A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose, but When Is Shakespeare Fakespeare?

Like many of my fellow Shakespeare professors -- like all of them, in fact -- I have students who like books or movies whose plots are based on Shakespeare. "It's The Taming of the Shrew in an American high school," they say, or, "It's Hamlet, but with animals."

It's not.

When I tell them so, I take care not to criticize the book, movie, play, Youtube short, or TV commercial in question. Each might be good, bad, mediocre, or excellent in its own right. I like the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate and the film 10 Things I Hate About You and Disney's The Lion King. Having myself written two Shakespeare-based novels, to roll my eyes at such adaptations would be hypocritical. In fact, I can add some celebrated titles to the conversation: Huxley's Brave New World, Dorothy Dunnett's King Hereafter, and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. There are hundreds of adaptations out