Shakespeare As A Comic Strip
(I was asked to write some notes for a forthcoming schools project, about how I've turned Shakespeare into comic strips. I've written about five particular passages in my books, and how and why I did them that way, with a suggestion of approaches the pupils might take themselves).
1 - From Findlay Macbeth, page 34 to 37 "Screw your courage to the sticking place."
My starting point with this graphic novel was me thinking how I would present Macbeth as a stage production. So I chose my setting, which is a successful salesman and his ambitious wife in 1970s Scotland. I didn't have the wherewithal to stage a full cast play, but I do have the ability to make a 120 page graphic novel so that was what I did.
My inspiration was Mike Leigh's play Abigail's Party from 1977, and my Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were his characters Laurence and Beverly. So I've taken the dynamic of their relationship, and their clothes and a lot of the decor, and made it into the world of my comic strip version.
I've retained parts of Shakespeare's dialogue, but for much of the book, and indeed this scene, I have taken the action of the moment and rewritten it in my own words. My idea for a stage version was to do it as straight Shakespearian text, but for a graphic novel an awful lot needs to be abridged. I needed to keep the action and the pace, but use way fewer words.
If you wanted to do something like this, look again at the action of a scene in a play. Think of a setting where the characters could be that is of interest to you - a different location, a different time period, do they have different accents or ethnicities, are they aliens or animals even? Then try retelling the scene entirely in your own words, thinking of how differently they'd speak in their new setting.
2 - From Findlay Macbeth, page 48 & 49, The Porter Scene.
Here was an example of me taking the gist, the original point of Shakespeare's script, and updating it. The original Porter scene is a break in the action where an actor plays a comic character and performs the simple task of opening the door to introduce the next major character, Macduff. Before he does this, he turns to the audience and delivers a stand up comedy routine about recently dead people. In the Shakespeare script, as we have it, he does a routine about "an equivocator." This is, we think, a reference to Henry Garnet, a Jesuit who'd written A Treatise Of Equivocation and was executed for treason for it. He was killed in May 1606, making jokes about his death both topical and in dubious taste.
So in my version, set in 1977, I've had Billy Connolly play The Porter. Billy was the most popular comedian in the country in 1977, so perfect casting. He tells tasteless jokes about 1977's most recent dead celebrities, Marc Bolan, Bing Crosby, and Elvis Presley. I like to think it's what Shakespeare would have wanted.
There are many scenes in Shakespeare, especially comedy scenes, that have dated so badly they don't work any more. So why not look at their original 'point' and try and make that point again, in your own words?
3 - From Prince Of Denmark Street, page 48 - 50, "To be or not to be"
In this adaptation, set again in 1977, Hamlet is a punk rocker, living and recording on Denmark Street, which was the home of the music business. He's modelled on Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, who lived on the street in 1977. I've updated most of the dialogue in the play, keeping the action and applying my own words. For a passage like this, however, where I needed to keep Shakespeare's lines intact, I've turned them into songs.
Here the To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy sees Hamlet changing his style from punk rock to something more ballad like and pompous. This is the first indication that his mental state is changing, following the revelation of how his father died. Other speeches are given in different musical styles. So the ghost of Hamlet's father gives his speech as a musical number performed on TV; Polonius gives a speech as a pretentious prog rock number; and Ophelia gives her first monologues as hippy folk songs, turning darker and more gothic after the death of her father.
Which Shakespeare texts might not sound realistic as dialogue, but make much more sense if you perform them as a poem, a rap, or song lyrics?
4 - From Prince Of Denmark Street, page 91 - 94, the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Here's something that should inspire anyone who wants to create their own Shakespeare scene: the action that happens out of shot. The death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and the whole journey that surrounds it, is completely unseen in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Maybe it was written in a script that didn't survive?
So I've had free rein to create my own version of how these two characters, Hamlet's friends turned spies, accompany him on a trip during which he's supposed to be killed, then have the tables turned on them when he finds out their plans. Having no Shakespeare dialogue getting in the way enabled me to make it one of the most visual parts of the story. Parts of it are silent save for the sound effects, using the comic strip medium to its best advantage.
Look at anything that happens off-stage in Shakespeare, and make it happen before our eyes. NB: You may want to avoid Titus Andronicus here.
5 - From Midsummer Night's Dream Team, page 35 - 38, Puck and the Players
If you want to get really carried away adapting Shakespeare, you can do what I did with my version of Midsummer Night's Dream. It's already a comedy, Shakespeare's funniest in my book, so I could hardly make it any more comic, as I'd done with Macbeth and Hamlet. So instead I took the characters, and the basis of the plot, and expanded it into a story of my own, a heist movie.
In this scene, where Puck is being interviewed by Inspector Philostrate (you'll find the character in Shakespeare's play, but in a much more minor role than she has in my book), he retells the scene where we meet The Players for the first time. But there is a twist. For we learn, in Puck's telling of the story, that the players are all adopting false identities. I've incorporated elements of the movie Reservoir Dogs here, from their outfits to the line "I don't want to know your real name".
How extreme can you be in taking Shakespeare's characters and re-imagining the story? What might have been happening behind the scenes? Could you even take characters from different plays and mash them together?
My Books and where to get them:
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) -
Lulu Scottish Pop Star Colouring - Amazon
NB: Etsy editions are signed and posted by me, and generally cheaper
