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One of my favourite writers is Shakespeare and I love to devour his plays. As a result, I also like to use some of his writing for inspiration, especially Hamlet and Macbeth (several great supernatural elements) as well as several of the comedies like A Midsummer Night's Dream.
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One of these days I'm going to write a fantasy novel based on TAMING OF THE SHREW.
We try to go the the Utah Shakespeare Festival every year, and we go to see the Shakespeare plays more than to see the other things they do.
We went last week, and saw all three of the Shakespeare plays they're doing this summer. I hope we can go back this fall and see the Scottish play, too.
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I haven't used them as inspiration for writing, yet. But my favorite is Macbeth; the witches scene, many a writer has borrowed from that scene. Double double toil and trouble... Hamlet, not so much--boring. I do like The Taming of the Shrew. I wonder what that would be titled if it were written today?
The only thing about Shakespeare is that it sucks to read, but to see it on stage, that is an experience.
Anybody here ever see Hamlet starring Kevin Kline? More of a "modern" setting. Best version I have seen, and I don't even like the play very much.
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I usually play with ideas from anywhere. Some minor thing that someone says on TV might spark an idea for a storyline or a different aspet in the fantasy world I'm building. As far as Shakespeare goes, I love A Midsummer Night's Dream. Especially the film...absolutely hilarious!
Personally I don't think it's that hard to read if you're used to that kind of language and once you get into the rythm(I could never spell that word correctly) of it.
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it's a difficult word... certainly. The trick is to make into an Acronym you can remember...
RHYTHM -- Really Hard, Yet This Helps Memorize [it]
Back to the topic:
Nah... Shakespeare no, I try hard to not be influenced by other writers (impossible, yes, but I try)... Music for inspiration? Always. Real life, too. Everything is inspiration.
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I love Shakespeare, one of the few classes in literature I actually enjoyed. It's really difficult for me unless I read it aloud. Here in Halifax there is a troupe called Shakespeare by the Sea and they do a fabulous job of bringing it to life. It's amazing what a different character and easier understanding the action and images gain when acted.
Sometime I would like to make a story about one of his sonnets. Maybe 144, 56, or 138. But, not today, and not tomorrow, someday!
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People use Shakespeare structures for their stories all the time. An example I'm pretty sure everyone has seen. "The Lion King" is "Hamlet." "Forbidden Planet" is "The Tempest". "Ran" by Akira Kurasawa is "King Lear." His "Throne of Blood" is MacBeth. Tad Williams's wrote "Caliban's Tale" which is an extension of "Tempest". Simmon's Illium is based on "The Tempest" and "The Illiad."
I could go on, but my geekishness is already starting to be dull.
The thing is that Shakespeare was borrowing stories and structures from other earlier writers, so adapting his work just means that you're taking story structures that work because they are timeless.
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I'm currently throwing around a few ideas for a story which is set in the Realm of Faerie (yes, yes, done many times but hopefully I have a new slant). It started with the folk story of Tam Lin and is so far taking in A Midsummer Night's Dream, assorted folklore from Koboldes to the Sidhe and its still going. The thing is, because Shakespeare used so many stories that were already in the public mind (at the time) and are timeless, as MaryRobinette said, its like following a maze. Every so often you just start finding all these amazing coincidences. I'm sitting there on the sofa with a copy of Shakespeare and a book on folklore going "look at this" and reading sections out to my bemused husband.
Yes, I'm an English grad and it probably shows, but this writing lark is turning into detective work!
And just to add to the Shakespeare line - I read somewhere recently that given the Elizabethan theatre, he wrote his plays to be performed for perhaps a fortnight and that was it. There might have been a revival, or a tour if a play was particularly sucessful, but on the whole the shelf life of a play at the time was two weeks and that was that. The Sonnets were for posterity, but the plays were pulp fiction.
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For the purposes of looking at Skakespeare as an SF writer, we should probably consider that modern SF fills the function that "faerie" tales and other mythological stories once served. Historically, myths were tales of the "strange but nominally possible", the people that told these tales believed them to be essentially true. Because the function of the "science" in Science Fiction is to persuade the reader that the events of the story are--in some sense--possible, modern SF fits this older tradition far better than does modern Fantasy--in which there is no attempt to persuade the reader that the events of the story are possible, ever have been, or ever will be.
Since Shakespeare is often ostensibly drawing on older versions of history and myth that still had currency with his audience, it is possible to look at his work as SF.
Of course, modern Fantasy also has a place in Shakespeare. Both tales of the strange but nominally possible and outright strange tales have deep roots in human storytelling. It is true that the outright Fantasy in Shakespeare and most other pre-modern literature is simply intended to be amusing, trading on the incongruity of grotesque impossibility. But even in Shakespeare's day there was a hunger for the primative consciousness of mystery and magic, a desire to be confronted with the irrational and impossible.
But it remains certain that SF would be far more accessible to Shakespeares audience than most modern Fantasy, particularly modern "Historical" Romances.
quote:Yes, I'm an English grad and it probably shows, but this writing lark is turning into detective work!
RFLong, is there any chance you may want to write some kind of English major/detective thriller about all the cool things you are discovering? (Along the lines, even, of THE DAVINCI CODE?) You'd have to come up with a deep, dark conspiracy (or some other BIG reason) for all the little connections you are finding, but it could be a fun book, to write as well as to read.
At the very least, you could write some kind of paper on what you're finding--we do do nonfiction here as well, you know. If you decide to take that route, there are places like MYTHPRINT and REALMS OF FANTASY that might be interested in publishing it, as well (I imagine) as a few "more academic" journals.
Kathleen, I'd LOVE to write the English Lit version of THE DAVINCI CODE (and you never know...) It's a good idea.
Most of the connections at the moment are going into a novel I'm working on tentatively called MAY QUEEN. As I'm focusing on this, I'm following definite lines of enquiry at the moment. I spent most of the weekend in Wagner's Ring and the antecedents (the titles of which I am not going to even attempt to spell off the top of my head! - ok I looked them up: the Nibelungenlied, the Eddas and the Volsunga Saga.) Oh, I had a flick through Beowulf as well.
Also, with the Shakespeare thing - took a very dark turn into Titus Andronicus via Wayland the Smith and Philomel. It's all looking a bit suspiciously like everything has been ripped off somewhere along the way! If only I had a time machine and a copyright lawyer to hand.
It also contains a list of Fantasy stories based on Shakespeare:
quote: Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (a beloved alternative-history tour de force: a world in which Shakespeare's plays are history)
Susan Cooper, King of Shadows (a sudden illness sends a teenage boy back in time to inhabit the body of Nat Field, a boy actor in Shakespeare's troupe)
Pamela Dean, Tam Lin (a contemporary working of the fairy tale, with many allusions to Shakespeare's plays and characters throughout)
Wendy Froud and Terri Windling. A Midsummer Night's Faery Tale and The Winter Child (two tales of Sneezle, a young fairy in Titania's retinue, are told and richly illustrated with photos of Wendy Froud's enchanting figures)
Neil Gaiman, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Sandman #19), collected in Dream Country
Neil Gaiman, The Tempest (Sandman #75) collected in The Wake (in a nice parallel to Shakespeare's play, this is the final issue of the Sandman series and Gaiman's farewell to his readers.)
Sarah Hoyt, Ill Met by Moonlight and All Night Awake (young Will Shakespeare discovers his poetic inspiration in the form of his "master/mistress," the Faery Lord/Lady Quicksilver)
Garry Kilworth, A Midsummer's Nightmare (young adult fantasy)
Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters (a funny treatment of the witches from Macbeth)
Leon Rooke, Shakespeare's Dog (an irreverent look at Shakespeare's world through his dog, Mr. Hooker's, eyes)
Marina Warner, Indigo (the events of The Tempest updated and told through the eyes of Caliban's mother, Sycorax, a Caribbean priestess)
Tad Williams, Caliban's Hour (a sequel to The Tempest, focusing on Miranda's life after leaving the island)
Hope the list is of help if anyone is interested. R
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Survivor, I'm not sure everyone believed in those tales of Faerie. It reminds me of an article that I once read, "Did the Greeks believe their own myths?" The author argued the myths were originally thought to be true accounts of events that had happened in past ages. But as time passed, people became more and more conscious of their fictional values, and by the time of the Romans such as Ovid (who collated a lot of tales in his Metamorphosis, a treasure-trove of ideas for mythological stories) myths were consciously thought of as told fictional stories, and not as history or true stories. I wonder if the same thing did not happen in Shakespeare's time.
Posts: 121 | Registered: May 2002
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Not everyone believes in SF stories either. The point is that Shakespeare used existing stories when he wanted to be taken "seriously", even when those tales were clearly fantastic. At other times, he uses mythological elements in a clearly fantastic way, changing the sense of the stories as a signal to the audiance that the tale was no longer the "true" original.
In point of fact, some modern Cretans still believe in the "essential" truth of the stories of Zeus et al. That is, they believe that Zeus actually existed (though they do not believe he was a god--or at least, they do believe he died and was buried a long time ago).
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