Shrews and Shakespeare

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If you read a lot and are in to learning about literature you probably understand where this blog post is going. If you are more like me and don’t really read books written hundreds of years ago then I will explain it myself. To start off this year in PLP we started off by reading classic literature and tried to learn how to understand what makes a book or a play or any kind of literature a classic.

Over the summer I was given many options for books to read and I had to decide so I could give my own opinion. When I looked at my selection of books I was only drawn to two, “A Prayer for Owen Meany” and “The Great Gatsby”. I was told that “A Prayer for Owen Meany” was a good book and it has a story that I would enjoy quite a bit. On the other hand I was just naturally drawn to “The Great Gatsby” as it is one of the most well known books I can think of. For some odd reason I decided to go with “The Great Gatsby”. When I first started reading I noticed that it was a book that was quite short and I thought something might have gotten mixed up. I double checked and turns out that it is a very short book. I began to read the book, and I was interested but also confused. I was constantly re-reading pages to actually understand what was going on. I decided to do research and it turns out that I’m not the only one who felt this way. This book was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and it turns out that he was a very depressed man who was also an alcoholic which brings a dark side to his writing. Even though I was confused for most of the book I still enjoyed the story and I was constantly paying attention to the way he set the scene in this book as his imagery was spectacular. Some how Fitzgerald was able to describe everything in every scene in a very short book. I would recommend this book to people as I thought it was really good but I feel that I would have to warn them that it is not an easy read has you have to pay close attention to each sentence to understand what is happening. This book is one of the best that I have read and I could see myself re-reading it again in the future.

After we finished our books and gave our opinions on them we were told that we were going to be focusing on the play, The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. One of the first things we did was go to see a re-done version of the play, done by Bard on the Beach. It was set in the Wild West instead of the original time period. They chose to change the play so that the main character was liberated instead of tamed, as it would be accepted instead of frowned upon by our current society. We were soon put into small groups, one group for each of the 5 acts. My group members were Isobel and Mimi, we all decided that we had to immediately start working on editing the script, I took this upon myself as my task as I wanted to help out my group as much as possible instead of sitting on the side being useless. This was not a fun task as I ended up staying up late reading Shakespeare over and over again. I cut out as much as I could until I requested another set of eyes from my group members to see what they think should be removed. We then started recording where I played every male voice and they split the female parts, of course with my luck I played around double the parts they had put together. We then decided to use Explain Everything as our animating software as we were familiar with it and knew that we could do it well. After our first draft we ended up taking out the whole first scene as we thought that it wasn’t needed. For our final draft we also revised our audio by making it clearer, and we also made the characters better by refining their image. Other than those changes we thought are first draft went really well.

With this project came other tasks of course. We also had to redo our act in another time. With that we had to change the story so it would fit that time. We ended up with the 1960’s. I did a solo project as well that involved me making a video about what women’s lifestyles were like during the 60’s. The taming of the shrew had a large focus on women and thats why we had to edit it so much as times have changed a lot with women’s rights and during the 60’s it was a revolutionary time.

 

The largest solo piece of this project was definitely the essay that we had to write. We had to explain why TOS was a classic or not. We had to focus on one element that makes it a classic and follow through and be specific with it.I immediately came to the conclusion that it was a classic and instead of writing out pretty much what I wrote in my essay, I’ll just show you my essay.

William Shakespeare is one of the most well known and greatest writers of all time. He wrote many plays that countless people have come across including Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Taming of the Shrew and many others. There has been countless remakes of his work. Just because it was written by Shakespeare does not mean that it is a classic, but The Taming of the Shrew is. It is a timeless play that has been redone over many generations purely because it is a classic. Not all plays are able to withstand the test of time. To withstand the test of time means that over generations and generations it has to be relevant, and to be relevant it has to be enjoyed by a large group of people over every generation. If one generation forgets about it, it will ceased to exist and will no longer be a classic and it will be forgotten forever. A recent example of this play being enjoyed is Bard on the Beach. Anybody is able to go and witness the recreation of this classic play. It is meant for all ages, but not everybody will understand the full meaning of the play as even still being adapted, it is a play written by William Shakespeare. Someone who has read or watched a form of the play, can understand it better and see the transformation that has been done to the story line and have an even better understanding than before. The newer adaptations have changed the ending as the original would be frowned upon now a days. This makes it more enjoyable for audiences today, and makes the play last longer so that it can be a timeless classic. The adaptations are integral for plays to become classics because the original play will be enjoyed as much as one that is changed and edited to be more socially accepted by that time period. The original play has an ending where the shrew sub misses to the men in her life and gives up what she was fighting for. Slowly over the hundreds of years that this play has existed, it has changed. The bard on the beach version ends with the shrew being liberated. This was a now brainer for the producer with all of the women’s rights progress that we have made over the past few decades. That single change in the play is one of the biggest pieces to making sure that this play stays a classic and is accepted until it needs to be changed again. Currently we don’t see much else in the story that is politically incorrect, but when it was first made, all of it was acceptable. I am sure that eventually there will be something else in the play that needs to be changed because, our opinions are constantly changing. Their is one part about Shakespeares writing that cannot be changed. It is the actual written words, sentences and paragraphs. It is too important to the quality and identity of the play. When I had the chance to talk with the cast of the Bard on the Beach adaptation, they said the only made required changes to their play, as their is a certain flow and rhythm to his writing that can’t be replicated. That is one piece that makes his writing to a classic. His writing alone has stood the test of time even though it’s hard to understand because nobody speaks in old english anymore. Our language might even change some more but his writing will still be important to how the play is written. The Taming of the Shrew was originally written over 400 years ago when times were different. Women were oppressed and men had all of the power. The play was seen as something that was entertaining and enjoyable. Now the original is seen as not acceptable and not something that should be seen as right. With that being said it has still stood the test of time and has been relevant all of these years. Sure it has been edited and changed so that it can be enjoyed by each generation, the heart and soul of the play is still there and the legacy of William Shakespeare lives on in this timeless classic that can never be replicated.

This project has been eye opening to how different women’s rights were throughout history in all era’s. It truly has shown me how much has to be done before anything is changed. The centre piece to this project I believe was the fact that when Shakespeare first wrote this play standing up for what you believed in made you into a shrew, and the times have now changed that standing  up for what you believe in is common and a good thing.

 

 

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