Last year, Hogarth Press announced that they had commissioned novels by top-tier writers that were retellings and reimaginings of Shakespeare's works. The titles usually don't invoke Shakespeare (which seems to be missing a crucial component of their marketing strategy), save for Howard Jacobson's Shylock Is My Name. The rest that are currently published (Gap of Time, Hag Seed, Vinegar Girl) don't indicate the source material.
I have purchased two of these, and aim to finish out the collection later today (we'll see how my schedule shakes out). In typical me-fashion, I have these books because I wants them (precious) and so I buys them. I haven't actually read either of the two I have, but I feel like I need to buy them (and, though it's costlier, I ought to buy them new) to support the market for books like this.
My biggest problem with them is that they're mostly mainstream fiction. I don't read a lot of mainstream fiction--I tend toward the fantastical and historical more than anything else. I read a handful of classics because it's part of my job (I'm thinking mostly of Les Miserables), and while I enjoy them immensely, I don't read modern day successes. I scored a copy of The Casual Vacancy for a dollar and, even though I love Rowling's fantasy series, I haven't even cracked the cover of her mainstream mystery. It isn't that I don't want to read it, it's that I'm busy reading other things...like a book about dinosaur knights (which are medieval-style knights who ride--surprise!--dinosaurs) or a million-word magical realism book by a comic book writer. (Which I'll blog about...if I ever finish it. The thing is huge.)
The premise for Hogarth Press' publications is pretty great: Shakespeare wrote great stories, so why not adapt those great stories deliberately and openly. Not in the She's the Man style, but make it overt? Again, the idea for this is great. It got me thinking: Considering how I tend to think fantastical, which story would I adapt if I were approached by them to make a novel around Shakespeare? I went first to The Tempest, since magic is kind of my bag, but then I saw Margaret Atwood was tackling that play, and I said, "Hahaha, lol, no."
My other interest often lies in space, so I thought about what a science-fiction Shakespeare would look like, especially if it wasn't like that graphic novel of Macbeth as a space opera. What story lends itself to a future world? And it took about three seconds to realize that A Comedy of Errors would be perfect. You have a mad scientist and her husband (I'd gender bend because it's the future, it's thoroughly Shakespearean, and I try to write women characters as often as possible) who have cloned their kid--and the first attempt at cloning--only to be attacked. Both parents flee with one of each of the clones, and, some twenty-five years later, the hilarity of mistaken identity ensues...but in outer space.
Since Comedy is taken from the old Roman play, The Menaechmi, it again fits into the Shakespearean tradition to retell a story from a source and society much older than one's own.
I tried a retelling last year for NaNoWriMo, setting Dante's Inferno on a colonized planet. There, the humans--mining for a precious resource--accidentally let loose a subterranean alien civilization that abducted the humans and dragged them into the bowels of the planet. Unwittingly, Dante (the main character) and his war-pal Virgil (I'm super creative about the names) end up working their way through a hellish night, trying to get to a communications tower so that they can let the authorities know what's happened. In the process, they descend lower and lower, meeting more aliens, more humans, and exposing more of their characters. By the end, they meet the "head alien" and have to shoot it a lot.
Anyway, it's a similar conceit to Dante's Divine Comedy, complete with the last word of the book being "stars", and a plan (but no desire) to follow up the Inferno-based story with one that follows Purgatorio and, at the end, Paradiso. So I've actually done a little bit of this sort of writing, though that isn't to say that I'm willing to dive into a Comedy of Quasar or anything like that soon.
Perhaps one day, though, I'll do something novel with Shakespeare.
I have purchased two of these, and aim to finish out the collection later today (we'll see how my schedule shakes out). In typical me-fashion, I have these books because I wants them (precious) and so I buys them. I haven't actually read either of the two I have, but I feel like I need to buy them (and, though it's costlier, I ought to buy them new) to support the market for books like this.
My biggest problem with them is that they're mostly mainstream fiction. I don't read a lot of mainstream fiction--I tend toward the fantastical and historical more than anything else. I read a handful of classics because it's part of my job (I'm thinking mostly of Les Miserables), and while I enjoy them immensely, I don't read modern day successes. I scored a copy of The Casual Vacancy for a dollar and, even though I love Rowling's fantasy series, I haven't even cracked the cover of her mainstream mystery. It isn't that I don't want to read it, it's that I'm busy reading other things...like a book about dinosaur knights (which are medieval-style knights who ride--surprise!--dinosaurs) or a million-word magical realism book by a comic book writer. (Which I'll blog about...if I ever finish it. The thing is huge.)
The premise for Hogarth Press' publications is pretty great: Shakespeare wrote great stories, so why not adapt those great stories deliberately and openly. Not in the She's the Man style, but make it overt? Again, the idea for this is great. It got me thinking: Considering how I tend to think fantastical, which story would I adapt if I were approached by them to make a novel around Shakespeare? I went first to The Tempest, since magic is kind of my bag, but then I saw Margaret Atwood was tackling that play, and I said, "Hahaha, lol, no."
My other interest often lies in space, so I thought about what a science-fiction Shakespeare would look like, especially if it wasn't like that graphic novel of Macbeth as a space opera. What story lends itself to a future world? And it took about three seconds to realize that A Comedy of Errors would be perfect. You have a mad scientist and her husband (I'd gender bend because it's the future, it's thoroughly Shakespearean, and I try to write women characters as often as possible) who have cloned their kid--and the first attempt at cloning--only to be attacked. Both parents flee with one of each of the clones, and, some twenty-five years later, the hilarity of mistaken identity ensues...but in outer space.
Since Comedy is taken from the old Roman play, The Menaechmi, it again fits into the Shakespearean tradition to retell a story from a source and society much older than one's own.
I tried a retelling last year for NaNoWriMo, setting Dante's Inferno on a colonized planet. There, the humans--mining for a precious resource--accidentally let loose a subterranean alien civilization that abducted the humans and dragged them into the bowels of the planet. Unwittingly, Dante (the main character) and his war-pal Virgil (I'm super creative about the names) end up working their way through a hellish night, trying to get to a communications tower so that they can let the authorities know what's happened. In the process, they descend lower and lower, meeting more aliens, more humans, and exposing more of their characters. By the end, they meet the "head alien" and have to shoot it a lot.
Anyway, it's a similar conceit to Dante's Divine Comedy, complete with the last word of the book being "stars", and a plan (but no desire) to follow up the Inferno-based story with one that follows Purgatorio and, at the end, Paradiso. So I've actually done a little bit of this sort of writing, though that isn't to say that I'm willing to dive into a Comedy of Quasar or anything like that soon.
Perhaps one day, though, I'll do something novel with Shakespeare.
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