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Shakespeare Adaptations

Adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays proliferated shortly after his death and have continued without cessation to the current day.  In his investigation of eighteenth-century versions of Shakespeare plays, David Wheeler notes that between 1660 and 1820, “all thirty-seven of Shakespeare’s plays were revised” with a total of at least 123 adaptations during this time.  While modern adaptations typically show homage or deference to Shakespeare’s works, Wheeler notes that in the eighteenth century, the revisions, such as Cibber’s Richard the III, and Dryden and D’Avenant’s The Tempest, “totally supplanted the original,” as all known performances were of the revised versions (438-439).

The practice of adaptation is part of an early modern tradition and Shakespeare’s plays are at times direct revisions of other works or are drawn from a variety of historical and literary sources.    Plays that rely heavily on a single earlier versions include Othello (Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio’s Gli Hecatommithi) and A Winter’s Tale (Robert Greene’s Pandosto), whereas plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Tempest are more composite works borrowing from an array of published materials and folklore.  The Taming of the Shrew seems to have touched a nerve, soliciting what we might call a proto-feminist sequel in John Fletcher’s 1611 The Tamer Tamed. 

We might debate whether to consider filmed versions of Shakespeare’s plays adaptations or performances (indeed, we could categorize every staged performance as an adaptation, as projects such as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare can attest).  Russ McDonald and Lena Cowen Orlin include a brief history of Shakespeare on screen in The Bedford Shakespeare, pointing to one of the earliest examples in which excerpts from the 1899 stage production of King John  were “committed to film” (1326) before touching on just a sample of the many complete film and television versions including those that take great liberty in their updates such as Then Things I Hate about You (Taming of the Shrew) and Prospero’s Books (The Tempest) as well as international adaptations including Akira Kurosawa’s now classic Throne of Blood (Macbeth) and Ran (King Lear).  In television, Slings and Arrows is a standout adaptation that follows the actors and producers who inhabit a Canadian Shakespeare festival and whose lives often imitate their productions in myriad delightful ways.

Print adaptations of Shakespeare have also become popular, crossing boundaries of genre and language.  Weighty novels such as Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres (King Lear) and David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (Hamlet) stand next to short stories including John Updike’s “Gertrude and Claudius;” young adult novels, such as Caroline Conney’s Enter Three Witches (Macbeth); Ryan North’s “choose your own adventure” books, To be or not to be and Romeo and/or Juliet; and comics and graphic novels including Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Series (A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest) and Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery’s Kill Shakespeare. 

The digital age has led to an explosion of possibilities in adapting Shakespeare from online games, to YouTube series, to comics, to memes.  Jumping into the pool of Shakespearean adaptation is as daunting as entering into the field of Shakespeare scholarship.  They are both daunting and continuously expanding.  But even getting our feet wet is worth it. 
Wheeler, David. “Eighteenth-Century Adapations of Shakespeare and the Example of John Dennis.” Shakespeare Quarterly 36.4 (1985): 438-449.
 

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