliet never did: peace.
If you finish the starcrossed lovers’ tale and need to fill the void, Warm Bodies will always bring you back to life.
Back to Basics: My Favorite Direct Adaptations
I could go on about teen movies, but I think it’s important to discuss the direct adaptations: Shakespeare’s work is best when it’s performed while keeping the original text.
Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet is everything to me, which will come as a surprise to no one. It shows an understanding of the story, which, at its core, is about youth. The leads look appropriately young, and turning swords into guns escalates the violence in a way that makes it more understandable to a modern audience, and equally gut-wrenching. It’s also visually beautiful, constantly playing with the idea of the world as a stage. It’s reminiscent of the Broadway production with Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor, which focuses on how young people interpret a story about themselves.
The Merchant of Venice is an underrated Al Pacino performance, and the right way to tackle a more controversial text. With undoubtedly anti-Semitic threads tying together the original play, Merchant of Venice includes historical context and a clear depiction of the horror surrounding the Jewish experience absent from the original text. Al Pacino’s performance as Shylock is one of my favorites of all time, taking a character with a terrible ending and making him a more sympathetic and humanized version without devaluing him as an antagonist.
Direct adaptations are an incredible introduction to the sphere of Shakespeare. Once you can get behind the language, the actors’ delivery and creative choices by the director and cinematographer reveal so much about how they view the story, its characters, and the themes of the play. There are a million ways to do it (I’ve seen some very weird King Lear movies), and they all have something to contribute.
Rapid Fire Honorable Mentions: Books, TV and More!
One For My Enemy: a read from this year that quickly became one of my favorites. It’s a rival witch family adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. And it’s by Olivie Blake? Run, don’t walk. These Violent Delights is another Romeo and Juliet retelling that’s been on my TBR for ages. Chloe Gong tells the story of rival gangs in 1920s Shanghai. A friend of mine LOVES this book, so I had to recommend by virtue of trusting her taste.
Hamnet: the movie that made everyone cry last November started out as a book! If you want a good cry, relive it all through the original source material.
West Side Story: Again, I have personal history with this, and it is (surprise, surprise!) more Romeo and Juliet action. But come on! Rival New York gangs to the music of Sondheim and Bernstein? That’s like, my whole brand. (The music part … not the—you get it.)
Last one, I swear!
Succession: You might not know it, but this award winning drama is actually an adaptation of King Lear! (A lot of family/sibling competition technically can be … Empire is also loosely Lear.)
Why I Care
I always find myself going back to Shakespeare. And so many others do, too.
But there’s a reason that we’re still talking about this man centuries after the creation of his stories. The text is rich, witty and constantly showing me something new the older I get. The cliches we see today? When he was writing them, they were groundbreaking. The things Romeo said about Juliet were unheard of at the time, and knowing that makes me look at them with fresh eyes.
I had a professor say that if he was going to choose one person to study for the rest of his life, why not the best? And I can’t say I disagree with his choice.
Shakespeare had a way of writing about the human experience that became an inspiration for some of the most inspired works ever. We’re constantly reinventing his texts, adapting them to fit our lives. The permanence of his work naturally lends itself to adaptation, but it also makes these narratives worth reading (or watching) for modern audiences.
As for me, I’ll be rewatching everything on my list.