By Rosanna Lee, St Dunstan's Student
The manga adaptations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet were published by SelfMadeHero, adapted
by Richard Appignanesi and illustrated by Robert Deas (Macbeth) and Sonia Leong (Romeo and Juliet), both of whom are
part of Sweat Drop Studios. The two manga are part of a series called Manga Shakepeare. They use the same Shakespearian language as the plays, however are set in alternate settings, still staying true to the original theatre production.
They both similarly start off with several coloured pages of images of the main characters, plus their names. I think
this is good as much of the time in Shakespeare I get very confused with the old and un-common names (especially the
names Capulet and Montague—I can never remember who belongs to which family). With a face to pair the name with, I
can easily tell what is happening in the story.
Within the first few pages of the two manga, the setting is introduced. For Romeo and Juliet, modern-day Tokyo is
the setting, and for Macbeth, the setting is a ‘world of post-nuclear mutation’. The opening scene in Macbeth is, much like
the play, the witches discussing when to meet again. The witches are, in fact, serpent-like creatures, making many later
remarks made about them (when Macbeth and Banquo first meet them) much more literal (e.g. “[talking about the
witches] What are these...that look not like the inhabitants of this earth?”. In Romeo and Juliet, the characters are all average-looking humans.
How Appignanesi changed the original Shakespeare setting to another, more interesting setting was imaginative.
Macbeth’s new sci-fi , post-apocalypse setting is suitable to the storyline
and Romeo and Juliet’s new setting is good. However, there are a few
points which don’t quite make sense, for example Prince Escalus (in the
manga, a detective) suddenly banishes Romeo, in modern-day Tokyo,
without any kind of court trial or real investigation and proof other than
one eye-witness’ statement.
Because each different story in the Manga Shakespeare collection
has a different illustrator, the styles of drawing and, therefore, the impact
of the art is very different. Macbeth’s illustrator, Robert Deas, uses lines
of changing thickness to give form, and leaves wide blank spaces for simple shading to give shadows of any kind. However, in Romeo and Juliet,
the illustrator Sonia Leong uses lots of lines to produce texture (e.g. a lot
more lines in the hair to give more detail to different characters) as well
as using different textures of grey for the clothes and colours—this gives Romeo and Juliet a lot more detail. The anatomy
in both is also very different—in Macbeth I found it hard to see much difference between the men’s body shapes—they
are all big and have lots of muscle. The head shapes, I noticed, were also very similar and the only thing that I had to tell
apart the male characters was the hair and clothes. Romeo and Juliet had a lot more ‘realistic’ body shapes, and although
the eyes were sometimes odd-looking (for example one shot of Romeo has one eye almost all black and the other as a
normal manga eye), I found it much easier to look at.
The styles are different, and using Sonia Leong’s style in the Macbeth setting would be very odd, as it is a very girly
or ‘shoujo’ manga style and this would just look wrong in a story with big, hulky men killing each other and visa-versa for
Robert Deas’ style in Romeo and Juliet. In terms of drawing, I much prefer Sonia Leong’s style simply because it is similar to
what I am used to looking at in manga, however both have their differences and are both appropriate to the Shakespeare
play that they had been applied to.
I think that Manga Shakespeare books would be great to use in schools. I am currently studying Macbeth in school
and the summer holiday work was to read Macbeth. It was taking me ages to read even one scene of the play, not because
I’m lazy but because the Shakespearian language is so hard to understand—it took me a while to realise that the sentence
“have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?” is only supposed to be saying “are we high?”. All my
friends make jokes about how none of the sentences make sense to them, and we always complain that we cannot follow
what is happening in class. I barely even understood the story before I watched the film of Macbeth a few weeks ago. And
I’m sure most teenagers that study Shakespeare plays in school feel the same way.
Then I read this manga, which I finished in less than a day, and the whole story makes a lot more sense to me. I
understand who all the characters are, meanings of most of the sentences and I have now technically done my English
homework for the holidays, because the manga is exactly the same as the play just with visuals to help me along!
If the manga were in schools, teenagers wouldn’t only be able to understand the story and meaning of words a lot
easier due to the visuals (they could do this by watching the play, right? Not right—not many schools want to spend
money on funding students to do or see something for school that they could see on a DVD repeatedly. It would be a good
experience, but would cost a hell of a lot of money each year - With the manga, it can be used for years on end and you
therefore don’t have to spend money every year on tickets to the play), but they would also be more likely to want to
learn about the play in class, or at least be more enthusiastic about reading the work. This is because comics can relate to
the teenage audience a lot easier than scripts can. Me, some of my friends, and lots of people in my school often read
comics (not necessarily manga), but I don’t know anybody my age who willingly reads scripts in their spare time (with the
exception of if they are acting some kind of production and need to learn lines), especially Shakespeare plays.