A few weeks ago we took the kids to see a Shakespeare play: Julius Caesar. The play was done by a great local group and hosted by a local community farm.
I was happy.
We got there in plenty of time to get front row seats, and with blankets and tasty treats at the ready, I opened the program to glance at the director’s notes.
Everything looked great. My kiddos have been studying the ancients all year so this promised to be a wonderful “homeschooly” segue into the study of Medieval and Early Renaissance times that they will begin in the fall.
The play started, I settled back, and was immediately horrified as men (and women) walked onto stage with modern suits and business ties. It turned out that this was a modern interpretation of Julius Caesar (yes as the Hub pointed out later, I should have ready the director’s notes more carefully). Some characters were cut, many of the male characters were played as women and by women (Publius Servilius Casca as an example was referred to as ‘she’ because the character had been changed to be a woman), and there were other characters playing journalists with microphones, video cameras, and press passes. Through the next 2 1/2 hours the play diverged more from the original classic and featured a mixture of modern language with Shakespearean quotes. As the storyline moved to the war which ensued after the death of Caesar, players dressed in a mishmash of army surplus gear with ‘stick-em-up’ masks, sporting all sorts of weapons: pistols to machine guns, hand grenades, and bomber planes overhead.
We left the play, that I was certain had Shakespeare spinning unchecked in his grave, and I discovered my kiddos has loved the presentation. I remained uncertain, however. I was sure that I had unwittingly destroyed months and months of ancient history study with one modernized play.
Yesterday we got the opportunity to watch a video of a BBC production of Julius Caesar. I pointed out the differences to my now irritated kids who explained that they both knew exactly where the live modernized play diverged from the televised original Shakespeare play, and even where that diverged from the actual historical record. They enjoyed both versions and were not confused at all.
Whew!
The moral of this tortured tale is that if your kids know history then no amount of hacking by playwrights or politicians can teach them something that never happened. They will always recognize fiction as fiction. I suspect that if you do things the other way around and begin with the fictionalized account, your kids are likely to need remedial learning afterwards to “fix” the artistic license.
