MovieChat Forums > Coriolanus (2012) Discussion > Why Not Have The Characters Speak In Pla...

Why Not Have The Characters Speak In Plain English?

posted 12 years ago by broadsword2004
19 replies | jump to latest

I mean Shakespeare wrote his plays in the English of his time. So if you are changing the setting to make the film modern, why not upgrade the language as well? The dialogue can be changed yet the same storyline still told. You could say it is just the equivalent of translating the dialogue into a different language.

While Shakespeare fans may like the original dialogue, to someone like myself who just wants to enjoy a good storyline, it makes it very hard to follow and much of it can pass over one's head.

[–] Cult_of_Kibner 9 years ago

It would take away the charm. It would cease to be Shakespeare and become only Shakespeare inspired. One day English will have evolved to the point where Shakespeare's dialogue really will need to be translated, but that day isn't here yet. We can still understand the dialogue the man himself wrote as long as we're willing to just put in a little effort.

I say this as a your average joe, not some Shakespeare scholar. I may miss some details here and there but I've yet to encounter a Shakespeare play where I couldn't understand the story. Of course I still have plenty to read, so that could change.

[–] pinkpixie1312 9 years ago

Don't you see? What sets this film apart is the Shakespearean language. Without the beautiful words of Shakespeare it loses a lot of depth and becomes like any other police state/warzone movie. It's Shakespeare, that's why it's called Coriolanus. They might as well changed the name to something generic and also had a completely different star and director. Lol :)

[–] raf-33 9 years ago

Hahaha, there's about a dozen posts above mine and not a single person has corrected the OP.

Shakespeare did not write in the style of 'olde', he wrote in Shakespearean, do you think his stories would have been told across Europe in the 17th century if they were in any regular language? Romeo and Juliet is a love story, The Merchant of Venice is about Jew-bashing, every country had the same fodder at that time.

Shakespeare was a bard, one of the original wordsmiths, his prose were poetic and well thought out. He was kind of like the original rapper (to use a far out term), just as some watch opera to see and hear a story be told through operatic singing talent people would attend Shakespeare works to see and hear a story performed cleverly, and elegantly.

I'm a working class Scottish dad, my grammar is patchy, and I can't always express what I mean, but this talented man is one of the reasons I try to better myself a little every day. I think William would be proud of all the chumps like me :D

If you did a Shakespeare story in regular English it would be like any other, he wrote simple stories, but with clever wordplay.

Ya Kirk-loving Spocksucker!

[–] Kent_Kainer 9 years ago

I mean Shakespeare wrote his plays in the English of his time.

I think it was just as weird back then like it is today.
Itd be quite weird for ppl to speak so figuratively in everydays talk. Imagine the military or in school. xD

---
Lincoln Lee: I lost a partner.
Peter Bishop: I lost a universe!

[–] !!!deleted!!! (67791493) 8 years ago

They did the same thing with Much Ado About Nothing where they used original text in a modern setting and it worked really well. Same here. You get an ear for it after awhile and understand it. It's good for your brain!

GFW

[–] lansdownehouse 8 years ago

You're having a laugh, aren't you? Shakespeare for morons... what else... for dogs?

Or maybe you should just go back to school & pay attention this time.

[–] johnmiller (3376) 5 years ago

It would be extremely difficult to both update the language and keep the "Shakespeare" in the Shakespeare. You would lose the essence of his writing. With my favorite Shakespeare works, I get books like No Fear Shakespeare that offer plot synopses and modern English versions of the dialogue.

[–] momur (107) 5 years ago

I mean Shakespeare wrote his plays in the English of his time

No he didn't. The amount of words and phrases we now consider commonplace that Shakespeare outright invented is staggering - for just one example, he literally made up the word "elbow" and its attributed meaning (Much Ado About Nothing, in case you were wondering). Shakespeare, for the vast majority of his plays and poems, wrote entirely in his own specific language and syntax - a lot of which would probably have been lost on general audiences at the time. But that didn't mean they couldn't follow the story just fine and got the general gist of what was being said. Really, it's a very similar situation to the general public's relationship with Shakespeare nowadays, only inverted: where most people now understand the more modern phrases and struggle with the Elizabethan archaisms, his original audiences would have been fine with the archaic language and struggled with the words and phrases we now use every day.

There's dozens (if not hundreds) of movies that basically tell Shakespeare's stories (or are at least heavily inspired by his stories) with updated language and setting, so that's hardly an issue. There are even some that bear quite a few resemblances to Coriolanus - the most obvious example being Gladiator (it's not a direct parallel in terms of story but, as I said, it bears quite a few similarities). The problem is that at that point you can't really call it "William Shakespeare's [insert play title here]". Because it's not his version anymore, it's yours. You can say "inspired by William Shakespeare's [insert play title here]", but you can't claim it's the same. The Lion King is not Hamlet, O is not Othello, Gnomeo & Juliet is not Romeo & Juliet. They're clearly inspired by all those but ultimately they're not the same (and in most cases they're not even remotely the same beyond a few superficial similarities).

[–] R_Kane (15828) 5 years ago

The English of his time is the English of OUR time. It’s called Modern English, and not, say, Middle English.