Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' rewritten as choose-your-own-adventure comic
London, November 28 (ANI)
A choose-your-own-adventure version of Hamlet, which features jokes, ghosts and previously unseen pirate fight scene, has raised more than six times its goal on Kickstarter in less than a week, it has been revealed.
Ryan North, a Canadian comic book writer, launched his appeal on 21 November. In three-and-a-half hours it had raised its goal of 20,000 dollars (12,500 pounds), and today is at almost 150,000 dollars and counting.
His version of Hamlet will be called 'To Be Or Not To Be' and will be an illustrated, chooseable-path adventure story.
Readers can opt to follow the same choices as Shakespeare's characters, with "little Yorick skulls beside the 'canonical' choices", but North points out that "Shakespeare's choices didn't lead to the best ending for the characters. Not by a long shot." And although the story is told in modern language, there is the option to see the "big speeches" in Shakespeare's "original beautiful and fancy language."
"I've used the story of Hamlet as a starting point, but a) that's already a great story because it ends with pretty much everyone in it getting stabbed in the body and b) the story can go in all sorts of fun, crazy directions when you make a choice that Shakespeare didn't," the Guardian quoted North as saying.
"Also unlike Shakespeare I didn't skip over the pirate scene in Hamlet. You get to fight PIRATES. With SWORDS. And yes OF COURSE you can choose which body part you cut off. Why would you write a book where you can't do that is my question," he added.