- She's reading a terrible
edition of Shakespeare's sonnets
by the way, that's the kind of nerdy thing
I can't help but see.
Hello Platform, I'm Emma Smith.
I've written a book called
"This is Shakespeare".
I teach and research Shakespeare
at the University of Oxford
and I'm gonna be reacting to
some Shakespeare adaptations.
- He's so romantic.
- Romantic?
Hemingway?
He was an abusive, alcoholic misogynist
who squandered half his
life hanging around Picasso
trying to nail his leftovers.
- As opposed to a bitter
self-righteous hag
who has no friends.
- Okay so we've got the
oldest high school classroom
probably ever in history with these actors
pretending to be high school kids.
Here we've got Kat, the Katherine
of "Taming of the Shrew".
Set up, interestingly I think,
as a kind of angry feminist
and that's a great take actually on Kat.
She's a very, in Shakespeare's play,
she's a, she's the shrew of the title,
she is an angry figure,
she's beating up her sister
as soon as we meet her,
she breaks somebody's lute
over their head, which is
you've ever heard lute music,
probably a favor to all of us.
But she is really angry
and I don't think the play
has any sort of vocabulary
or context to understand
why a young woman might
be angry, it just sees it
as antisocial, funny but problematic
and not a positive quality at all.
And therefore perhaps, I mean
it's a really problematic play
isn't it "Taming of the Shrew",
you can't get away from that
but perhaps what Katherine
in the "Taming of the Shrew"
has to give up is this
kind of anti-social,
slightly bitch kind of
behavior and be a bit more
part of a normal society
and that that might be
good for her, not just a loss.
Here though, what Kat is standing
for is feminism, isn't it,
it's just feminism and we can
all see what she's so angry
and I'd be angry if I were
in this terrible classroom
with these terrible people and actually
this weirdly off key kind of teacher
who's trying to be cool
and down with the kids
but is also very hard on Kat.
- I guess in this society
being male and an asshole
makes you worthy of our time.
- Line worthy of Shakespeare I reckon.
- Kat me lady, you sway
to the rhythm of me heart.
- Dance for me cow girl.
- Kat babe, what do we owe
you for the table dance?
- Interesting to see that
sequence from Kat's point of view
that kind of whirling shot of
the very hostile classroom,
just made me wonder, how
much of Shakespeare's play
do we ever see from
Katherine's point of view.
I think the only character
who's alone on stage
talking to us directly
is her lover, tamer,
however you want to see it, Petruchio.
He has a soliloquy, short
speech directly to the audience
he tells us how he sees the
play but she never gets that,
she never gets, we never get to see quite
what it's like from her perspective
and we just got a little
glimpse of it there.
- Let's open up our books
to page 73, sonnet 141
and listen up, "In faith, I do
not love thee with mine eyes,
"For they in thee a thousand errors note,
"But 'tis my heart that
loves what they despise,
"Who in despite of view
is pleased to dote."
- So what Mr. Morgan's
doing there is quite
a common kinda modern take,
I guess, on Shakespeare
which is to translate
that rhythmic language
here in the sonnets, it's
rhymed, it tends not to
be rhymed in the plays, that's
what we mean by blank verse,
blank means unrhymed, but
to take that and to do it
in a kind of hip hop style, to
really emphasize the rhythm,
to really emphasize the rhyming words,
to find a new style in which
that very artificial patterned
language makes sense and
there's loads of versions,
loads of great version of proper
rap artists doing Shakespeare.
The film doesn't quite have the confidence
maybe, to do the whole thing.
It's really funny, isn't
it, I think school,
school teachers on film are
just always really really cringy
and the school, even
great poetry, great stuff
that would be, there's just something
about the school teacher on film
who's just a bit of a sad-o.
- I want you all to write your
own version of this sonnet.
(groaning)
Yes Miss I Have An
Opinion About Everything?
- Yeah that's a really
interesting kind of put-down
kind of remark "yes Miss I Have
An Opinion About Everything"
kind of why shouldn't she?
Seems like she's in a
classroom of complete morons,
doesn't she, I mean it's a good job
she's got an opinion
because no one else has
but it is akin to the routine way
in which Katherine is Shakespeare's play
is seen as someone who talks too much.
One of the things that
I really was shocked by
when I did the analysis of the play,
she talked hardly at all.
There are about six or seven
male characters in the play
who talk more than she does.
But there's a thing, isn't there about,
you know if, I can't remember
what the statistics are
but if women talk, you
know a third of the time
in a conversation, it's perceived
that they have completely
dominated and the same may be true here.
- Do you want this is iambic pentameter?
- You're not gonna fight me on this?
- No I think it's a
really good assignment.
(laughing)
- You're just messing with me aren't you.
- No I'm really looking
forward to writing it.
- Get out of my class.
- What?
- Out, get out.
- See she can't do right can she?
I mean that's an
inexplicable exchange to me,
I don't understand, she's
trying to be sincere,
she says, yeah I'm
looking forward to this,
I'm a smart student, I understand the form
in which Shakespeare writes
and the teacher dismisses that
so she can't, whatever she
does, whatever she says,
somehow comes over wrong,
she's a real misfit
but it's not entirely her fault I think
and there are some interesting wash back
to Shakespeare's play there.
- You know my momma gave me that scarf
when she got real sick.
Said to make sure and give
it to someone very special.
And to keep our love real.
- I'm sure it'll turn up
around here somewhere.
- Can we look some more.
- You can see those
reaction shots from Emily
so obviously she knows
what's happened to the scarf.
And that's sort of clearer here,
she's more of a presence here than she is
in the Shakespeare move,
in the Shakespeare,
I nearly said in the Shakespeare movie.
In Shakespeare's original
movie, in the Shakespeare play.
What really works about this setting,
this kind of roommate setting,
is it gives a reason for a modern woman,
like Desi in this film
not to be on her own
or to have another woman as a companion
who's around a lot and
witnesses some of these scenes
'cause actually in most other scenarios
in the modern day, it
wouldn't really make sense,
you'd think the couple
would be on their own.
- You'd never give out no love
behind my back now would you?
I mean maybe I'm not enough for you.
You know especially with
you being all hot and shit.
- What?
- You know what I'm talking about.
Hey Em you gotta see this
girl in action, I mean it's--
- Are you kidding me?
That's really shitty.
- Okay, but check this.
- So obviously one of the
things, one of the themes
of this play which has
become more and more topical
in different ways is race and
that's really important here
because O is at this high school,
kind of on a sports
scholarship so he's allowed
to be successful in sport,
it's a real stereotype
about black men, just as
there's a stereotype in the play
that black men can be
marshal heroes but they can't
marry your daughter,
that's kind of the deal
in Shakespeare's Venice.
But I think what's really
really interesting here
is a point about gender,
what O is saying to Desi
is a real real double
standard, he's saying,
the fact that you enjoy
making out with me,
the fact that you enjoy sex makes me think
you're unfaithful to me, you've
got sexual kind of appetite,
you like it too much and
there's a really disturbing
but very very recognizable
part of that, isn't it
that women, girls who are sexually active
and sexually confident are
somehow slut shamed by that
and that's what, exactly
what O is doing here
and what's gonna prove absolutely fatal.
- Where is my scarf?
- I don't know.
- You lost it.
- [Desi] No, I'll find it later.
- Does Mike know where my scarf is,
is that why you want me to talk to him?
- What?
If you wanna ask me if
I'm cheating on you,
go ahead, get some balls and ask!
No I'm not, Michael?
You're the only person I've been with
and you're the only
person I wanna be with!
- Get some balls and ask,
I really wish Desdemona
had said that to Othello,
it's one of the really
puzzling points about
Shakespeare's play "Othello"
is that Desdemona starts out
in the first half of the play
pretty feisty, speaks up for herself,
she has a fantastic scene
in the Venetian courtroom
where she says to the Duke of Venice
that she's chosen Othello,
she's not been abducted by him,
she speaks to her father
about her own wish to marry
and be with Othello, she
speaks up for herself,
she's a really, she's
like a woman actually
in a Shakespeare comedy
and something happens
and people have different
views about what happens,
some people think she suffers
from a kind of abused wife
sort of syndrome, she
loses all that confidence
because of Othello's treatment of her.
I partly think that she kind of realizes,
almost in a kind of meta way, she realizes
she's not in a comedy, she's in a tragedy,
tragedy's are terrible places
for women in Shakespeare
and you don't have a voice
and you don't have much to do
and you're gonna have to pretty much
lie down and be murdered and
that is what's gonna happen
to Desdemona but I love
the fact that here in this,
in this movie, "O", she does
fight back at this point
and she finds that voice that
says don't treat me like this
that says don't, don't even say that,
it's disgusting, it's
outrageous, I don't deserve it
and that's exactly, I think we
all wish Desdemona had said.
- Blue eyed hag was
hither brought with child
and here was left by the sailors,
thou my slave as thou reports
thyself was then her servant.
But for thou wast a spirit too delicate
to act her earthy and abhorred commands,
she did confine thee into a cloven pine,
within which rift imprisoned
thou didst painfully remain a dozen years,
within which space she
died and left thee there.
- So "The Tempest" is a
fantasy kind of world,
in some ways waiting for
cinema I think to imagine
its magical unreal settings
and also the way in which
place in "The Tempest" seems different
depending who's seeing it, it's
in the eye of the beholder,
it's very unclear what the
island is actually like,
what we get is quite
incompatible descriptions of it
from different people, so they see
sort of what they want to see somehow.
So film and particularly this
sort of CGI enhanced film
should be really great
actually at visualizing
some of these imaginative
and highly poetic images
and accounts within the story
and this bit from the very
beginning of "The Tempest"
is giving us a kind of flashback really,
a kind of backstory, how did
we get to be where we are
and how does that history
affect the present
and what's gonna happen in
the next couple of hours.
So here we've got the
character who Shakespeare
calls Prospero talking
to Ariel about that past.
Here we've got quite an
early example by Julie Taymor
of what's become common in the theater,
which is re-gendering major
characters in Shakespeare
to be women, not just to
be performed by women.
So we had a sort of
previous go at this maybe
where women actors played male characters,
so a reversal of what happens
on the Shakespearian stage
where make actors play female characters,
but now, as in this
movie, where Julie Taymor
calls the central character Prospera,
and it's played by Helen Mirren, we become
interested in what would it be like
if these central characters
were actually women?
How would that change the
gender dynamic of the play
and particularly since "The
Tempest" is so patriarchal,
Prospero, the magician, kind
of father colonial ruler,
it is such an archetype of
male, gray-bearded sort of power
in lots of images of this play,
it's really interesting to
see a woman with a daughter,
talking about here Sycorax, another woman
who gave birth to
Caliban and talking about
this kind of past of the play.
- [Prospera] Best knowst what
a torment I did find thee in,
thy groans did make wolves howl.
("Kissing You" by Des'ree)
♪ Pride can stand a thousand trials ♪
♪ The strong ♪
- So I love this movie, one
of the best things about it
is the soundtrack and if you're
this kind of geeky person,
writing a soundtrack of you,
writing a kind of playlist
to your Shakespeare play is
just such a great job to do,
thinking what songs you would
put, by who, at what points,
how would you do it,
completely, you could almost
do a play completely as a
musical, you don't really need
any of the language, you
could just move the tone along
and you can see what
the music's doing here,
it's really slowing this moment down,
that and the tropical fish,
there's something so slow
and kind of dreamy about
a tropical fish pond,
which is why they have
them in hospital wards
and that kind of stuff.
It slows things down and
I think that's important
because in the play itself, everything,
in Romeo and Juliet,
everything goes too quickly,
even though Chorus starts by
saying the play is gonna take
two hours, "the two hours
traffic of our stage",
it can't possibly have
take that but it gives
you a kind of anxious,
oo, everything's kind of
a little bit stressful,
little bit adrenaline-y,
a little bit too quick
and the plot is all about
being too quick, Juliet is too
young to be in this marriage
and in this kind of sexual relationship,
14 would have been thought to
be much much much too young
by Elizabethan audiences,
just as we think so now,
no actor who was 14 could
possibly play this role
in the modern cinema and in
fact, I think Luhrmann did
try and cast somebody of the age of Juliet
and realized after that
was just not gonna work.
So you need to slow
this down here, I think
to believe in the romance
because there are some ways
in Shakespeare's play, in
which the, perhaps this
great towering icon of romantic
love, "Romeo and Juliet",
maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be,
they're kids, it happens really quickly,
Romeo is only just finished,
hardly finished moping
for being madly in love
with some other person,
Rosaline who we never
see, so Romeo is a serial,
kind of crush actually, he has these women
that he's, at a distance,
absolutely in love with
so maybe the play itself
is not quite so clear
that this is the towering love story,
this is actually young
people tumbling into things
too quickly under the
pressure of their families
and that makes them act
rashly, it makes them act
in ways which are immediately destructive.
But what we're getting here is something
which gives us a little bit
more time on the relationship
which makes it look as if
there's time for this couple
to try and get to know each other,
even though there isn't really time,
it gives us that illusion,
that there's something
a little bit more leisurely,
a little bit more considered
and maybe therefore a little bit more
authentic about the relationship.
("Kissing You" by Des'ree)
I feel awful stopping this actually
but what's so great about it, I think is
just to cut out all the
language and to move to
a kind of song as a backdrop to that.
Most movies of Shakespeare
cut an enormous amount
of the dialogue, probably
between sort of 60 and 80%
of the dialogue and Luhrmann's
film buts about 75%,
cuts really cleverly,
tends to have the beginning
of speeches and the end and to realize
that what happens in the middle
of Shakespeare's speeches,
long speeches is that things get repeated
so that's a good trick if
you're trying to work out
what are big speeches
saying, look at the beginning
and look at the end and
that will probably tell you.
But it's also cut, language
is cut to create meaning
through different routes,
through different ways
of communication, one is
visual, Shakespeare's theater,
in the early part of his career
which is the date of "Romeo and Juliet",
it's not actually very visual,
it's quite a verbal form,
you listen to descriptions
and you imagine them,
it's a little bit more like radio almost.
Luhrmann's film is a
very very visual film,
it spends a lot of time
on setting and locations
and on these camera
shots of different kind
of wheeling kinds or quick editing kinds,
so it communicates a lot visually
and it's good to be
reminded that actually,
I think what makes a really
great film of Shakespeare
is a real willingness to be
quite radical with the text.
("Kissing You" by Des'ree)
♪ Pure and true ♪
- Will you now deny to dance?
- Poor Paris didn't get
the memo that actually
if you go to a fancy dress party,
you have to wear a sexy costume,
who goes as an astronaut,
just makes you look,
I mean he is like a sort of space cadet,
he is a kinda spaced out, kinda
nice, cheesy kind of a guy
he's like sort of the best friend,
he's never gonna be the boyfriend.
But the costumes are really really so fun
in this whole sequence,
the wonderful drag costume
for Mercutio, Lady
Capulet's Cleopatra costume
which is really great on her
kind of sexy kind of vibe
that she's got going, but
then you can see the way
the lovers are characterized in these
fairytale kind of costumes,
she's an angel, he's a knight
this is a world of chivalry and the past
and the storybook and they're operating
in this much more knowing,
much more sexualized
world all around them
and then their costumes
and that moment between the,
on either side of the fish tank
that creates a completely different space,
they're like in a different world,
really literally they're
in a world of themselves
but their costumes and
everything about that
identifies them as a unit
against everybody else.
Thanks for watching, we'd love to know
what you think of these
adaptations in the comments
and don't forget to subscribe
for more bookish videos.
(soft music)
