Prince Of Denmark Street's just had its third cover redesign, because it's worth it. I realised, standing behind my table at recent events, that I'm talking about my books and pointing at them and, on more than one occasion, people have asked which one's the Hamlet. Because, possibly, I went too clever clever in naming my book simply Prince Of Denmark Street.
So now, following on from the 2023 redesign, where I added the Shakespeare Graphic Novel collection heading, I've changed things once more. The book now has Hamlet in the title. Is it too cluttered? I don't know, I'll have to let it bed in for a while.
Here are the three stages it's been through over the years...
I've also this week remade the D2D version of Findlay Macbeth, which you'll remember had under-sized contents which looked so wrong I sold the books at a discount. And I've redesigned Midsummer Night Dream Team's cover on D2D so it has the new logo, and I've shrunk the Shakespeare logo at the same time.
Yep, definite improvement, I'm not doubting that one.
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Talking of Shakespeare, I've been rather flattered to be asked about my work for someone's student work. Lucy, a student on a European Graphic Novels course, run by my friend Barth Hulley, has been "assigned a presentation that analyzes a specific theme across multiple graphic novels. I have chosen to do literary adaptations, more specifically, your graphic novel adaptations of Shakespeare's Richard III, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream."
I've answered her first question like so....
Why did I keep some lines and not others? A good question. My starting point, with my first adaptation Findlay Macbeth, was to try and do the play on the comic page as I would like to do it on the stage. So I first envisioned FM as a full text stage play.
When it came to making it a comic, I knew I had to shorten the dialogue because it is over-wordy for a visual form, and I started re-wording stretches of it. As the characters developed, and particularly their Scottish accents, I realised I preferred it when the characters re-performed Shakespeare's scenes, giving us the plot as he intended, but in ways of speaking that better suited them and told the story directly and understandably to the reader.
So some stretches of original Shakespeare, eg Lady Macbeth's "unsex me" speech was played straight, exactly as I envisaged my staging, as were things like "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" and "Macbeth has murdered sleep". But a lot became totally new scenes that captured the gist. For example the initial battle with the Norwegians, summed up early in the play, becomes a sales meeting and a phone call. And Macbeth not getting "promotion", and getting the laminate for Glamis and Cawdor, is all done in terms of the office set up, instead of Shakespeare's war scenario.
The witches being secretaries at Alba Industries was probably my starting point for the play idea, along with the Macbeths being based on Lawrence and Beverley from Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party. I'd still love to stage the play, full text, that way. Though I would miss some of the liberties I've taken with the play.
With Prince Of Denmark Street I took even more liberties. As well as the additions I make to the story (like showing the whole death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern story, which has been lost from Shakespeare's version, if he ever did one) I turned the soliloquys into musical numbers, which gave me an excuse to keep as much of Shakespeare's poetry in as I could. In both FM and PODS I give agency to a couple of characters who I think Shakespeare wasted: the witches/secretaries in FM, and Ophelia in PODS. I just feel the ending has more of a sting when you realise those players have been behind it all along, and they get the chance to benefit from it.
Midsummer Night's Dream Team was one that I couldn't make any funnier, as I'd tried to with bits of FM and PODS, because it's already a great comedy. So I added the crime layer. The inclusion of Shakespeare's dialogue then works a lot more as self parody than as just poetry. Characters say their familiar lines but sometimes there's a punchline to it, or I've twisted the meaning slightly. But I think getting the star crossed lovers and Bottom to have mind-altering drugs and fall in love with the wrong people, and have Titania and Oberon play tricks on each other, as per the original, all while also having a robbery take place and a crime need solving was a fun conceit that I think I got away with. The unreliable relaters of the narrative, Puck vs the band etc, was great fun to write, and turning Pyramus and Thisbe into a prog rock band and Puck into a creepy table magician was probably indulgent of me, but I loved writing them. Trying to do justice to the LGBT cast of Woods nightclub was also great fun, and giving them all distinct characters in the short time they appeared was a thing I love trying to do. I hope it worked. Admittedly Shakespeare doesn't get many of his lines making it through all that. MNDT is the most "me" of the three original books, and the least Shakespearey I think.
I pick up on your mention that I've kept Shakespeare's dialogue in "more mundane parts" and that is interesting. It could be that I've kept dialogue of his because I failed to come up with anything better! In the case of Findlay Macbeth, as I say, at one point I envisaged every bit of that story told in full Shakespeare text, so maybe things have lingered which I might have, with another rewrite, have lost.
Richard The Third was interesting because it was the one where I tried to play it "straight", with fewer twists. Though obviously it's cartoony, and kid-friendly, and there's a unicorn playing the Duke Of Buckingham, apart from that, and maybe the final scene, the rest sticks close to Shakespeare's plot. So when Shakespeare's dialogue nails it, eg in Chapter Eight The Offer, where Bucky tells how he tried to big up Richard and everyone "stood there like breathing statues, stared at each other, looked deadly pale". That was a perfect example of how Shakespeare's lines have such perfect comedy timing that, 400 years later, you can't better them. In Richard more than any of the others, I just had the characters perform Shakespeare's lines straight, and whole scenes as they were from start to finish, re-worded but as intended, because they were already as funny as I wanted.
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Richard The Third | Findlay Macbeth | Prince of Denmark Street | Midsummer Night's Dream Team |
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Shakespeare Omnibus | Comic Tales From The Bible | Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories | Space Elain |
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Colouring Books: Doctors Who, Hollywood Legends, Punk, Cult TV, Eurovision Vol 1, Eurovision Vol 2, Eurovision Best Of British & Irish, 1960s Pop, 1970s Pop, 1980s Pop, 1990s Pop, 2020s Pop, Bowie, Scottish Pop, Royalty, Rom Coms
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