The Reader Travels

You know, when Disney does Shakespeare (or anything, for that matter), there’s always a happy ending, regardless of whether it’s based on a comedy or a tragedy.  Hamlet is no exception.  I watched Be Kind Rewind this week, and they made subtle reference to The Lion King’s roots, calling it, “Shakespearean.” I just smiled because I knew how true the statement was.

Evil, power hungry uncles and fratricide aside, the story even includes a part for Hamlet’s college buddies.  Young Hamlet lion cub (Simba) goes off to the school of life and meets Rosencat (Timon the Meerkat) and Guildenboar (Pumbaa the Warthog), who teach him about friendship and survival. It’s beautiful, really.

I went to see The Lion King performed last year, and I was enraptured by the puppetry, all those moving parts coming together to make magic. And when I recognized the story, it just added to the appeal.  I don’t ever think of it as stealing when I see a classic Shakespearean story being retold. I think of it as tribute, and the honoring of a tradition of storytelling that goes back way beyond Shakespeare.

It’s Father’s Day, and we could talk about Katherina’s good father Baptista in The Taming of the Shrew, but we won’t.   Instead, we’ll talk about the evil step-father who kills his own brother to attain the throne - Hamlet’s uncle/father Claudius. It’s not that I don’t love my father, because I do. It’s just that I know plenty of people who don’t.  And even bad dads are supposed to be honored this day.

Hamlet is probably the most filmed Shakespeare play of all time. Check out the search list on IMDB to see what I’m talking about. Since young Prince Hamlet pretty much steals the show, you hardly think about Claudius, except in the havoc he wreaks. But he’s one bad dude. Not only does he kill his brother to get his throne and his wife, he also kills poor Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who weren’t hurting anybody.

Anyway, I have a few things to say about young Hamlet, and we’ll talk about that soon.  But while I’m on the topic of wicked step-fathers, I can’t help but think of the TV show Lost.  Terry O’Quinn, who plays John Locke on Lost, has been in a hundred different things, but every time I see him, I can’t get The Stepfather out of my head. Jerry Blake was way more blood thirsty than Claudius. Of course, it’s hard to compare a slasher movie with a classic tragedy. But there, we just did.

Happy Father’s Day.

My earliest knowledge of Richard III was watching Richard Dreyfus play a flamboyantly gay hunchback in The Goodbye Girl. I didn’t know the story, I just knew Richard was a serious dude with a bad back, and he wasn’t meant to be a joke.

When we visited the Tower of London, we walked through the Bloody Tower which wasn’t always called the Bloody Tower. It was originally called the Garden Tower, a name associated with life and greenery instead of death and blood.  The bloody deed that started the tower’s new name was the murder of two young heirs to the throne.

The most popular theory of the murder was that it was commissioned by Richard of Gloucester, King Richard III.  This is the theory portrayed in Shakespeare’s play about this foul, deformed villain.  I really liked Ian McKellen’s 1995 movie version of Richard III with its surreal 1930s setting, but I gained an all new appreciation with Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard. Of course that was the whole purpose of the documentary, to make Shakespeare more accessible to American audiences, to give them a real appreciation for the stories, the language and the art of acting.

Pacino obviously loves his craft, and he has a passion for Shakespeare. We get to learn the background history of what was going on in politics when the play starts. He breaks down every scene to make us love it the way he does.  He even gives us a better understanding of the poetic language used, the rhythm of the iambic pentameter.  Love the language, ride the wave.

I’ve been plottng this tour of Shakespeare in the Movies for over a year now, and what better time than following a trip to England?   Our literary tour of England started in October of last year with Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down. It took us through a journey into alternate reality London, and actual real-life London. 

The movie versions of Shakespeare’s plays are obvious, mostly because they have the same name as the play — movies like Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing and Othello.  But some of my favorites are modern day stories with modern day scripts that take their stories from Shakespeare, with such classic musical examples as Kiss Me Kate and West Side Story.  Some may call it stealing, but I like to think of it as paying tribute.  Then there are movies like L.A. Story and 10 Things I Hate About You that make it point to play up the tribute.

We’re about to explore some of my favorite references to Shakespeare in the movies. What are your favorites?