‘It’s like a Shakespeare play!’: Parodic Appropriations of Shakespeare

Abstract

The practice of adapting, parodying, and otherwise appropriating Shakespeare is so incalculably widespread that this chapter on it must inevitably be selective in the extreme, and confine itself to one very specific aspect of the subject. The two quotations heading the chapter will, I hope, give some indication as to where this focus will lie. Both are extracts from mainstream adaptations of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline staged in Britain in 2007 — by the theatre companies Cheek by Jowl and Kneehigh respectively. Both extracts are largely composed of newly written, non-Shakespearean dialogue (the only exception being the words ‘For me, my ransom’s death’ in the Cheek by Jowl script). It is the difference in attitude displayed by the two towards their shared source which will concern us here. Where Cheek by Jowl’s adaptation does its best to hide its disjunction from Shakespeare’s script with deliberate use of archaic language and pseudo-Shakespearean asides, Kneehigh’s playfully advertises the chasm separating it from its seventeenth-century forebear, making irreverent and mocking use of Shakespeare’s play. In this respect, the attitudes of the adaptations towards their original might run parallel to the model of assimilative and disjunctive anachronisms laid out in Chapter 2.

IACHIMO. Hold, Sirrah!

What Briton slave is this?

POSTHUMUS. ’Tis Iachimo. Thank thee, gods.

They fight.

For me, my ransom’s death.

Thou knowest me not Italian signore but I will spare thy life.

Exit.

[…]

IACHIMO. What miracle is this?

An unknown Briton spares my life.

(Cheek by Jowl 2007: 80–1)

JOAN. Bloody complicated, innit? It’s like a Shakespeare play! Everyone’s either miserable or dead! I rather wish I’d stayed in the Costa del Sol!

(Rice & Grose 2007: 14)