# Are there any Shakespeare films with modern subtitles?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-shakespeare-films-with-modern-subtitles/614957>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [March 6, 2012, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-shakespeare-films-with-modern-subtitles/614957 "2012-03-06T19:17:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2022, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-shakespeare-films-with-modern-subtitles/614957/21 "2022-05-19T08:32:58Z")

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> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.
> > 
> > > King Lear (2.2.14-24)
> 
> How would you subtitle something like that?

“Get a load of this asshole!”

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**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2022, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-shakespeare-films-with-modern-subtitles/614957/22 "2022-05-19T08:37:10Z")

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Nice. I used to think it was blasphemy to do Shakespeare in modern English translation, but linguist John McWhorter convinced me otherwise in a book about 15 years ago, with the same arguments Sampiro elucidated in this thread, in his long posts from ten years ago.

When I lived in Mexico in the late 1990s and learned to speak Spanish at about 80% fluency, I realized a side benefit was getting to enjoy Shakespeare in an ideal fashion: hearing the original words, but getting simultaneous clarification (via Spanish subtitles) on the meanings when necessary, without the distraction or feeling of “dilution” I might have gotten with modern English subtitles.

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**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2022, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-shakespeare-films-with-modern-subtitles/614957/23 "2022-05-19T14:57:19Z")

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> [@Smapti](#):
>
> “Get a load of this asshole!”

You know, there’s something to be said for brevity. I think some famous writer made it a metaphor, or a simile, I can never keep them straight.

People don’t talk like that, with long winded insults, anymore. It sticks out, like having homeless people speak in iambic pentameter in a movie about gay street hustlers.

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**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2022, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-shakespeare-films-with-modern-subtitles/614957/24 "2022-05-19T22:59:26Z")

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Don’t most films have subtitles these days?

And yeah i know you meant “translated.” But Shakespearean English is modern English. And the poetry–the words–is the point.

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