The Popeye Romeo and Juliet
In this 1940 episode of Dave and Max Fleischer’s classic cartoon, the pipe-puffing mariner plays Romeo, Olive Oyl is his Juliet (with an ear-trumpet), while Bluto appears in top hat and cape. There are thespian in-jokes aplenty, a balcony that won’t stay still, and an intriguing skit where – fortified by his beloved spinach – Popeye gets the girl after indulging in some Shakespearean cross-dressing. All in six-and-a-half minutes.
The Revenge of Prince Zi Dan
Created in 2006 by Shanghai’s Jingju Opera Company, Hamlet becomes a sword-swinging warrior prince given to doing the splits in six-inch heels while singing in armour-piercing falsetto. See also Xioagang Feng’s The Banquet, a 2006 kung-fu-kicking movie version choreographed by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon martial arts guru Yuen Woo-Ping.
Forbidden Planet
Fred M Wilcox’s 1956 film adaptation of The Tempest is an odd but wonderful attempt to reimagine the mysticism of Shakespeare’s late play for an atomic-age Hollywood. Instead of that remote island, we’re blasted onto the luminous surface of Altair-4, where a terrifying monster roams the landscape and the mysterious Dr Morbius (Walter Pidgeon as a Prospero stand-in) holds sway. Will Robbie the Robot/Ariel gain his freedom? And how does Leslie Nielsen’s hair remain so flawless in low gravity?
Salman Khan gets the Shakes
For all that he’s rarely credited, one of the busiest screenwriters in Bollywood is William Shakespeare, whose plotlines and characters have proven to be a rich source for popular Hindi film for over a century. There are too many sly Shakespearean tributes to count, but one of the most glorious has to be 2011’s Bodyguard. Theoretically a lumbering remake of the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston Hollywood vehicle from 1992, starring tough-guy Salman Khan and siren Kareena Kapoor, it includes a wooing scene ripped off As You Like It. See if you can spot it.
Hamlet in Klingon
Taking inspiration from a famously tedious line in Star Trek VI, spoken by RSC veteran David Warner, that “you have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon”, the Klingon Language Institute (yes, it really exists) decided to render the greatest words in the English language into the invented tongue of a Meatloaf-haired, craggy-browed race of imaginary beings. Published in 2000, a copy of the text (full title: The Tragedy of Khamlet, Son of the Emperor of Qo’ noS) now resides in the world’s most important Shakespearean archive, the Folger in Washington DC.
Shakespeare without the words
The poisoning scene from King John – acted by the formidable Victorian star Herbert Beerbohm-Tree in 1899 – was probably the first Shakespeare captured on celluloid. More than 300 films based on the plays were shot in the silent period, ranging from wildly inauthentic Indian versions to a barnstorming US Richard III from 1912. Most have now been lost, but seven that haven’t are collected on a delightful BFI disc. Beerbohm-Tree is here, but perhaps the most wonderfully strange re-enactment is an American A Midsummer Night’s Dream from 1909, which crams the play into an action-packed 11 minutes. The moment where the kid playing Puck soars into the heavens is entrancing even now. Who says Shakespeare is all about the words?
The Beatles doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Among the wackier tributes for the last major Shakespeare anniversary is this effort from the Fabs, who recorded a spoof version of Pyramus and Thisbe in front of a live (and often hysterical) TV audience. Paul is a decidedly fey Pyramus, with George and Ringo providing solid backup as Moonshine and Lion respectively. But the show is stolen – naturally – by John, whose rasping Thisbe channels both Charlton Heston and Frankie Howerd.
Theatre of Blood
Compared to India, Britain has been more restrained when it comes to cinematic renditions – which makes Douglas Hickox’s schlock-horror tribute from 1973 all the more welcome. Vincent Price plays the cadaverous actor Edward Lionheart, who decides to take revenge for a series of terrible reviews by meting out some Shakespearean poetic justice. One reviewer is dunked in a vat of wine, à la Clarence in Richard III; another has his eyes put out, in grisly tribute to Gloucester in King Lear. Dog-lovers may prefer to look away for the scene in which a critic receives what can only be described as his just desserts, Titus Andronicus-style.
Nahum Tate’s King Lear
Oliver Cromwell and his theatre-detesting colleagues forced the public playhouses to close in 1642, and when they reopened under Charles II 18 years later, the thespian world was unrecognisable. Women were allowed to act, for one thing, and though Shakespeare’s scripts rapidly reappeared, the playwright would have scratched his head (or called his lawyers) over what had happened to them. John Dryden rewrote Antony and Cleopatra as a creaky melodrama called All for Love (1677), while David Garrick overhauled Romeo and Juliet, declaring his intention to “clear the original as much as possible from the jingle and quibble which were always thought the great objections to reviving it”. But in every way the most notorious Restoration rewrite was by playwright Nahum Tate, whose 1681 version of King Lear bolts on a happy ending (Lear survives! Cordelia and Egdar get hitched!). Modern producers remain mystifyingly resistant.
Hip-hop Shakespeare
In this engagingly written and presented TEDx talk, given at Aldeburgh in 2011, Akala covers iambic pentameter, rhyme schemes and the similarities between the west African griot tradition and the English Bard. He also provides a winning account of Sonnet 18 set to a grime-style 140bpm beat, exposing Shakespeare as the best songwriter in the business. The Oxford professorship of poetry surely waits.
