Where to begin with my comments?
I will begin by saying that this past June I vacationed in London. I went to Skakespeare's Globe, the reconstructed Elizabethan theatre of William Shakespeare. I bought a groundling ticket, which meant that I stood and leaned against the stage as I watched the production. It was AS YOU LIKE IT. I had a fantastic time in the theatre. I was surprised when I learned that Kenneth Branaugh had made this version and immediately bought it. I have to say that I loved it; I laughed out loud several times; and feel that it captured the same sense of fun that I had in London in the Globe.
First of all, let's tackle the setting. Theatre in Shakespeare's time did not understand period costuming. The actors wore Elizabethan fashion. That means the actors in JULIUS CAESER did not wear togas. They wore doublet and hose. Hence, wearing Victorian and Japanese costumes is no big deal. Shakespeare himself did not worry if the costumes were authentic to the period in which he wrote.
Secondly, no matter where Shakespeare set his plays -- Scotland, Italy, France, ancient Rome, Egypt, & Greece, etc., they were nonetheless set in Shakespeare's England! In ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, Cleopatra says that she will not be taken prisoner by Octavious and have actors "boy her" in Rome. This is a reference to the custom of having boys play women's roles, a custom that was Elizabethan English and not Roman. Shakespeare's plays, if you take the time to read/listen to the dialogue, are set in the England of his time. If he did not worry about whether his dialogue, plot, etc. matched the time and place of the play, why should we make a big deal about it? Placing British and American actors in 19th century Japan is no different than Shakespeare putting English actors in 16th century France. It was the characters and the plot that was important, not the "accuracy."
Shakespeare has been popular for 400 years. Miners, ranchers, and saloon girls of the Old West loved Shakespeare. 19th century school children read Shakespeare in their McGuffy readers. Civil War officers recited the "St. Crispin's Day" speech from HENRY V to their men. But, suddenly, no one can understand him! Please. Everyone reading this has more education than most of Shakespeare's audience throughout the last 400 years. Are you seriously going to tell me that, with a superior education, you cannot understand or empathise with Shakespeare's characters? Believe me, 400 years from now Shakespeare will still be read and performed; the TWILIGHT series will not.
Going back to the original poster's question: I don't think this is the end of Shakespeare. As long as he is read and performed, he will survive. I am an English and Drama teacher. Every year I make my 9th graders read ROMEO AND JULIET. At the end of the unit, my students may not run right out and buy his complete works, but they have gained an appreciation of his talent. I am not promoting my teaching by any means. What I am saying is that my students have been exposed to Shakespeare, been exposed by someone who loves his work, have been told that they CAN understand his poetry, and who, whether they like him or not, have come to appreciate the love, the lust, the hate, the fear, the faith, the violence, the comedy that is William Shakespeare. If only a few come to that understanding, (and I believe that more than a few do) Shakespeare will never die.
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