No Fear Shakespeare
Submitted by mwilliams on Wed, 2008-03-12 13:40.Or perhaps that should be, how to destroy the Bard with a few brisk pen strokes. The No Fear Shakespeare series from Spark Publishing translates the language of Shakespeare into today’s common vernacular, from “To be, or not to be” to "The question is: is it better to be alive or dead?” This well-written and amusing review is worth a read even if the books aren’t.
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I don't have a problem with them. The guides are marketed as study aids, not substitutes. Plus, more importantly, I think Shakespeare is pretty effin' difficult to read and I'm lazy!
Rat's Reading - http://reading.kingrat.biz/
I agree with kingrat. At this point, I have sworn -- IN BLOOD -- to never read Shakespeare. He just blows my mind. I can do the literary equivalent of making out with 17th century poetry, but Shakespeare makes me want to flail.
Of course, no current translation will ever top Shakespeare 1.0 for dropping insults.
Renay - http://bottle-of-shine.livejournal.com
Terrible! This makes classical writing available to the masses, what tragedy! The great ivory towers are crumbling! We cannot allow this!
It makes classical stories available to the masses, not classical writing. But who cares about the creative use of language anyway? Down with rhythm and meter, imagery and allusion. Who needs all that beauty and inspiration and those ingenious turns of phrase? Bah.
There is no thief like a bad book
--Italian Proverb
Perhaps it's the gist of the story that counts, not the ostentatious decorations it's wrapped in. :)
As a former English student who got to enjoy the tasty flavor of public education...uh...teachers and professors never cared about rhythm and meter when trying to teach of Shakespeare's work where I took classes. Rote memorization of the plot for the win! And no offense to literature before 1850, but that stuff has to be taught because of the language. That is not English as we learn it today.
People can make a profit off things like this in particular because those that educate aren't -- or maybe even can't nowadays -- doing their jobs. Blah blah standardized testing, blah blah anti-intellectualism, all these things are factors. Art appreciation is like anything else. If no one shows kids early on how to appreciate art, they're not going to and they'll find the quickest way around the stuff that looks boring. Sad but true.
Renay - http://bottle-of-shine.livejournal.com