Content Warning: This article contains mentions of suicide.
Jane Austen and William Shakespeare are two of the most influential writers of all time. Their unique works and style have given them loyal followings and imitators for centuries. According to Vulture, the first cinematic adaptation of Austen’s work was a live action “Pride and Prejudice” in 1938. Although Austen adaptations didn’t catch on in Hollywood until the 1970s, today she is one of the most adapted authors ever. Shakespeare’s work has been adapted and built on over and over and over for about 400 years. In the time since the originals were made, shifting language, environments, fashion, and cultural values have forced imitators to innovate. Sometimes they’ve even done a good job of it. The following are just four movies out of the multitude of adaptations over the years.
“Taming of the Shrew” (1594) and “10 Things I Hate About You” (1999)
“10 Things I Hate About You” is an adaptation of the Shakespearean comedy “Taming of the Shrew,” a love story between a woman initially unconcerned with romance and a man who (in the movie) is initially paid to woo her. It adapts the original by reframing the story around high school teenagers in 1990s Seattle, and “10 Things I Hate About You” is truly a movie of its time. For example, like any high school comedy or drama from the 1990s, the movie begins with a new kid being shown a menagerie of cliques around the school by a snarky, unpopular classmate. Why every high school movie insisted on doing this is beyond me. The characters wear clothing and drive cars that fit the time period, and the language has been adapted for a modern audience.
The original play’s titular “shrew” is Katherine Minola, a young woman with a “scolding tongue” and a short temper. While Katherine does react with excessive anger and often hits people, it’s important to note that there is a longstanding stigma against women being assertive, as hinted by the title of the play: according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “shrew” is “an offensive word for an angry unpleasant woman.” In the play, Katherine is “tamed” by her controlling partner, Petruchio. So any adaptation of the play must confront this misogynistic trope and change the story to reflect modern perspectives. And “10 Things I Hate About You” does make a clear effort to adapt certain parts of the story: Petruchio’s equivalent, Patrick, played by Heath Ledger, is kinder and gentler to Katherine’s equivalent, Kat, who is played by Julia Stiles. And the creators also changed Kat’s character to reflect the 400 years of progress: Kat is a loud feminist.
Umm… what?
When Kat criticizes her English teacher for neglecting women’s writing, she is viewed as annoying, and her family is perplexed and irritated by her preference for politics over conventional interests like dating. Over the course of the movie, though, she discards her aggressive feminism and becomes more romantic than countercultural, writing a sonnet about love, entering a relationship, and doing some weird pedal boat thing with Patrick. Within the logic of the movie, she has been “tamed.” While there is nothing wrong with preferring to conform to a more traditional gender role, the film seems critical of non-traditional feminists.
Kat herself is no less of a feminist. She has refused to back down in spite of her classmates’ misogyny, reading feminist theory like the icon she is. When Patrick is attempting to win her over in a bookstore, she shoves a copy of Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” in his face. Kat is a role model from the beginning, but the story is framed in a way that suggests otherwise. Screenwriter Karen McCullah said in a 2019 interview with Refinery29 that “‘Kat being a feminist character and a rebel and light activist in her spirit, really speaks to the current teenager.’” But by the movie’s end, she’s much less outspoken in her activism, writing a sonnet to Patrick titled “10 Things I Hate About You” instead of her usual feminist poetry.
Because “10 Things I Hate About You” is a fairly loose adaptation with modernized language, it sacrifices much of the original’s wordplay. Shakespeare is known for inserting innuendos into his work, and in “Taming of the Shrew” he comes hard and fast with suggestive references, like when he writes that “asses are meant to bear.” In contrast, “10 Things I Hate About You” makes the sex jokes more obvious, if still entertaining. The school counselor spends her work time writing smut, another disappointing case of a story hinting at, but not developing, a more interesting narrative. Kat helps the counselor write her fiction, offering the phrase “quivering member” to describe something that I will not name for legal reasons.
Still, the movie is enjoyable, especially the budding relationship between Kat and Patrick, who learn to accept each others’ differences and make me feel very single.
“Romeo and Juliet” (1597) and “Romeo + Juliet” (1996)
Baz Luhrmann adapts the iconic Shakespearean tragedy with an overwhelming theatrical bombast that feels loyal to the original style, transposing Shakespearean language and storytelling onto 1990s Miami. Romeo, played by the then-dashing Leonardo DiCaprio, is a member of the Montague family, who are engaged in a brutal feud with their rivals, the Capulets. Juliet, played by Claire Danes, is a Capulet soon to be betrothed to Count Davis, played by Paul Rudd. From the moment Romeo and Juliet lay their eyes upon each other, they are madly in love. The story chronicles the teenage couple’s pain in the face of their family feud, a conflict that ultimately leads the two to die by suicide in each other’s arms.
This adaptation stands out for its relentless and exuberant faithfulness to the original, turning it into one of the most tonally wild and striking movies I have ever watched. Every detail, from the verbatim language to the Italian-influenced set design, the wild fluctuations in weather, and the expressive clothing, combine to make every scene feel overwhelming. It also feels timeless in every aspect: Scenes move between the opulence of a mansion inspired by the classical era and the traffic-jammed bustle of a modern city.
These tonal changes helped me understand Shakespeare’s work in general by recontextualizing it in a modern setting. Despite copying much of the play, Baz Luhrmann evokes its more campy elements with force, like the rapid mood swings of the teenagers and the explosive color. Shakespeare’s work is often thought of as “high art” and put on a pedestal, but stories like “Romeo and Juliet” feel more wild than neat. However, the directly-quoted dialogue does make many of the lines stick less strongly. There’s so much on the screen at any moment that I often couldn’t focus on the dialogue, which meant that much of the emotional understanding came from visual cues. Just after finishing the movie, I realized that I could not remember a single line.
Luhrmann’s theatrical explosion of a tragedy was one of my favorites I watched, and it made me feel very happy to be single.
“Emma” (1815) and “Clueless” (1995)
“Clueless” recontextualizes Jane Austen’s “Emma,” while maintaining the original characterizations through modern language. It does an excellent job of moving its characters to the modern day and is full of brilliant joke after brilliant joke. The character dynamics involving Cher, played by Alicia Silverstone, Brittany Murphy’s Tai, and Paul Rudd’s Josh drive the movie and accentuate Cher’s pride as she learns to understand herself and what love means to her.
In the book, Emma’s central weakness is her arrogance, a belief in herself that comes from having resources and receiving constant positive feedback with little adversity. It leads her to play matchmaker with people and try to help steer a friend of lower status in what she falsely deems to be the proper social direction. Austen’s early-18th-Century language is flowery and provides her with the space to describe characters with incredible nuance and precision. By just the second page, Austen writes: “The real evils, indeed, of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself.” This characterization introduces Emma’s flaws in an understanding yet straightforward way, and in just a few clauses. When I read Austen’s books, I regularly feel called out on my most toxic behaviors, in that kind and gentle way that allows me to analyze my flaws, and those of others, fairly.
That kindness is aided by the formality of Austen’s language, which sugarcoats her satire. The shorter and simpler sentence structures of 1990s teenage English mean that many of the jokes must be meticulously reworked. Fortunately, the writers of “Clueless” hit it out of the park. While most of the characters feel stereotypical in some way, they are treated with Austenian teasing. As part of her matchmaking hijinks, Cher quotes Shakespeare but attributes it to Cliffs Notes. It’s quotes like that which, like in “Emma,” show that Cher is genuine but sheltered.
The tone of each character is adapted seamlessly with more contemporary speech. In an essay published by the journal JSTOR, linguist Chi Luu points out that Austen used phrases like “you know” and “very” more than most writers, reflecting the characters’ naivete; in “Clueless,” meanwhile, the teenagers use similar contemporary phrases like “way existential” and “totally.”
The novel’s outdated garments and environment must also be adapted. Austen’s novel takes place in a wealthy, rural English environment that may not feel relatable to modern audiences. In “Clueless,” the costume designers once again show that they understand the emotional resonance of the setting and outfits, giving characters like Cher and her best friend Dionne extravagant, colorful, modern attire.
“Persuasion” (1817) and “Persuasion” (2022)
By far the newest adaptation of the four, “Persuasion” takes a unique approach in adapting the romance between protagonist Anne Elliott and her love interest Captain James Benwick. It keeps the fashion, setting, and posh British accents of the original novel while adapting the script and cinematography in a modern style. This experimental approach yields mixed results.
I don’t object at all to the modernized language; in fact, it’s an interesting idea that makes the viewer rethink their own perception of Austen. After all, even if phrases like “I never trust a 10” feel out of place in pre-Victorian England, Austen’s dialogue was likely less than realistic either. People in the 1800s rarely said things like, “You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions.” Instead, according to an 1865 piece by William Pearson titled “The Self-Help Grammar of the English Language,” urban spoken English in the 19th Century included phrases like “‘We am running’” and other informal, grammatically-incorrect sentences. Still, the writers of “Persuasion” had a hard time mimicking the nuances of Austenian characterization.
As I mentioned in my description of “Clueless,” Austen’s style is difficult to emulate in a modern context. The complexity of her satire can easily turn stale or mean, depending on how it is interpreted, so any adaptation must tread carefully to avoid losing the nuance that makes the characterization special. Austen’s stories depend heavily on the simmering romances and friendships between characters, so getting these character quirks right is essential.
The writers of “Persuasion” struggle with these nuances. Phrases like “she’s a total narcissist” introduce characters in a more meme-like way, using simplified and snarky modern descriptors. It doesn’t help that protagonist Anne Elliot, played by Dakota Johnson, repeatedly breaks the fourth wall to explain to the viewer how she feels. The heavy exposition conveys a frustrating lack of faith in the audience.
My least favorite character in the movie is Mr. William Elliot, a mannequin of a man with whom Anne Elliot nearly falls in love during the third act for no discernible reason. Granted, Mr. Elliot is intended to be unlikeable. But he is such a vapid beneficiary of pretty privilege that I cannot understand why Anne would ever feel attracted to him. He refers to Anne as a “dazzling creature” in public and calls her “my Anne.” He is in every way a pompous, possessive, and unworthy man. His brutally satirical characterization puts the moviemakers in a bind, as they have to convince the audience that there is any reason why Anne would like him. But they can’t seem to find that reason, instead having Anne insist that she is falling for him with no evidence whatsoever.
Anne Elliott’s awkwardness makes for the best part of the movie, as it’s where the creators best build on her traits, and I did feel sorry for her when she struggled to live up to love interest Captain James Benwick’s expectations. But the movie’s snarky 21st-Century language made Anne meaner and less likable; the language felt adapted with insufficient regard for what makes Austen great.
Each adaptation had to determine what to keep from the original work. Would it be a nearly-verbatim copy or a high school-themed allegory? How much of the plot would remain? What would the settings and costumes look like? But the most effective adapted elements were those which understood the emotional significance of the original authors’ decisions, like the language of “Clueless” and the tone of “Romeo and Juliet.” The strongest adaptations were those that understood not only what the original authors chose, but why they chose it.