Content Category

Literary Criticism

Abstract/Description

This research examines the trend towards modernizing Shakespeare’s plays. Though Shakespeare is valued for his intricate wordplay and changes to his text are considered sacrilegious, I will explain how Elizabethan Era views on language value finding expressing Shakespeare’s important universal social commentaries in ways that are accessible to the largest number of people. Because the majority of Shakespeare’s global fame stems from admirers who have not encountered his original works, but translations of it, this research suggests that the value gained from adapting the original texts into more modern forms of English to engage a wider audience outweighs the arguments that the value of the plays are lost when the text is altered. This research demonstrates that modernizing Shakespeare’s plays with our evolving millennial vocabulary not only pays homage to his innovative wordplay, but also fulfills the overarching purpose of language— to communicate and connect cultures through ideas.

Copyright and Licensing of My Content

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Origin of Submission

as part of a class

Faculty Involvement

Gideon O. Burton

Location

4188 JFSB

Start Date

17-3-2016 12:15 PM

End Date

17-3-2016 1:15 PM

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Mar 17th, 12:15 PM Mar 17th, 1:15 PM

Wherefore art thou, bae Romeo? or, An Argument for Modernizing Shakespeare’s Texts

4188 JFSB

This research examines the trend towards modernizing Shakespeare’s plays. Though Shakespeare is valued for his intricate wordplay and changes to his text are considered sacrilegious, I will explain how Elizabethan Era views on language value finding expressing Shakespeare’s important universal social commentaries in ways that are accessible to the largest number of people. Because the majority of Shakespeare’s global fame stems from admirers who have not encountered his original works, but translations of it, this research suggests that the value gained from adapting the original texts into more modern forms of English to engage a wider audience outweighs the arguments that the value of the plays are lost when the text is altered. This research demonstrates that modernizing Shakespeare’s plays with our evolving millennial vocabulary not only pays homage to his innovative wordplay, but also fulfills the overarching purpose of language— to communicate and connect cultures through ideas.