Shakespearean Dialogue

This is the big one. Usually, whenever someone describes something as Shakespearean, they mean the dialogue, and they mean that it sounds fancy. David Milch’s dialogue is Shakespearean, especially his work on Deadwood. Quentin Tarantino’s dialogue has sometimes been described as Shakespearean. I have my suspicions that writing in iambic pentameter would be enough to get most people to think it sounded Shakespearean without being able to articulate why, but there’s also a deliberate anti-realism to the concept. Sheakspearean dialogue is heightened and elaborate, although not in any principled way. It’s neither poetic compression (the attempt to convey the biggest idea in as few words and ideally syllables as possible) nor Lovecraftian purple prose (using the most interesting and ideally obscure word to convey even the simplest concept). It’s more like trying to find the most original combination of words to convey a concept, even when that breaches the rules of grammar and requires using a word that’s only 75% of the way to the intended meaning.

Shakespearean Structure

This is also what people usually mean when they describe something as Shakespearean. Usually, something with a single protagonist who, through ambition or a general drive for power, causes tremendous damage and chaos that escalates throughout the narrative. At the height of its popularity, Breaking Bad was described as a modern Shakespearean tragedy. Conversely, I’ve rarely if ever seen anyone describe The Wire or Game Of Thrones as Shakespearean despite their epic tones and tragic elements because their scopes are simply too wide to think of any one protagonist as the driving element. Rarely, I also see comedies that are compared to Shakespeare’s comedies; there have been occasional modernised adaptations and they’ve seeped into the general milieu of romantic comedies. The best thing Film Crit Hulk ever wrote was his screenwriting 101 book that created a general structure for five Shakespearean acts, and he showed how various movies fit into that structure.

Shakespearean Characters

This is something that I’ve been puzzling over for a while now. There are characters that feel Shakespearean to me, even when nothing else about the story feels that way, and there are characters that definitely don’t. I think a Shakespearean character is one whose every thought and intention is laid bare for the audience so that they have nothing to hide from us, even – especially – when they’re hiding things from the other characters. Order Of The Stick presents Shakespearean characters, because we see them with an incredible intimacy; come to think of it, the comic has a big number of Shakespearean monologues. Mad Men characters are not Shakespearean, because we’re locked out of their minds and left to infer what they’re thinking from context. The characters of Stargate: Universe are Shakespearean, even if I think they’re badly drawn characters – the intent, at least, is for them to be open to the audience and for their views to be worth exploring in full.