Shakespeare in Any Other Era

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Malviolio...*

Okay, so I know it's "Michelangelo" in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but I adapted it to introduce this post about possibly-incongruous adaptations. Sorry, T.S. Eliot.

The other day I overheard a conversation two ladies were having about Shakespeare. One of the ladies had upcoming plans to see a live performance, but she was already complaining about it.

“When I went to see Much Ado About Nothing they dressed in all modern clothes. I hate that!”

What surprised me about her tone was that it implied she thought it was some new thing, for Shakespearean plays to have a “modernized” setting. She continued,

“It’s just weird, they’re going around in regular clothes, but speaking the same words.”

True, I've encountered similar adaptations and found them confusing. But is it really a travesty to perform Shakespeare—or really, any “ancient” play—as if it were a contemporary setting? Does every adaptation need to be "Shakespeare: Men in Tights"?

No doubt there are benefits from traditional adaptation. Viewers get to experience what the original audience would have seen, heard, and felt when the plays debuted hundreds of years ago. And there is no anachronistic disconnect between what the play looks like and the language that is spoken.

While some fans may insist that Shakespeare is timeless and therefore doesn’t need updating in any way, the fact remains that there is a LOT more competition when it comes to entertainment, and in order to draw viewers some producers may feel that a contemporary setting will give them a better edge.

I’m no expert, but it seems that Shakespearean costumes would be harder to acquire or make, and probably more expensive. A Shakespeare in the Park sort of production might find it easier to save money by having actors just wear their own clothes, or purchasing at thrift shops. Shakespearean costumes also pose the problem of accuracy. If someone is a stickler for “Shakespeare needs to be performed in the clothes of his time period,” they may be a stickler for historical accuracy. In that case, traditional dress would be as distracting (and draw as much criticism) as contemporary, anyway. 

Then there’s the whole “historical accuracy within historical accuracy” question: Do you adapt Julius Caesar to be set in Elizabethan England, or Republican Rome? What did Shakespeare’s original company do? Except for his Histories (obviously), Shakespeare’s stories usually don’t indicate what time they’re from. Especially the more fantastic (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest) could be said to exist in their own constructed worlds. If there are no dates technically assigned to these plays, who’s to say that any of the “contemporary” settings are necessarily wrong?

(There is also the question of how strict an adaptation should be in following the traditional performance: that is, will all the parts be played by men?)

I think there are two important things that people need to keep in mind if they’re going to adapt Shakespeare:

1)    Do not be distracting. There’s a risk that dressing in contemporary clothes and spouting Elizabethan language will be confusing—and therefore distracting. But then there’s also a risk that people will be distracted by men walking around in tights and puffy collars. Whatever setting you decide, be consistent with it. I’ve seen a few BBC recordings of Shakespeare that couldn’t decide whether they were doing minimalist, modern, or some weird Steampunk thing with the sets and costumes. For me, that was more distracting than if everyone had been going around in T-shirts and jeans.

2)     Whether you stick to traditional dress or do something more modern, do not modernize the language. No, it’s not the sort of language we would normally speak, and it’s sometimes hard to understand. Nevertheless it’s the language that thus far has stood the test of time, and attempts to adjust it to be more “realistic” threaten to ruin the wordplay, poetry, and symbolism. Anything else, well...as the saying goes, it ain’t Shakespeare.