We get novelisation of films, but what about plays? I know I can freely read his plays anywhere online, but surely reading a script is less ideal than reading a novelised version written for people who were born sometime after Bach, assuming you’re not planning a word-for-word performance yourself of course.
I don’t even enjoy reading the scripts for my favourite films, and I understand all of the words, phrasings and allusions in those. With Shakespeare, I need to do a 4-year college course just to know what the fuck he’s on about.
This isn’t me being anti-intellectual, I respect anyone who can read through Shakespeare and enjoy it, it’s more about life being too fucking short and I’d like to experience the stories in a less torturous manner if possible.
If this has been attempted, can you recommend any authors?
Cheers!
I can confirm that such a thing exists, because I once owned such a book, though I can’t give you any specific detail about it because it was probably 20 years ago and I have no idea where it has ended up since then and my memory is a bit fuzzy.
I was in probably about 5th or 6th grade, but a pretty advanced reader, and I don’t remember where I picked it up, but maybe that might give you some idea where I might have looked for books. The majority of books I had back then either came from Barnes and Noble or scholastic book fairs. It was definitely a softcover book, and I’m fairly certain the cover was black with one of the usual portraits of Shakespeare you’ve probably seen in 1000 different places. I am far from certain but if I had to guess it may have been published by penguin.
I believe more or less all of the dialogue from the plays was there and mostly intact, but padded out with extra descriptions and such so that it read like a regular story and not a play.
I want to say it had a couple of the better known plays, but there’s a chance it only had Romeo and Juliet, my memory is very fuzzy on this.
Dialogue was still very Shakespearean, so you do have to be willing to wade through that a bit, but it was definitely still far more approachable than as a play.