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)
A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps the best-loved of
Shakespeare's plays, and certainly the one that children are likely
to encounter first; its mixture of aristocrats, workers, and
fairies meeting in a wood outside Athens has a magic of its own.
Simple and engaging on the surface, it is nonetheless a highly
original and sophisticated work, remarkable for both its literary
and its theatrical mastery. The fact that it is one of the very few
of Shakespeare's plays not to draw on a narrative source suggests
the degree to which it reflects his deepest imaginative concerns.
In his Introduction, defining the play in both the literary and
theatrical traditions to which it belongs, Peter Holland pays
particular attention to dreams and dreamers, tracing the materials
out of which Shakespeare constructs his world of night and shadows
in the strange but enchanting amalgam he makes of them. Both here
and in the detailed commentary he draws freely upon the play's
extensive performance history to illustrate the wide range of
interpretations of which it is capable. ;This book is intended for
students and scholars of Shakespeare from A-level upwards;
Shakespeare enthusiasts, actors, and theatrego
General
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