Devil’s advocate time here, people.

I’ve been avoiding all the discussion about Oregon Shakespeare Festival‘s plan to translate all the works into “contemporary modern English”.  The general response seems to have been, “GAH! DON’T TOUCH IT!”

Personally, I agree.  Just…not enough to jump on my blog the very instant the news broke, and start a boycott.

Instead let me ask a question. Haven’t the works of Shakespeare already been translated into, well, pretty much every language in existence? Including Klingon and Esperanto?  George R.R. Martin himself hopes that constructed Game of Thrones language “Dothraki” is next.

Did we grab the pitch forks for all those translations as well? Why not? Isn’t it the exact same thing?

Ok, this story isn’t specifically about Shakespeare, but it’s got some obvious parallels.

Scholars believe they’ve found a draft of the King James Bible dated somewhere between 1604 – 1608.

There’s a popular story, which I’m sure most of you know, that says Shakespeare was not only one of the translators, but that he hid his name in Psalm 46.  Count 46 words in and you get the word “Shake”, count 46 words backwards from the end and you get the word “spear”.  Shakespeare would have been 46 years old in 1611 when the KJV was published (well, technically in 1610, when they were supposedly finishing the project). Boom. Mind==blown.

That story’s great if you have absolutely no other details about how the KJV was created, and just assume that that’s how it worked.  That a bunch of guys just banged it out in a year, and Shakespeare, being the biggest fish in that particular pond, helped himself to psalm 46 and slipped in his easter egg.

The great thing about today’s news is that it brings the actual true details of the KJV into the spotlight.  Such as how the bulk of the work was really done 1604 -1608, which doesn’t line up at all with the whole 46 thing. Or how there were actually six separate companies all working on the translation, and any one of them could have been responsible for psalm 46. Or how they submitted their work to the general committee in 1608, meaning that Shakespeare would have to have been so dedicated to making this happen that he planned ahead two years and said, “Yeah, I think we’ll be done around 1610 when I’m 46.”

Either that or it’s one a big coincidence.

Honestly, scholars have been flat out proving it’s not true for years. But sometimes it takes a mention in the NY Times for people to finally start paying attention.  No offense, scholars. 😉

Whenever a new Shakespeare movie comes out, everybody does a list of movie adaptations.  But here’s my problem.  Nobody seems to want to do the research.  Take this one, for example:

Are these the 10 best Shakespeare screen adaptations?

4 of the 10 are from the year 2000 or later (including Julie Taymor’s Tempest.  Really?)

3 from the 1990’s (including 10 Things I Hate About You, grrrrrrr.  Not the same thing!)

1 each from 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s (including Brando’s Julius Caesar, Peter Brooks’ King Lear and Chimes at Midnight)

We’ve been filming Shakespeare for basically about one hundred years. So is it reasonable to believe that 70% of the best versions all come from the last 25 years?

What sort of criteria should we use?  You can’t drop a 1936 Romeo and Juliet into a class full of high school English students alongside the 1996 Leonardo diCaprio version and ask them which one they like better.

The art of movie making, it would seem logical to assume, has gotten better over time. The quality of the equipment that goes into it, the special effects, the scope and budget.  So is it true, then, that the best movies in general have all been recent movies? When we speak of those older movies is there an implied, “…for its time” qualifier tacked onto the praise?

Does anybody have a favorite Shakespeare adaptation from before 1990 that they believe stands up to a more modern adaptation? If a friend asked you for a recommendation, would you dip into 100 years of Shakespeare movies or would you stick to the more modern stuff?

UPDATE : This guy gets it right.