Tales still told 400 years later
Author Michael Morpurgo has retold William Shakespeare’s most famous plays for today’s audience.
In 1955, when Michael Morpurgo was a child living in London, he had an argument with his mother. He got so cross he decided to catch a bus going “anywhere”. He got off the bus in central London, where he bought a cheap ticket to see an afternoon production of Hamlet by the English playwright William Shakespeare (1564–1616) at the Phoenix theatre.
A famous actor called Paul Scofield was playing the main character, Prince Hamlet of Denmark, whose uncle has seized his father’s throne and married his mother. Morpurgo saw something incredible that afternoon, he told The Week Junior. “Every person in the theatre wanted to get to know Hamlet, to help him avert his fate. The whole theatre was completely focused.”
Many people find Shakespeare difficult to understand but Morpurgo believes that if you see a good version of a play and you know the plot, these are the world’s best stories. In his book, Tales from Shakespeare, Morpurgo tells the story of 10 of Shakespeare’s most famous plays.
The genius of Shakespeare, said Morpurgo, is that he understood what humans are really like. He shows that friendship and love change us and help us grow, even though sometimes we argue and get upset with each other.
Shakespeare told all sorts of stories. His plays reveal that he knew a lot about history and different cultures. Other plays are “wonderfully absurd... Like they were thought up by a 10-year-old but written by a genius.” Morpurgo said he has been “trained” by Shakespeare in his own writing, from the love of language itself to creating characters who seem life-like and real.
Shakespeare was “hyperactive” said Morpurgo, and was always asking questions. The picture on the book’s cover, designed by Dapo Adeola, is how Morpurgo imagines the playwright was: “mischievous” and looking at the reader “as if he is saying, ‘I dare you’.”