April 4, 2025: Foolish Texts: Fool

[For thisyear’s April Fool’s series, I’ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with “fool”in the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word,for a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!]

First, repeatingyesterday’s a bit of inside baseball: I haven’t yet had a chance to check out eitherof the texts on which my last two posts in this series will focus. I don’t wantto pretend to have specific things to say about them, but I did want to both highlightthem and use them as a lens for broader AmericanStudies questions. So in honorof ChristopherMoore’s 2009 novel reframing King Lear from the Fool’s perspective,here are AmericanStudies takeaways from a trio of similar such Shakespeareanadaptations:

1)     Rosencrantzand Guildenstern Are Dead (1966): Tom Stoppard’s play is quite simply oneof the most unique and compelling cultural works I’ve ever encountered, and I’dsay the 1990 film adaptationcaptures its essence (if you’re able to check that out more easily than theplay). There are a lot of reasons why, from the philosophical debates to the wittywordplay to the ultimate pathos, but I’d say a significant element in the play’ssuccess is integral to this broader genre of cultural text: it reminds us thatmany of our greatest literary works (especially from earlier centuries,although the trend undoubtedly continues) focus too fully on elite charactersand worlds, and that it’s worth stopping to consider how different the story andour takeaways from it alike might look from the perspective of others (to foreshadownext week’s series, Myrtle Wilson, anyone?).

2)     Shakespearein Love (1998): Look, I know there are people who think this film (co-writtenby Tom Stoppard!) is one of the most overrated ever, not least because it beat outSpielberg’s Saving Private Ryan for the Best Picture Oscar. Maybe all I needto say here is that I 1000% support that Oscar win, and think this is one of themost clever, funny, and ultimately moving films I’ve ever seen. But even if youdon’t agree with all of that, I think it’s undeniable that Shakespeareoffers a unique and thoughtful perspective on both the creative process and howit intersects with broader historical events. Given how much we tend to thinkof plays like Romeo and Juliet as timeless or universal, I very muchappreciate this film’s reminder that it was created in one time and place, by aplaywright and a group of collaborators fully and importantly immersed in thatworld.

3)     Opheliamachine (2013): I’veonly had the chance to read that Google Books excerpt of Magda Romanska’spostmodern drama (which as you can see only features peripheral materials forand about the play), and so will mostly direct you to check out that excerpt aswell as the Wikipediaentry on what sounds like a fascinating attempt to adapt Shakespeare’scharacters in a 21st century world. While there are lots of reasonsto create such adaptations, as just these few examples of the genre clearlyreflect, I’d say their most important effect is precisely Romanska’s goal: tohelp us think further about both the original work and our own moment, on theirown terms but also and especially in conversation with each other. I love thisgenre for both those reasons, and look forward to reading Fool soon toadd another example!

Crowd-sourcedpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. So onemore time: what do you think? Foolish texts you’d share?