People may never get over The Beatles. More than forty years after the burst onto the music scene, they are still revered by millions, frequently ranked in the highest echelons of contemporary music. New compilations of the greatest hits, some occasionally including never-before released tracks continue to sell. In addition, their catalogue remains a staple of oldies radio stations. Most recently, Julie Taymor created a film, Across the Universe, that built a musical story around The Beatles’s songs. While the singing was quite admirable and the songs still potent and melodically rich, the film itself was a mess. Instead of creating relatable characters, the film was mired by inconsistent tone and performances, shoddy (and often unnecessary) special effects, and a truly grueling midsection kicked off by a whacked-out appearance by Bono.

A Bard Day’s Night is going to try to take Taymor’s idea in a different direction. The play is a one main show conceived by and starring Chris O’Neill, who for many years has played in a Beatles cover band. In the play, O’Neill stars as Sir Paul McCartney, and he has put Shakespeare’s words to the Beatles’s music. While some memorable quotes from his plays to figure into the proceedings, most of the words come from the sonnets. I’m not sure what the ultimate purpose of the show is or how the audience will be impacted dramatically, but its hard to deny the creative appeal of the concept. As I type this, I can hear “Drink to me only with thine eyes” sung to the tune of “With a Little Help from My Friends.”

In far-away Shakespeare news, the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre is hosting a very unique Bard-based production. Rather than tackle one of the plays and attempt to put a unique spin on it, the company has decided to create a performance piece out of the sonnet. Utilizing music, multimedia, and obviously the sonnets themselves, they have created a story about, what else, love. The sketch of a plot follows a man as he considers the merits of love over the course of an evening.

The sonnets typically are performed more in literary recitals or as part of oral interpretation exhibitions. This production seeks to celebrate another kind of The Bard’ poetry and find drama in it. In a sense, this company gets to do what so many other scholars and theatres dream about: “discover” a new Shakespeare play.

Admit it, if the news broke tomorrow that a heretofore undiscovered manuscript of Shakespeare’s had been unearthed, you would join the stampede of millions who would want to read it, produce it, study it and perform it. The KLPAC company has accomplished this somewhat indirectly. For performers the chances to tackle the sonnets are far fewer than those that involve putting the plays on their feet. For scholars who have long sought to find connectivity among the sonnets (even going so far as to attempt to unearth the subjects of The Bard’s musings), this production provides, if not an answer, then a clever reframing of the question.

If Shakespeare was a poet first, why do we remember him more as a dramatist? This is the question posed in a recent article about Shakespearean scholar. For this writer, it seems that far too much attention has been paid to Shakespeare’s career as a dramatist while not enough writing has been devoted to his poetry. For this writer, Shakespeare started out as a poet first and later found his way into theatre. Additionally, he points out that Shakespeare had a poetic career beyond the Sonnets. Two of Shakespeare’s most famous and masterful poetic works are Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. While both works have received significant attention in literary circles, they don’t receive the same attention as King Lear.

If this assertion is true, why don’t both of his efforts receive equal attention? One issue may be accessibility. For those who regularly read poetry for study and/or enjoyment, this isn’t a problem, but how many people read poetry for leisure? Has poetry inadvertently become a victim of educational classism? In other words, is poetry something only studied by wealthy intellectuals?
Forum may have also played a role in the shaping of Shakespeare’s reputation. Theatre’s role as popular entertainment (both in Shakespeare’s time and especially in the 1800’s) has ensured that his plays reach a wide audience. His poetry, unfortunately, has not enjoyed the same level of exposure. Yet, there is one other factor that arguably is the biggest contributor to the disparity at hand. Shakespeare’s dramatic writing has always been celebrated and analyzed for its poetic quality. In essence, audiences and readers have been getting two forms in one. Shakespeare didn’t stop writing poetry; he simply incorporated it into new forms. In doing so, he may have cast a shadow over his earlier, equally important work.