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The Hogarth Press got in touch with eight acclaimed writers to put a modern spin on Shakespeare Plays of their choosing.
Jeanette Winterson chose to write a cover for A Winter's Tale a play by Shakespeare that resonates with her particularly as it is about a foundling - Perdita - just as she was. She has long studied the play and unraveled it like only a true lover of literature can.
We get a brief description of the original play by Shakespeare and then starts Winterson's version. Leo is a magnate married to MiMi, a jazz singer. He is at the moment in throes of jealousy, just as MiMi is heavily pregnant. He is sure that his best friend and sometime lover, Xeno, is the father of the unborn child.
His jealousy sets things in motion, and a baby winds up up in New York, in a baby hatch outside a hospital with a briefcase full of money and diamonds. The baby and the money are appropriated by Shep who brings up the girl, Perdita, like his own alongside his grown son, Clo. She grows up loved and cossetted like a darling child while Leo, having lost his wife and older child, is a shell of his former self.
Leo's best friend and one time lover, Xeno is also in New York. Xeno's son has grown up now and just like Shakespeare decreed, he gets to know Perdita.
Winterson analyses Shakespeare and gauges his depth brilliantly. She transfers the same brilliance to her story and gives us a tale as delightful and merry and full of happy coincidences as the Bard's.
She looks at the two things that set apart the play. One: that it highlights the gap of time. The play halts just when the annihilation of happiness of King Leontes at his own hands is complete. There is a jump in time and we see Perdita grown up at sixteen. Two: the theme of forgiveness. At the essence of the play, Perdita and the good people in the play, Paulina, Shepherd and Clown (the people who adopt Perdita), forgive the wrongdoers.
She brings us a near perfect modernization of Shakespeare. As a rare treat, we get a treatise on the play and are given a very good analysis of it. It is a MUST read for lovers of Shakespeare.
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The Hogarth Press got in touch with eight acclaimed writers to put a modern spin on Shakespeare Plays of their choosing. I chose to read Anne Tyler's Vinegar Girls, published under project Hogarth Shakespeare, as I love Anne Tyler immensely.
Anne Tyler brings The Taming of the Shrew to life in Baltimore. Except Kate Batista cannot really be called a shrew now. She is merely a blunt person who lacks social skills. She has been caring for her father and younger sister, Bunny for years now. Her social life is, of course, non-existent. She has a sort of a crush on a fellow teacher, but does nothing about it. She seems content to spend the rest of her life gardening, working at a day-care and being the housekeeper.
Her father, Louis Batista is a brilliant scientist. At home is just a lost father who likes to lean a bit too much on his elder daughter, and be a bit too indulgent with his younger one. His assistant at work is about to be deported and he wants Kate to marry him. This is such a preposterous idea that Kate is outraged. Pyotr, the man in question, is an orphan from Russia. He seems to take a fancy to Kate, he actually enjoys her bluntness and likes her long hair. Kate turns into a prickly cactus on seeing him.
Here we get to see the comic touch of Anne Tyler. The exchanges between Kate, her father, Pyotr and Bunny are hilarious. Tyler has a deft touch with her characters, and she seems to have some special skills with displaced people. Her portrayal of the Iranian American Maryam in 'Digging to America' was simply brilliant. Here also, she is deeply sympathetic (without seeming so) with Pyotr, with his peculiar accent and choice of words.
Vinegar Girl is primarily about Kate Batista and her jaundiced view of life in general. It is also about a displaced person (Pyotr) who is trying claim some space in this world for himself. He has left his country where he had no one and is trying to adapt to a new country where no one seems to be willing to accommodate him.
This is a link to other projects of Hogarth Shakespeare that are published or due out soon.
