Yo Shakespeare, what up dawg?

Before you cogitate that I have gone crazy and denounce me as a literature-hater and deranged person, let me elucidate the title for this post. Few nights ago, we watched a play – "The Complete Works of W.M. Shakespeare (Abridged)", with some of our friends. The play was stupendous with an eminent cast who ensured 90-minutes of contemporary incessant fun, cachinnation, and satire. The audience in the theatre was literally falling off their seats – thanks to the rib-tickling humor. It was an alluring way in which the cast had enacted all of Shakespeare’s works in just 90 minutes. For example, to narrate Othello, they did a rap number where as Macbeth involved the cast dressed as Scottish men.

Can you imagine if Shakespeare used the above-mentioned title as opposed to ‘where art thou,’ in his works? Maybe, the literary circle will construe this as insolent behavior, but our young masses might actually be able to empathize with the great playwright’s writings. How many people (I am referring to the hoi polloi, and not gurus who have studied Shakespeare or theatre in college and can soak up the arcane writings) managed to comprehend Shakespeare’s literary contributions, when they were in high school? I remember being in a comatose stage once while watching the bard’s works in London at the Globe, and this, is when I am an ardent admirer of Shakespeare’s work.

All of his plays, ranging from “Julius Caesar” to “Romeo & Juliet”, though eloquent, are arduous to assimilate for that particular age group. To the younger generation, the greatest writer of the English language and his contribution seem archaic. My friends and I feel that we fully understood Shakespeare’s work eons after graduating high school. Renouncing Shakespeare’s work is not what I am suggesting; improvising them with humor, is what I am - adding a contemporary feel to his works, so that they become congruous with the changing times.

I do not want Shakespeare to turn in his grave, but I think he would appreciate it if the readership of his books aggrandized. Can you conjure up a world where teenagers, out of choice, immersed themselves in Shakespeare’s work? Well, to me, it seems attainable!

Copyright © 04.19.2007

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" - Shakespeare

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