Why girls won’t die for love in BBC’s Shakespeare

THE screenwriter behind BBC1’s new controversial adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has said he has cut out lines referring to female suicide because they are ‘untransmittable’.

Russell T Davies said he went against Shakespeare’s original as he thought women killing themselves for love is not appropriate for a modern audience.

Speaking at the Hay Literary Festival last night, he added that he wants his adaptation, which stars John Hannah and Matt Lucas, to interest young women and he did not feel it was a healthy message for them.

The former Doctor Who writer said: ‘I don’t care what Shakespeare was thinking, it’s my name on it.

‘It’s kind of standard in 1590 to say if you don’t love me back I’ll kill myself, it’s not standard now. And here I am deliberately trying

‘I don’t care, it’s my name on it’

to get young girls to watch this, so I will not transmit lines in which the women are so much in love that they’re threatening to commit suicide.’

Mr Davies referred to one of Hermia’s lines in which she states: ‘If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep, Being o’er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep, And kill me too.’

He explained he had edited out the line, along with Helena’s words to Demetrius ‘I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell, To die upon the hand I love so well’.

The adaptation, which airs tonight, has already been met with disapproval from some critics for its gay storyline involving Demetrius and Lysander, as well as a lesbian kiss between Maxine Peake as Titania and another female character.