I thought the 8.2% IPA to Bud Light analogy was apt, although perhaps not for the same reasons as the guy who made it. A lot of people drink Bud Light because it's cheap and accessible and gets the job done. Saying "just drink the best beer" is sort of a "let them eat cake line". In the context of Shakespeare the reality is you need a more readable modern translation for most of his plays or lots and lots of people simply won't read them (except when they have to for school and even there it's straight for the tl;dr cliff notes).
I consider myself fairly well schooled and read and don't dislike Shakespeare. However, despite going through the high school forced march of one Shakespeare a semester/year and having read some plays solely out of interest ... I've read (and reread) significantly more Ibsen plays than those of Shakespeare. It's true they're shorter and prose and Ibsen's best work is spectacular (well with a good translation) but still if Shakespeare is this shining light on a hill why aren't more people reading him in English?
> I thought the 8.2% IPA to Bud Light analogy was apt
Not to derail the discussion (and you make excellent points), but Bud Light has an underrated quality of its own. Its drinkability quietly belies the delicacy that goes into a well-crafted lager -- as opposed to the contaminated dreck that microbreweries pass off as special release sours.
Part of the reason for Bud Light's enduring appeal is the same reason people go back to Coca-Cola or Heinz ketchup: it achieves a magical, happy balance of taste and mouthfeel that artisanal formulations usually can't.
Correspondingly (bringing the discussion back on-topic), it is likely that a modernization of Shakespeare that achieves any lasting popularity will be infused with subtle skill that goes unnoticed by casual readers, even if dismissed by more serious scholars. (This is a difficulty faced by all translators of great works, and researching which translation to use is often as enjoyable as reading the work itself.) That being said, I'm unsure that the "translation by committee" approach proposed here is going to bear any fruit.
Well, Shakespeare wrote plays, so it's generally a good idea to see them in the theater, or watch cinema versions, rather than to read them. Once you have a good idea of he action and the character interactions, it's easier to read the language.
I once saw a performance of the "bad quarto" of Hamlet and it was a terrific play, even though the language was all over the place.
re: plays, sure but I made an intentional comparison with Ibsen who is also a dramatist.
re: Throne of Blood. Yeah it's great and that's sorta the point of wanting modern translations. Shakespeare, freed from the yoke of Old Elizabethan, can be more vital and approachable to modern audiences.
With plays it is often difficult to understand the words that are being spoken. At least with a written version you can see what words and sentences are being used instead of hearing mostly barely distinguishable utterances or words that don't seem to fit together.
I have always thought it ridiculous that anyone would actually behave (assuming the play-worlds take place in our own or a similar world) in the manner that I have seen many Shakespearean plays acted out. I guess it is all for dramatic effect?
All true, sadly. However, good actors speak in ways that can be heard and understood, and good directors make the action understandable. (Understandable in context: you might be in a fairyland where the world is different.)
It helps that when I studied Shakespeare I saw most of the productions in Stratford on Avon, but lots of plays are available on DVD now. In the old days, eg to take in Grigori Kozintsev's Hamlet, I had to go to the cinema three nights in a row....
Schools focus too much on Shakespeare. Most people are going to have studied very few plays from the past 400+ years; a large chunk of those are going to come from just one man.
Just to pick one example, Marlowe seems to have been considered to be at the same level as Shakespeare by their contemporaries; however, I've met few people who have read his stuff (or can even name his stuff). And that's picking someone from the same time period and same country. Imagine how many authors across the world and from a period of hundreds of years most of us have missed out on.
Failed higher English twice in Scotland and was forced to read one more Shakespeare play than I would have needed to if I had passed.
How they can pass this off under the subject of "English" is beyond me (the left hand page was the Shakespeare version, right hand page was the translation to modern English). It has provided me with absolutely no benefit in my life since I studied it.
I consider myself fairly well schooled and read and don't dislike Shakespeare. However, despite going through the high school forced march of one Shakespeare a semester/year and having read some plays solely out of interest ... I've read (and reread) significantly more Ibsen plays than those of Shakespeare. It's true they're shorter and prose and Ibsen's best work is spectacular (well with a good translation) but still if Shakespeare is this shining light on a hill why aren't more people reading him in English?