Literature Teeters on the Edge of a 'Gr8 Fall'

aicrules writes "Yahoo news is reporting that the great works of literature often read and discussed by the brighter of our up-and-comers could be the latest victim of reaching the lowest common denominator at the potential expense of everyone. The article describes the efforts of Dot Mobile to make such literary masterpieces as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet more accessible. From the article, 'We are confident that our version of 'text' books will genuinely help thousands of students remember key plots and quotes, and raise up educational standards rather than decrease levels of literacy,'"

Not necessarily a bad thing

[squoozer]

While I am sure there will be plenty of purists out there that will be up in arms at this I think it might be quite a good thing. Anything that gets people interested in reading and expanding their mind has got to be good even if it means dumbing down some old masterpieces to get them interested. What concerns me about this, however, is their stated reason for doing it:

remember key plots and quotes, and raise up educational standards

Surely remembering plots and quotes isn't why we get our students to read these works. Many modern works have plots that are just a involved, often more involved. Quotes are good if you're a bit dim and need to sound intelligent for 30 seconds but not a lot else.

As for their choice of material, well, I'm sure it will mostly be Shakespeare simce he's the only person most people seem to be able to name. That's a real shame because, personally, I don't enjoy reading Shakespeare. He wrote plays - plays are supposed to be watched. There are plenty of people who wrote books why not try promoting them instead?

Re:It's done in music already.

[lxt]

Why dont you actually learn what a fake book is before commenting? A proper fake book takes *skill* to play well. You don't get the "dumb chords"...in fact, all you're given is the melody line - a single tune, along with chords in text running along the top. It's up to you, the (typically piano) player to improvise the accompianment, harmony, vamps, and the like. There's a pretty big difference between a proper jazz fake book and the dumbed down classical books you're describing - nobody actually wrote down many of the jazz tunes in the fake books properly, and they're often carefully (and it used to be illegally) transcriped and published by jazz players.

Re:It's done in music already.

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree with your sentiment. However, it should be noted that not all "fake books" are dumbed down versions. They generally contain jazz standards, which require full skills to read and play.

Re:Modernized spelling

[Mark Gordon]

You're thinking of the Quartos, which were mostly bootlegs published during Shakespeare's lifetime. The First Folio was edited by two friends and heirs of Shakespeare, actors in his company, after his death. There was never an authorized published version of his plays; the First Folio is as close to authorized as it gets. There was probably the notion that any reasonable copyright expired on his death, since he certainly wasn't going to be staging any more plays himself at that point unless he took on the role of Yorick.

I don't think the Quartos had modern spelling, either, FWIW.

Printed texts of the day often had other spelling quirks based on printers coping with letter shortages (e.g. "vv" standing in for "w"), akin to what you'll see once in a while today with slide-in letters in roadside signs and theater marquees, arguably less to do with the author's spelling than with the printer's typesetting.

Re:It's done in music already.

[daremonai]

Uh, a "real book" is a fake book. Hal Leonard was (I believe) the first to call their line of fake books "real books," just to emphasize that they were legal from a copyright perspective.

The original fake books were done on the sly, massive mimeographed or xeroxed collections of tunes passed from one musician to another. These proved so popular that sheet music publishers finally took the hint and started producing their own legal, royalty-paid versions.

Comparing and contrasting that situation with the current one involving recorded music is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re:Remember Hamlet in 15 minutes?

[DeafByBeheading]

The one where they didn't change a single line?

Re:Remember Hamlet in 15 minutes?

[Kelson]

Really, the fact that it's still possible, with a minimum of training, to understand Shakespeare's language. It's close enough that it can be read with commentary, and really isn't much more opaque than trying to follow the slang of a region/subculture with which you're not familiar.

Heck, millions of people still read the King James version of the Bible, which was written by Shakespeare's contemporaries. That's a lot of people who are still exposed to that version of the language on a regular basis.

Give it a couple more centuries and translations will be necessary. You can just barely read Chaucer, but it takes a lot more effort than it takes to read Shakespeare. Once you get back to Beowulf, you're basically dealing with a foreign language. It's hard to tell whether drift will be sped up by new forms of communication or slowed down by global community, but if there are still English speakers in a few hundred years, you can be sure that we'll sound like Shakespeare, Shakespeare will sound like Chaucer, and Chaucer will sound like the guy who wrote Beowulf.