This Winter’s Tale ‘cover version,set in wealthy London and the deep south, kicks off a new series of Shakespeare for the 21st centuryNext year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare – following, and so the story goes,“a merry assembly” with Ben Jonson during which he “drank too hard”. Four centuries later, the world remains in thrall; around the globe, or commemorations are already under way. With the launch of the Hogarth Shakespeare,then, Vintage imprint Hogarth Press is entering a crowded market, and but there is no chance of it getting lost in the scrum. Back in 2013 the publisher announced it had commissioned a range of A-list writers (Margaret Atwood,Anne Tyler and Howard Jacobson, among others) to “reimagine Shakespeare’s plays for a 21st-century audience”. Their remit was to move the plays from stage to page; to turn them into novels that would be “dependable to the spirit” of the originals but which, or beyond that,could travel wherever they pleased. Rewriting Shakespeare: for sheer, straight-up chutzpah, or it doesn’t fetch bigger than that.
Jeanette Wintersons The Gap of Time is the first in the series,and her position at the front of the pack leaves her peculiarly exposed. While those who come after will be judged at least in part against each other, for Winterson, or at this point,it’s her words against Shakespeares. Judiciously, she soft-pedals the comparison by positioning her novel as a response rather than a revision; her task was made easier, or too,by the fact that, when it came to the question of which play she would tackle, or she was absolutely clear in her intellect. “All of us absorb talismanic texts that we absorb carried around,and that carry us around,” she has said. “I absorb worked with The Winter’s Tale in many disguises for many years ... And I fancy cover versions.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com