I don’t know what exactly drew customers at the time. But I do think the depth of some of his characters is Shakespeare writing in a way he wanted to, not trying to just draw an audience. You could do Hamlet without Hamlet being the introspective character he is - in fact the play might be significantly more exciting if he would just get on with the revenge. 
Ah yes, the Mad Max version.
“And what,” says one Hollywood executive to another, "if we actually make it so that Romeo and Juliet, instead of committing suicide, go on a firey rampage, slaughtering their own families in an orgy of spinning, double-fisted submachine gun fire, and then find the portal that allows them to escape from their fictional Verona world and back into the dystopic post-modern reality where they’re desperately fighting at hopeless odds aganst a malevolent world-spanning computer, aided only by a rogue Executor 600 cyborg reprogrammed by their future progeny to protect said progeny so that he can grow up and defeat the alien menace that is going to invade the Earth via gigantic interstellar spacecraft shaped like 737s by loading them with a computer virus since their control systems happen to be compatible with Mac OS X?
“But,” says the second executive, “is Keanu Reeves free or to be the lead male role or not?”
“That,” responds the first executive, “is the question.”
Stranger
You’ll likely laugh, but when I read the OP I thought “Tarantino-style stuff, but with a British accent.”
Not a bad opinion.
Think of [ITitus Andronicus*.
Rape, torture, murder & revenge. Yikes.
I kind of looked at it from a different angle… “What director would write a movie like Romeo and Juliet, a movie where two kids get it on, have a street rumble between their familes, and then they fake their deaths at the end but in a way where the stupid dolts end up killing themselves in a tragic, yet bizarrely funny manner?”
Sounds like Tarantino all the way. Complete with long, expository dialogue that’s much ado about nothing.
If we’re assuming that Shakespeare would want the largest audience possible for his work, then by definition, we’re assuming that he’d want his work to be international. If he’d be content with just showing his stuff to British audiences, then he wouldn’t be looking for the largest audience possible.
Bingo.
There’s a theory that Shakespeare intended it that way – as an over-the-top parody on blood-soaked dramas. I can see that. In terms of pure villainy-for-its-own-sake, Aaron the Moor is both far worse and far less believable than Iago; what else could he be but a parody?
DOO-dah, DOO-dah . . .
“Get me out of this coffin.”
“Get me out of this coffin.”
“Get me out of this coffin.”
“Get me out of this coffin.”
“Get me out of this coffin.”
“Get me out of this coffin.”
“Get me out of this coffin.”
"I am NOT:
- Francis Bacon
- Ed De Vere
- Opal"
Heh. That reminds me of this:
Ro-Mo. Your windows are still mirrored; taunt me not,
But show your colors, dare to challenge me,
These lips are two shaped charges, primed and hot,
That wait the go-code for delivery.
J-Cap. The flag is to the deadly, not the loud,
Yet aim as well as posing show in this;
The worthy throwdowns always to the proud,
And hammer down is how the hard girls kiss.
Ro-Mo. My draft is stopped; I struggle toward the clutch.
J-Cap. And would a charge of nitrous make thee run?
Ro-Mo. Too much; but what else is there but too much?
Let me take arms, and elevate the gun.
**J-Cap. **Small arms but hint what demolitions say.
**Ro-Mo. **Then, gunner, gimme one round.
**J-Cap. **On the way.
(By the great John M. Ford, from the very cool Infernokrusher thread over at Making Light.)
I’m afraid I agree with Miller here - I really do think he’d have gone for the international audience, rather than staying with the Beeb. Now, if you want to argue he’d go for Bollywood, that’s something I’d have to concede as a possibility.
I’ve long maintained that Shakespeare was his time’s equivalent to Spielberg. Yeah, he did some serious stuff, and a lot of his work turned out very good, but ultimately, he was in the business of producing popular entertainment for the masses.
This is not necessarily to say that Spielberg is as good as Shakespeare (I don’t think we’ll be able to pass judgement on that score for a few centuries), just that they occupy the same niche.
And, of course, when he wrote his last will and testament, he’d leave his second-best Tempur-Pedic to this actress.
Bite your fingers.
Not one to spoil a good gimmick, Shakespeare would still be writing some of his work based on real people: Decent human beings who are brought low by their own tragic flaws.
Colin Powell comes to mind as a possible Protagonist.
(That might be one of the few plays in which the King and the Fool are the same character.)
Didn’t Shakespeare die on his birthday? Are we observing Shakespeare’s death day?
That’s why I suggested “Deadwood” as something in which he might participate. It’s melodramatic, loosely based on history, and poetic in its way.
That April 23rd was his death day is rather certain. That it was also his birthday is speculation (see the link in the OP).
That raises an interesting point… All of Shakespeare’s plays are flattering to the current monarch, but he lived in a time when it was important for an artist to have powerful patrons. Nowadays, though, that’s not nearly so relevant. Would Will continue his flattery, or proceed to ignore the ruling classes? Or would he go to the other extreme, and write anti-administration polemics?
Porn.
But really damn good porn, with epic plotlines and tragic blows.