Of late many classic titles - including the Bible - have been
turned into manga, in a 21st-century version of the venerable
Classics Illustrated comics. This take on the Bard boils his play
down to approximately 20 words per page, drastically abridging the
text, though keeping intact the original language and meter. A
fully colored dramatis personae reduces the characters to sound
bites and shines in comparison to the flat, gray-toned images that
murkily tell the story itself. As drawn by Brown, the characters
are decidedly more Western-looking in their styling than is typical
to most manga, and the adaptor's choice of setting is an
anachronistic mishmash of quasi-antique and modern, a choice that
will leave sophisticated readers knowledgeable with the text
slightly puzzled. The Tempest (ISBN: 978-0-8109-9476-8), drawn by
Paul Duffield, follows an identical template. These attempts to
convert Shakespeare into visual language fall flat, although the
slick manga styling alone may attract some new readers to these
works. (plot summary, author's biography) (Graphic fiction. 13
& up) (Kirkus Reviews)
Edited, Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D.,
Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth
Classics' Shakespeare Series, with Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and
The Merchant of Venice as its inaugural volumes, presents a
newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual
editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the
material a careful reappraisal. Its lyricism, comedy (both broad
and subtle) and magical transformations have long made A Midsummer
Night's Dream one of the most popular of Shakespeare's works. The
supernatural and the mundane, the illusory and the substantial, are
all shimmeringly blended. Love is treated as tragic, poignant,
absurd and farcical. 'Lord, what fools these mortals be!', jeers
Robin Goodfellow; but the joke may be on him and on his master
Oberon when Bottom the weaver, his head transformed into that of an
ass, is embraced by the voluptuously amorous Titania. Recent
stage-productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream have emphasised the
enchanting, spectacular, ambiguous and erotically joyous aspects of
this magical drama which culminates in a multiple celebration of
marriage.
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