I understand what you are saying about Shakespeare. I love Shakespeare, love his words and you are quite right, without his words, it isn't Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet is West Side Story, The Taming of the Shrew is....uh...I forget.

But Dickens WROTE soap operas. Serials.

A few years ago, United States television did a version of A Christmas Carol with Patrick Stewart. I was very excited, because I have 'heard' him do it, I gave my mother a radio tape a few years ago of Patrick Stewart as Scrooge.

I watched the TV version for the first half hour, and realized that it had been 'dumbed down'. And they renamed Scrooge's sister FRAN. I turned it off, so disappointed.

Scrooge had a sister?

My favourite adaption of A Christmas Carol is Scrooged, with Bill Murray.

I hate that movie.

Yes, Scrooge had a sister, Fan. In the scene at the school, when parents were coming to pick up their children, and Scrooge thought he was going to have to stay...but Fan showed up and said "Father is so much better now, Ebenezer..."

And who did you think the mother of Scrooge's nephew was?

My favorite version of the "Christmas Carol" movie is the one with Alistair Sim , it was released the year I was born.

I could see how one might argue that Dickens and Shakespeare would be writing soaps today. Shakespeare was an entertainer, and Dickens normally published his novels in suitable chunks, complete with cliff-hangers and everything.

However, they did not live today, and as a consequence they didn't write soaps. And I agree that their writing is really not compatible with this format either. If you want to do a news-room comedy that's inspired by Willy S., then by all means do so, but don't call it an adaptation if it's a re-writing. There are two rather good examples of how one can update Shakespeare (these taken from the teen-flick genre for no specific reason, other than they jumped to mind); one is the Baz Luhrman Romeo and Juliet, where language and lines is kept intact, and the other is 10 Things I Hate About You, which doesn't even keep the title from The Taming of the Shrew and whose audience was probably mainly unaware that the teen rom-com they were watching was actually a Shakespeare re-hash. The latter might not have been a great film, but at least it didn't try (in any major way) to pull "points" on the fact that it had stolen its plot-line from Shakespeare.

I was thinking of Kiss Me Kate...

I never thought of 'technically'. Serials, I suppose, were different from what we now call 'soap operas'.

Maybe, soaps are a derivative of Dickens' work.

I was convinced by the serials = soaps argument until I saw the BBC Bleak House. They'd speeded up the action, reduced the role of the comic characters, skimped on atmosphere- and- entertaining as the result may have been- it wasn't in the least bit Dickensian.

I enjoyed the Baz Luhrmann Romeo and Juliet, but
my- it's a silly story. All that stuff with sleeping drafts and scheming friars at the end is somehow more convincing if the cast are wearing ruffs.

Thanks for this thoughtful and thought-provoking post. It adds more fuel to very slowly catching fire in me that is my desire to reread Shakespeare plays (and/or reread the ones I never did read) this winter.

It also gives me vocabulary to look up! "kedgeree"...

You're a good writer yourself! Your choice of words, the way they're put together...

Hope life is good where you are today.

Thanks.

As it happens I had kedgereee for lunch....

I'm re-reading Dickens at the moment (I've just started Our Mutual Friend) but one of these days I must tackle Shakespeare in the same way.

With or without smoked fish?

This had smoked haddock in it. Very nice it was too...

I don't recognise that quote, but Dickens's plots are all pretty lame.