Thoughts on rewriting Shakespeare

Literary obsessives among you may be aware of the recent news that Penguin Random House are commissioning a series that will adapt the plays of Shakespeare into the novel form. Award winning authors Margaret Atwood and Howard Jacobson have been added to the list of authors attempting this task (so far only four have been announced, see the story for more). As you might expect, some have been up in arms: surely the authors have better things to do? Why should we meddle with Shakespeare? What will this achieve? Is this going to ruin Shakespeare?

To be fair, I am generalising massively here and the reputation of the authors so far announced is making people very excited. Even better, some people are very open to reinterpretation of Shakespeare and correctly say that it is not a brand new idea. Indeed, there are a series of children's books which I got one Christmas that tell the plays of Shakespeare in modern prose and charming illustrations. Now, this project is going to be more ambitious than that series. Here, they are going to use the novel from to retell the stories rather than just summarise them. Again, not without precedence: A Thousand Acres (one of the many books on my 'must read' list) retells the story of King Lear, and there are numerous plays and films that use Shakespeare's plays as a starting point.

Personally, I'm going to read them and quite excited about future announcements. This is an exciting chance to see another interpretation of Shakespeare's work which we see every month it seems. I see no reason that this news should not be as exciting as the news this week of the Royal Shakespeare Company announcing its summer season. Both projects are going to give us versions of Shakespeare that will not be to everyone's taste. But everyone has their version of Shakespeare. That is why his work lasts, because it can be endlessly reassessed, looked at in a different way.

In fact, the novels will probably be more faithful to the plays than most modern theatre productions will be. Shakespeare's plays are long and a lot of the material simply doesn't work nowadays. This, as well as creative decisions, means that rarely do you see a Shakespeare play in its entirety (as Kenneth Branagh's film proved Hamlet would be about four hours long). Beyond page length, novels don't have this problem with length and just as modern productions do now, can rework the unworkable material into something that does.

I'm definitely going to check these out although as has been pointed out by others, so far no-one has been announced for the tragedies. While the commissioned author of Hamlet or Macbeth (my all time favourite Shakespeare play) will be naturally daunted, they should be thrilled to have such a unique opportunity that would be hard to refuse. As terrifying as it would be, I would definitely love to have a shot at producing my version of these timeless works. Best of luck to the authors, I can't wait to read them.