The literary apocalypse has arrived

Would you care to be mortified? Blown away in despair? Wrought to the point of bitter, Macbethian depression at the cognitive injuries we do to ourselves? Then read Prof. James Shapiro's NYT op-ed, which opens:

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has decided that Shakespeare’s language is too difficult for today’s audiences to understand. It recently announced that over the next three years, it will commission 36 playwrights to translate all of Shakespeare’s plays into modern English.

Many in the theater community have known that this day was coming, though it doesn’t lessen the shock. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has been one of the stars in the Shakespeare firmament since it was founded in 1935. While the festival’s organizers insist that they also remain committed to staging Shakespeare’s works in his own words, they have set a disturbing precedent. Other venues, including …

I would go on with other excerpts, but I can't bring myself to reread Shapiro's elegiac cry. I am tempted to pull out my copy of Richard III and hurl at the above malefactors, through quotations, the best insults ever devised by a literary mind. But, battling dumbed-down modernity is as doomed to failure as Richard III was at Bosworth.

You can't beat 'em; you just can't beat the cash-whoring bastards. Among no others has pen ever scratched paper with the brilliance of Shakespeare's, yet now his unequaled genius is deemed unmarketable on stage. Yes, we have known "this day was coming" — and it will get darker. The very best the English language has to offer will soon disappear altogether. Already, at my local Barnes and Noble, one can find only a handful of Shakespeare's dozens of masterpieces. The total eclipse is well on its way.

I am mortified beyond expression. I'll let you read and, if you like, reread Prof. Shapiro's op-ed. I can't take it.

 

Comments

[Bob Puharic]

I'm just a dumb chemical engineer. I have a fleeting familiarity with poetry and other literature. Yet there's a magic in Shakespeare's language that makes learning Elizabethan English worth it. Perhaps there's a place for this, side by side with the original. But it's kind of like the remakes of classical movies. Never the same. Never as good.

[Peter G]

2B or 2not B? ?. Cooler to be dissed by luck or get in its grill?

That's the script of the first texting presentation of Hamlet's soliloquy from actors sitting on a stage and addressing the audience's phones. Not at my beloved Stratford by God.

[Peter G]

So here's two takes on the Crispian Day speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-yZNMWFqvM and this from Renaissance Man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHYeDqEngxU

I watched them film a piece of the latter at the Sarnia border crossing where Benitez and the other misfits were crossing to see this play at Stratford. It is easily understood is it not? And powerful, so much so that the Marines use The few, The Proud as their recruiting motto. The Crispian's Day speech resonates throughout popular culture and a rousing speech to the troops whether they be soldiers or nerds or members of Animal House is a literary convention. None did it so well as Shakespeare. Sometimes it doesn't end well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMwmqp3GLMc

[Bob]

Shucks, PM, even the Bible has been translated into modern language. When Turner started colorizing movies my brother-in-law the media arts professor probably should have been heavily sedated even though no black and white copies were destroyed in the process. I even enjoyed watching many of the so-called abominations, especially 'The Maltese Falcon'. The novelty eventually wore off, though, and I'd just as soon see the originals now. Likewise, existing copies of Shakespeare's works will not be lost and the original wordings are all in the public domain and available on the web for free.

I haven't noticed a colorized movie broadcast for years. Evidently most other people who enjoy classic movies would rather see them in their original form. The same will likely prove true for Shakespeare plays.

[The Raven]

Ach, conservatives always complain about the death of high culture, but high culture is still here. The OSF is still performing the original plays (and you should go if you haven't been), the original texts are widely available, and what's the problem already?

Hey, if you really want to have an aneurysm, there's always the Thug Notes summaries.

[David & Son of Duff]

I, too, have seen this day coming and in a tiny way I have helped it along - mea culpa! I have directed several amateur productions of Shakespeare and I never hesitate to modernise an archaic word or phrase here or there if it is likely to aid understanding. I like to imagine that Will would have nodded his head in approval because he was a very *practical* man of the theatre and for sure he would have wanted his audiences to understand.

Much of his work he chopped and changed himself so there is no need to approach it as though it - assuming you can decide which 'it' you think is the one he preferred - is some sort of pristine relic.

However, there is one thing about which I was rigorous, and that was abiding by the iambic pentameter. That must not be altered and sometimes, dammit, I could not think of a modern replacement word or phrase that would abide by the rhythm. A great deal of the clowns' speeches written in prose can be well and truly hacked and, albeit carefully, modernised because the joke references are now 400 years old and whilst they might have had the groundlings at The Globe falling about they are meaningless to us.

I respect Prof. Schapiro and tomorrow I will read his op-ed with interest.

[The Dark Avenger]

"To be or not to be--I think I'll have some Merlot."