How The King Rewrites Shakespeare’s Most Famous Dialogue

Frustrated writers in hunt of some-more certainty would do good to investigate a instance of Joel Edgerton and David Michôd. For their Henry V film The King, now streaming on Netflix, a span borrowed many of a plot, characters, and large moments from Shakespeare’s contingent of plays about a monarch, though chose to sale a Bard’s famous hymn in preference of discourse of their possess creation. Edgerton and Michôd aren’t a initial to rewrite Shakespeare — millennials will remember 10 Things we Hate About You kicked off a call of adaptations that brought Shakespearean plots to American high schools, efforts that were generally some-more successful with comedies (She’s a Man) than tragedies (O). There a change in view liberated filmmakers from a weight of approach adaptation; in gripping so many a same, a people behind The King have finished any depart feel even some-more glaring. Besides a language, they’ve also altered a fates of a few ancillary players, and given a story new themes. Timothée Chalamet’s Hal is now a eminent peacemaker who disdains quarrel and imperialism, that is kind of like branch Romeo into an incel.

Instead of iambic pentameter, characters in The King pronounce in what we competence call Game of Thrones English, a brew of brief staccato sentences, thundering pronouncements, a few old-timey phrasings, and revisit cursing. How does it review to a original? We’ve taken excerpts from a few scenes that directly line adult with Shakespeare’s own, to see. (All quotations from a plays pleasantness a Open Source Shakespeare project.)

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