I’ve had my disagreements with various Shakespeare fans on this board, but I think we can all agree that this is just wrong:
Hamlet II: Ophelia’s Revenge
by David Bergantino
Yup, saw it in my local Waldenbooks yesterday. Just what one of the greatest works of English literature needed: a knock-off sequel.
But wait, it gets better. It’s the first part of a new series called “Bard’s Blood” which is marketing Shakespeare to the Goosebumps crowd. Or as the actual promotional blurb puts it:
I googled for David Bergantino and up popped “A Midsummer Night’s Scream!”
Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Nemo - the Globe remains. 
“Alas, poor Yorick, I popped a cap in his bitch ass, Horatio.”
:lol: GMRyujin
I’m torn between thinking these people have good intentions (creating Shakespeare for kids) and being horrified at the exploitation of art for the sake of a buck.
“T’aint nuthin good or bad, ceptin us spects it’s so.”
Go to, go to…
“Juliet! Get yo bitch ass back in the kitchen, and make me some pie!”
Hmm…
Richard III:
“Bring me wheels, homies, and yo’ got my pad”
Ehh, people always put down modernizations of Shakespeare, but isn’t that exactly what he did? Unless my high school English teacher lied to me, his original works were modern versions of older tales. And weren’t they also put down in his time?
Maybe in a few hundred years school kids will be forced to read “MacBeth 2: Electric Boogaloo”.
And, if I remember right, his shows were popular entertainment in their day? So maybe Titanic will be studied and gone over 500 years from now…
Hamlet’s soliloquy, rendered in the modern idiom:
So like, is it or isn’t it: what’s the big fuckin’ deal?
What’s cooler, taking shit like a man,
or kicking ass and taking names?
I’m down with that death shit, man,
but I don’t wanna be buggin’
when I could be chillin’
Romeo and Juliet II: Love from beyond the Grave
I think you’re being to sensative, Nemo. Shakespear in not just a great artist, he’s a cultural institution. And as such he comes in for some parody. (bete fondly remember the Mad magazines of her youth)
But because he really is a great artist, he can take it.
Shivers terribly (exits pursued by bear).
Isn’t it a bit difficult to have a sequel when all the major characters from Part One are, you know, dead? What’s left – Voltimand, Cornelius, Marcellus, and Bernardo killing each other off?
No, they weren’t all killed off. It was just a flesh wound!
Hell, if it was a parody, I’d probably love it. But the scary part is that the publishers of this book appear to be serious.
Nor is any problem encountered by the lack of characters left standing by the end of the original. The play, after all, was just a source of inspiration. It appears that “H2O” is about a college football player (campus royalty, get it?) named Cameron (I guess Hamlet didn’t market well). Cameron’s dad is dead (although his ghost appears in the endzone during the big game) and he suspects his mother and aunt of being involved (which if we’re following Hamlet, means that his mother and aunt are … not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Anyway, Cameron inherits a Danish castle (it could happen) and he and his college buddies (Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, and Freddy?) decide to go visit it. When they arrive they find the ghost of Ophelia looking for … well … revenge.
At this point you’ve lost me. The online reviewer at Amazon says he couldn’t finish the book and I’m sure as hell not going to buy it.
Me? I’m off to watch my “Tromeo and Juliet” DVD (with transvestites, street gangs, lesbians, an onscreen nipple piercing, and a special appearance by Lemmy as the narrator). Now that’s Shakespeare!
Now Troma is quality entertainment. And Lemmy is god.
When I was in 9th grade, a friend and I wrote a parody of Romeo and Juliet, just for fun. I still have a few bound copies around here somewhere … At the time, I thought it was a masterpiece, but re-reading it now, I want to smack myself. Some parts of it still make me laugh, though, like the scene in “Friar Lawrence’s Cell” where the nucleus yells at the ribosomes for not synthesizing proteins fast enough.
Okay, fine. You owe me the price of my paper towels and glass cleaner. Stupid tea-spit-on-the-screen moment!
As for the actual OP topic, I’ve often felt that modernizing Shakespeare is a nice idea as it can bring people who wouldn’t normally read it to the originals. Then I read Little Nemo’s post. Good lord. Someone shoot me. :smack: