Shakespeare Adaptations

It's a bit of mystery why songwriters haven't prolifically adapted Shakespeare's poetry. Perhaps it's heresy or something, I have no idea, but it works.

Sonnet 29:

Sonnet 27:

Sonnet 18:

Scratch pad: Shakespeare in Deptford

Marlowe: (gasping) Neptune’s ocean shall not wash my blood clean from thy hand.

Shakespeare: Forgive me, Kit. But the world must never know the extent of your genius. Your plays, your words… they will be mine.

As Marlowe slumps to the floor, Shakespeare quickly gathers the manuscripts.

Shakespeare: You were the greatest, Marlowe. But now, you make me immortal with your death.

Exiting the tavern into the dark, cobblestone streets of Deptford, Shakespeare disappears into the night, Marlowe’s masterpieces in his possession.

Bill

With a quill for a sword, a parchment for a steed,

Bill galloped through words at breakneck speed.

He dreamed of fair maidens, of kings, and of fools,

While trying to follow Elizabethan tax rules.

 

In Verona and Venice, he scribed of great tales,

All the while chasing his messenger for mails.

Letters of tax, they came in a swarm,

"Oh, blast these rules!" he howled in a storm.

 

Crying havoc, he let slip the dogs of war,

Spilling ink on his accounts, oh what a chore!

He penned of tempests, of love's labour’s lost,

While grappling with all his Tudor tax costs.

Profound

Ted went to dine at his local café,

But his rear-end spoke up and had its say.

With a rumble and a roar,

People ran for the door,

Leaving Ted with the entire buffet.

 

Back to the library, quiet and still,

Ted’s bottom piped up and sang at will.

His bum did resound,

With words so profound,

As if written by Shakespeare’s quill.

Rhythm and Words

When bobbing along in iambic pentameter, with perfect metre and pace, 1000 lines of Shakespeare is about 1 hour – or all night when fulfilling the words and their meaning.

Journal 2021-02-06

Reading 2 to 3 hours every day for a year is probably enough to skim through the complete works of Shakespeare; and this will still probably miss 90% of the meaning and richness of the text.

Shakespeare the Songwriter

I listened on YouTube to various attempts at turning Shakespeare’s sonnets into songs, but I don’t think these straight translations work very well. However Shakespeare is so clever that if you read the lines of his sonnets out of sequence as rhyming couplets - e.g. line 1 then 3 then 2 then 4 etc. - the sonnets usually still work well, without losing the meaning. So I picked up a guitar, strummed some rhythms and improvised some vocal melodies to the rejigged lines, and it all works great!

A key for translating Shakespeare’s sonnets into a standard song format:

VERSE 1:

Line 1

Line 3

Line 2

Line 4

CHORUS:

Line 13

Line 14

VERSE 2:

Line 5

Line 7

Line 6

Line 8

CHORUS:

Line 13

Line 14

BRIDGE:

Line 9

Line 11

Line 10

Line 12

CHORUS:

Line 13

Line 14

Line 13

Line 14

Shakespearean Style

It is so important with the poetic flow of Shakespeare that every word means something real to the actor, otherwise the viewer will get lost in the density of content coming at them. Watching performances of Shakespeare, it is so obvious when an actor is merely ploughing through the rhythms in a conventional Shakespearean style, rather than really living the powerful words given to them. Thankfully there are lots of good actors and performances out there.

Journal 2020-08-12

I appreciate the storytelling of real human experience, truthfully expressing core feelings that are shared by people across cultures and time. Very generally, I tend to turn to Shakespeare for plays and poetry; and Dostoevsky for deep psychological novels. Some other great writers I like to read are: Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, and Victor Hugo.

Journal 2020-07-30

Wasn’t Shakespeare amazing. It would be so interesting to find out how his genius developed - what he saw and experienced in his life that helped him write such beautiful words and comprehend so deeply the human condition in all its different aspects. I can think of other notable geniuses in history - Mozart in music, Newton in science etc. - but Shakespeare is a sort of mythical other, shrouded in mystery, whose breadth of insight has the greatest impact on me.