The Bard - At Last

I'm sitting in the computer lab during my class, and I'm finished all my work. I'm now two weeks ahead on my assignments, so I thought I'd finally write that post on Shakespeare in the real world.

I've recently read Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston, which is the story of a young actress in New York who discovers that Shakespeare's story Midsummer Night's Dream, is actually real! The actor playing Puck? He's actually the real Puck. Oberon? Yep, he's real too. I found this story to be absolutely enchanting. The idea of having an actress perform one of Shakespeare's plays and discover that it wasn't fiction, really worked well for me. There are two other books in the series - Darklight has the Kelly, the main character, preparing for a production of Romeo and Juliet. The Bard really does provide rich material for mining. I found this to be a great combination of Shakepeare and modern faerie literature.

The next book I read was Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson. This was a more traditional biography of one of the English speaking world's most beloved authors. I found this book fascinationg because it really showed me how much we think we know about Shakespeare is actually guesswork. Shakespeare scholars have spent hundreds of years studying him, but they still know very little. I think my favourite part of this book was the section on the Shakespeare de-bunkers; you know, the ones who believe Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare. Bryson does a very good job of showing that he most certainly could have written everything he wrote, and that all the contenders for the "real" Shakespeare couldn't have been Shakespeare. I'm sure I'll pull this book out again before I start my Shakespeare units with my classes; I wouldn't want to give them facts that aren't really facts.

The final book I read recently concerning Shakespeare was Fool by Christopher Moore. I've already spoken about one of Moore's other books (Lamb) and this one is no different. Moore takes a well-known story and makes it lewd and crude. I never really got into this story. It's basically the story of King Lear, not one of my favourite plays to begin with. Moore makes the fool the narrator, and also the protagonist. Edmund writing a letter to discredit his brother? The Fool's idea. Regan and Goneril's deaths? The Fool's idea. Yep, pretty much everything that happens is because of the Fool. Oh, the witches from Macbeth show up as well. I can't really say anything too negative about the book, but I just never bought into the story. It was all abit to obvious. You don't know where to go with the story? No problem! I'll have a ghost come in and direct things. It just didn't work for me.

What about you? Any adaptations of Shakespeare that you really liked or really didn't like?