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Richard's Reviews > All the World's a Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare
All the World's a Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare
by John Reed (Goodreads Author) , William Shakespeare
by John Reed (Goodreads Author) , William Shakespeare
When I first read the blurb for this "new play", I thought it would be a silly thing, like the fluff of Jasper Fforde. Shortly after starting, however, I realized what I was reading a
mash-up
of several of Shakespeare's plays. The content isn't silly at all, although the conceit of it may be.
I think two types of Wikipedia's discussions of "mash-up" are germane -- first, the "web application hybrid" is often a real act of creation. It typically draws data from different internet sources and present interpretations or deductions from those sources that would not have been foreseen otherwise.
The video and musical mash-ups, however, don't seem to add anything new other than the cleverness and mischievousness of combining disparate sources.
Unfortunately, despite his obvious hard and earnest effort, Reed's product is closer to the latter than to the former. The only readers likely to enjoy ATWAG are those already on intimate terms with the source material, and will have learned which scenes and which lines they cherish, and which are melodious filler. Reed recombines these -- yes, with cleverness and mischievousness, but not with anything resembling heartfelt creativity.
I can recommend ATWAG to anyone that already knows Shakespeare well and is willing to spend a few pleasant hours decoding the pastiche. There is certainly some fun to be had in seeing where Reed places and misplaces certain lines. But there are plenty of other Shakespearean diversions -- sorry to say, this one doesn't shine so bright as to obscure the fact that Amazon indexes an astonishing 72,497 books under the keyword Shakespeare (for example, you might enjoy this one as much).
Postscript: whilst proofreading my review, I checked up on my understanding of the word "pastiche" and discovered that the word was more appropriate than I had realized. See the Wikipedia discussion of the term.
I think two types of Wikipedia's discussions of "mash-up" are germane -- first, the "web application hybrid" is often a real act of creation. It typically draws data from different internet sources and present interpretations or deductions from those sources that would not have been foreseen otherwise.
The video and musical mash-ups, however, don't seem to add anything new other than the cleverness and mischievousness of combining disparate sources.
Unfortunately, despite his obvious hard and earnest effort, Reed's product is closer to the latter than to the former. The only readers likely to enjoy ATWAG are those already on intimate terms with the source material, and will have learned which scenes and which lines they cherish, and which are melodious filler. Reed recombines these -- yes, with cleverness and mischievousness, but not with anything resembling heartfelt creativity.
I can recommend ATWAG to anyone that already knows Shakespeare well and is willing to spend a few pleasant hours decoding the pastiche. There is certainly some fun to be had in seeing where Reed places and misplaces certain lines. But there are plenty of other Shakespearean diversions -- sorry to say, this one doesn't shine so bright as to obscure the fact that Amazon indexes an astonishing 72,497 books under the keyword Shakespeare (for example, you might enjoy this one as much).
Postscript: whilst proofreading my review, I checked up on my understanding of the word "pastiche" and discovered that the word was more appropriate than I had realized. See the Wikipedia discussion of the term.
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Trevor
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Feb 13, 2009 04:10am
Interestingly, many of the latter plays are virtually pastiches in the first sense in the wiki discussion you've pointed to here. A Winter's Tale, for example. I would never have thought of reading this, but might now.
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Reed (a "Goodreads author!") will be glad to hear that.His apologia appendix manifestly makes the point that Shakespeare's works were mash-ups of previous stuff.
Today's intellectual property laws might serve corporations well, but I think Shakespeare's era had it better. I remember when the Schwarzenegger flick "Total Recall" came out (whoa: 1990), and folks noted that it was based on the work of Philip K. Dick, just as had been 1982's "Blade Runner" (as have many others, since). But Blade Runner was a masterpiece, and Total Recall was a joke. I mourned that: wouldn't it have been wonderful if Total Recall had been done in the style and texture of Blade Runner? (Minority Report, in 2002, was much more faithful to the dark vision of Blade Runner, despite Tom Cruise.) But today's IP more often means that once someone has messed up a remake, no one else gets a shot at it for a long time. And if the original didn't make money, a remake probably doesn't even get that much of a chance.
Although the whole Batman thing makes a bit of a hash out of any clear statement, I guess. Except: gratuitous sums of money make any nonsense possible.
