For Solid Snake: Orson Scott Card Rewrites Hamlet

[Kim]

Link-a-dink-drink

Orson Scott Card has rewritten Hamlet. The back of this slim novella boasts that once we have read this "revelatory version of the Hamlet story, Shakespeare's play will be much more fun to watch—because now you'll know what's really going on." The author has previously updated other Shakespearean plays, rendering them more intelligible to modern audiences while supposedly retaining the “flavor” of the originals.

Hahaha... Snake's head will explode when he sees this. It's pretty dumb! Here's how Card defended it when he did it to Taming of the Shrew.

It seems to me that we might rather lose our contempt for Bowdler’s attempt to make Shakespeare watchable to the audience of his time, and realize that the standards of taste and decorum change from age to age, and it is not at all unreasonable to make such temporary changes in the script as will allow a play to continue to find an audience—as long as the original remains available, so it can be restored to public view when tastes change again.

...

The purpose is to present Taming of the Shrew in a way that recovers, not the original text of Shakespeare’s play, but the original experience of it—a fast-moving, instantly comprehensible, pun- and bawdy-filled, ironic, self-parodying comedy with a legitimate moral lesson about the relationship between man and woman in marriage.

And one of the worst things about the new version of Hamlet?

The extent of the novella's failure is surprising—and embarrassing, given that Card is a skilled veteran novelist and Subterranean a well-respected press. The most polite thing for us to do would be to walk away and quietly forget the whole painful exercise. But Card does not deserve our polite amnesia. His failures should be known and remembered, because the revelation in his "revelatory new version" turns out to be a nightmare of vitriolic homophobia.

Here's the punch line: Old King Hamlet was an inadequate king because he was gay, an evil person because he was gay, and, ultimately, a demonic and ghostly father of lies who convinces young Hamlet to exact imaginary revenge on innocent people. The old king was actually murdered by Horatio, in revenge for molesting him as a young boy—along with Laertes, and Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, thereby turning all of them gay. We learn that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are now "as fusty and peculiar as an old married couple. I pity the woman who tries to wed her way into that house."

Hamlet is damned for all the needless death he inflicts, and Dead Gay Dad will now do gay things to him for the rest of eternity: "Welcome to Hell, my beautiful son. At last we'll be together as I always longed for us to be."

Not really much to say other than Card is a piece of shit and I wish nothing but harm upon him. Snake's more fond of and familiar with Shakespeare's work, so I can't wait to see his reaction, which will be the only good thing to come of this.

I recommend reading the full article, too. Covers some other failings of Card's rewrite.