I saw this!

But Hamlet isn't in Old English. Beowolf is in Old English. Chaucer is Middle English. Shakespeare is most definitely modern English.

'Early Modern' English is, I think, the technical term. It's the same language (which Old English isn't) and the words are understandable (though a lot of them have gone through subtle or not-so-subtle shifts in meaning).

It's a very different style to contemporary writing, of course -- lots of imagery and sustained metaphors that expect you to be keeping track of long speeches without letting your attention wander in the middle, 'cause you certainly won't be able to pick it up again if you miss a bit (I've heard the theory that back when people were mostly illiterate they were much better at processing that kind of oral communication, and one of the prices we've paid for being able to put our thoughts down on paper is that we've lost the skill of constructing and following long, complex speeches).

But as a serious response to our cruelly kidnapped friend, the RSC wouldn't even contemplate using an 'updated' script, and there'd be an outcry if the BBC tried to pass off such a thing as 'real' Shakespeare (as opposed to 'a new play based on Shakespeare's', as are done form time to time, such as that 'Shakespeare Re-told' series a few years ago). Shakespeare's taken seriously over here -- you'd be hard pressed to find an area that doesn't have a performance of a Shakespeare play, amateur of professional, in any given year, I think? -- and there'll certainly be an audience for such a high-profile production.

"(I've heard the theory that back when people were mostly illiterate they were much better at processing that kind of oral communication, and one of the prices we've paid for being able to put our thoughts down on paper is that we've lost the skill of constructing and following long, complex speeches)."

Interesting! I've often (idly) wondered why plays that were so widely understood in the days of yore are now impenetrable by most.

Hamlet is possibly the most accessible Shakespeare play though because every other line is a phrase we use in common speech. I exaggerate but only by a little...

MediumRob wrote:

It's a long, long-standing theory that goes back to Homeric times and beyond. There's even a tale of the Egyptian god Thoth inventing writing and Pharaoh complaining that now humankind would no longer need to remember anything.

It's worth remembering though that while our brains are slightly out of practice at remembering long speeches (although theatre actors who have to recite their lines seem to do well), for longer works such as Homer's, the writers/tellers of the tales used all sorts of devices to make them easier to remember, particularly repetition.

See also Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy on the difference between rural Africans who live in 'a world of sound' and those in the West who live in 'a world of vision'.

Fascinating (both Rob's and SK's points).

"The Gutenberg Galaxy" seems a little too hard for me... I started reading it on google books and feel utterly lost! GCSE English wasn't like this...

Am also looking forward to this.

In response to Sabine's question, I suspect that Moliere seems perhaps a little more stuffy and less accessible to the French then Shakespeare. Having studied both that would be my guess. However, even with a literature degree, Shakespeare can seem impenetrable at times and needs to be seen in the main rather then being read. I found Hamlet completely incomprehensible till the first time I saw it at the Barbican with Roger Rees in the lead role. Then I thought, now I get it. But it wasn't till I saw Mel Gibson play Hamlet for the film that I realised it was actually a funny play in parts. And though I missed seeing David Tennant, Edmund Bennet was the first actor I've seen play Hamlet who really did seem very young and unsure, and Patrick Stewart's Claudius was one of the most brilliant I've seen. He actually made me think he was innocent. Having said that, the night we went to see it, I was absolutely knackered and suffering with a bad back and I had to really concentrate to understand it. Whereas I went to see Love's Labour's Lost, having never read it and found that much easier to follow. The wordplay there is superb if the play itself is a little odd.

I've taken all my kids to see Shakespeare (youngest 7) and though they don't necessarily get it completely, they get the gist of the story. The last thing we saw was Romeo and Juliet at the Globe and they loved the fight scenes if nothing else.

On the language point again, we had a brilliant lecture from an actor at the Globe who pointed out that Shakespeare levelled his language according to his audience. He used an eg from A Midsummer Night's Dream, where Bottom has to die in the play he and the Rude Mechanicals are doing. He looks up to the top of the auditorium, where the posh people would be and says, Alas I am dying (I'm paraphrasing), then to the middle where the merchants sit, and says it again, then to the bottom where the tradespeople are and finally to the groundlings he simply says, Dead, to make sure they get it. Most of the bawdy bits in Shakespeare are the crowd pleasers to keep the groundlings happy, so it might well have been a lot of them didn't necessarily get it all. I'm sure I probably knew that once(-:

I'd really recommend a tour of the Globe to anyone who hasn't done it, if you're in/visting London. The guides are really informative and it's fascinating to see behind the scenes. My nine year old was so inspired by it she begged me to take her to a play there, and having stood on the stage and held a skull and said Alas Poor Yorrick, she wants to be an actress!

stu-n wrote:

One of the things I cottoned onto at the Globe is that crucial bits of info in Shakespeare are often repeated three times — and the Globe stage has three sides facing the audience.