Shakespeare & Hollywood Story Structure

by Caroline Lawrence

What do you do when you’re supposed to write a post about Shakespeare but you’re not half as knowledgable about the Bard as the other History Girls? 

Easy! You phone a friend. 

I phoned Aidan Elliott. 

I know him from church and we also used to attend a film analysis group. He’s just surfaced after a busy few years working on a PhD. So it seemed like a good excuse to catch up.  

That’s how we found ourselves spending two happy hours discussing Shakespeare and story structure a the Southfields Starbucks. The background noise is ambient music occasionally interrupted by the clatter of cappuccino cups and hiss of steam. Aidan has brought his ancient copy of Hamlet, so well-read that it’s falling to bits. 

Aidan has several occupations. One of them is as a part-time lecturer at Kings College London. Another is teaching American students from Notre Dame University (in America) on their semester abroad. For Notre Dame’s Trafalgar Square campus he teaches a class called ‘Shakespeare Through the Lens of Hollywood Narrative’. The course is a short one, consisting of three hour-and-a-quarter sessions in one week. 

I kick off by asking him how he gets 19-year-old American college students hooked on Shakespeare in less than four hours tuition time. 

Aidan explains that instead of suffocating them with great swathes of Shakespeare text, he shows them clips from movies and TV such as The Usual Suspects, The Big Chill, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. That’s his way of telling the kids he’s going to be talking about Shakespeare the Storyteller. He uses these clips to introduce principles of the Russian Formalists and terms like syuzhet, fabula, schemata, analepsis and prolepsis. 

For those of you who – like me – are unfamiliar with the names Propp and Shlovsky, syuzhet is the order in which the elements of the the story are presented and fabula is a term for the actual chronoloical order of the events. I immediately thought of the film Memento which turns out to be a popular example. The story (fabula) of Memento is told backwards (syuzhet) in a perfect reversal. (See the diagram from Wikipedia)

As for the term schemata, Aidan defines this as the filters we apply to make sense of the narrative. Maybe you could say our assumptions. Analepsis is essentially another word for flashback and prolepsis is a flashforward. 

After illustrating these concepts through film, Aidan asks his students to consider how Shakespeare uses any of these elements. So he will ask his pupils to think about how the pilot of The Walking Dead overturns the schemata (our assumptions) by showing a policeman shooting a little girl. Only the little girl is a zombie trying to eat him. Straightaway we know all our preconceptions about this world are wrong. Does Shakespeare ever ask you to apply different schemata to his plays? 

Only on the second day does Aidan introduce actual clips from Shakespeare, asking the students to look out for conflict and the shape of the story. 

‘Your character starts off lacking something,’ he says. 

‘Stasis equals death!’ I cry, using one of the terms of a popular Hollywood script doctor Blake Snyder. 

Aidan nods. ‘The protagonist knows they’re unhappy but they don’t really know what they want.’

‘Truby’s Problem/Need,’ I say, referencing John Truby, another Hollywood story structure guru. 

Aidan presses on. ‘It’s really toward the end of Act One that the story kicks in.’ 

‘Call to adventure!’ I say. ‘The Inciting Incident.’ I point at a diagram of Freytag’s pyramid and ask, ‘Does Shakespeare always have five acts?

Yes,’ says Aidan carefully, ‘though an awful lot of that has been imposed on the text.’

‘So he doesn’t always mark the acts?’

‘Not always…’

‘But sometimes he does.’

‘Sometimes he does. A lot of times his plays are edited into five acts.’

‘Do you have any sense of how Shakespeare approached his writing?’ I ask. ‘Did have some kind of structure in his head?’

Aidan nods. ’My feeling is that he knows the building blocks he’s using, because quite often the hero gets what they’re after at the halfway point of the story.’

‘Like Blake Snyder’s Midpoint!’ I say. 

‘Yes. For example, Hamlet wants to know if his uncle is guilty and he discovers that he is in Act 3, Scene 2, exactly halfway through. Macbeth becomes king half way through Macbeth. Romeo marries Juliet in Act 2, Scene 2…’

‘So it’s often a high point. Some kind of achievement.’

‘In a tragedy.’

‘And in a comedy, it’s a low point!’ I say. ‘The Apparent Defeat in a comedy, and the Apparent Victory in a tragedy.’ Again, these are all beats I know from Hollywood screenwriting. But then comes one I’m not aware of. 

‘What quite often happens then is that the main character disappears after the first half.’

‘The hero disappears?’

‘Yes.’ 

’That’s bold!’ 

‘Yes. I think Act 4 shows the impact of the hero’s success on wider society. So it’s in Act 4 that you see the effect of Romeo and Juliet’s marriage on the family. In Macbeth you see what is done to Scotland. In Hamlet you see what effect his action has on Ophelia: she goes mad.’

Aidan goes on to explain that because the hero is absent in Act 4, it is frequently cut by filmmakers. 

‘What do you do on the third day of your class?’ I ask.

‘That’s when we look at passages in Shakespeare’s plays and compare them with the filmed versions, highlighting which lines the filmmaker has cut and asking what might be lost. What characters have been cut? Has conflict been sacrificed? Also, what’s in the mise-en-scene that can justify the filmmaker cutting a ten minute scene to two minutes. I get them to discuss this in pairs,’ Aidan continues. ‘What we usually see is that in films, if there’s no conflict then the character or scene goes. That's why Hamlet’s gravedigger doesn’t always survive.’ (For more about the comparison of scenes, watch this YouTube Clip.)

I’ve only touched on what Aidan and I discussed that afternoon. I’d love to attend his class and I'm sure the kids adore it. He illustrates the Bard in terms of story structure applied to movies and TV because quite a lot of young people get put off by Shakespeare’s language but they are literate with film and television. That’s how Shakespeare was presented to Aidan in secondary school - as a block of text on the page that he had to read for homework. 

He didn’t get it then, when he was sixteen. 

He didn’t get it when doing an Open University Course when he was twenty-one. 

But he figured there must be something about a playwright and poet who could maintain sustain such popularity for over four hundred years. 

So he read the plays, and re-read them and watched the plays on stage and re-read them. In his mid-twenties he was being put up by his employers at the Heathrow Holiday Inn because London property was so expensive. He tells me for twelve months he ate everything on the menu and read everything of Shakespeare. He calls it ‘The Year of Reading’. 

I guess Aidan finally ‘got it’ because last year he was awarded a PhD for his dissertation Shakespeare on Film: Through the Lens of Narrative Theory, and now he’s a Doctor of Shakespeare.

Aidan’s Top Ten Shakepeare:

1. Favourite play: Doesn’t have one; they’re all good
2. Favourite character: Hamlet
3. Favourite stage Hamlet: Roger Rees ‘for sentimental reasons; he was my first Hamlet and I saw him four times’ and the young Ben Wishaw ‘for acting ability’
4. Favourite film Hamlet: Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy in the 1964 Russian version
5. Favourite passage: Caliban’s ‘I cried to dream again’ from The Tempest
6. Favourite villain: Iago, who refuses to justify himself.
7. Favourite film adaptation: Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing
8. Favourite female character: Rosalind from As You Like It
9. Favourite kids’ film: The Lion King (Hamlet)
10. Favourite teen film: Ten Things I Hate About You (Taming of the Shrew)

Dr. Aidan Elliott invites to you chat with him on Twitter @Aidan1564 (Yes, 1564 is the year of Shakespeare’s birth)

The Easter Story: Myth, Truth or both?

by Caroline Lawrence

Which famous story has a character whom we first meet in a kind of shed, who is persecuted by men in authority, has a special affinity with children, is gentle and meek, performs healing miracles, whose message can be summed up in the words "be good", who sacrifices his life to save another's, who dies, is resurrected to joyful cries of "He's alive!", who reappears dressed in white, promises to be with his friends always and who finally returns to the heavens from whence he came?

It's the 1982 film E.T. the Extra Terrestrial.

Think about it: Eliot first meets ET in a shed-like garage, finds he's being hunted by scientists who want to "dissect him or something"; ET is "seen" only by children, at first. In one scenes he heals Eliot's cut finger by touching it. He tells Eliot's sister to "be good". He and Eliot become so empathically linked that when E.T. starts to die, Eliot sickens, too and so E.T. cuts the link to Eliot – essentially his life support – and allows himself to die, thereby saving Eliot. But when E.T.'s "family" come back from space his heart begins to glow again and he comes alive again. (Think of those pictures or statues where Jesus is shown with a glowing red heart!). Before E.T. leaves, he touches Eliot's forehead with his finger and says, "I'll be here". Then he ascends into the heavens, leaving a rainbow-like star above.

E.T. was directed by Steven Spielberg, who is Jewish and had no conscious intention of re-creating the Christ story. In an interview I heard a few years ago, Spielberg told the story of how some Jewish kids who played extras on the film said to him, "This story's about Jesus!"

"No, it isn't," said Spielberg, then paused, frowned and added, "At least not consciously."

Isn't that amazing? That one of the highest-grossing films ever made essentially tells the Jesus story, and yet the director wasn't consciously aware of it.

Martin Scorsese, another film director, came up with one of my favourite quotes: He said, "I have a hard time telling the difference between going to the movies and going to church."

Scorsese, a New York born Catholic, directed such films as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and the controversial Last Temptation of Christ. I think Scorsese means that when you've seen a good film you come out of the cinema feeling inspired, encouraged, warned, loved, and with a renewed sense of awe for God's love and grace.

That's how some films make us feel, and I'm not just talking about so-called "religious films" like The Passion of the Christ or Ben-Hur. Many secular films can inspire the sort of feelings we'd like to have when we leave church on Sunday. (One of my favourite inspirational films is WALL-E.) I think it's because of the huge power that stories have in our lives.

As a professor at Oxford, C.S. Lewis wrote several academic essays on Christianity. Then one day he had a revelation about the power of story from his colleague J.R.R. Tolkien. He realised that stories are far more powerful than even the most beautifully presented academic argument. So he wrote The Narnia Chronicles.

As a writer, I'm deeply interested in story structure. I regularly attend screenwriting classes put on by an organisation in London called Raindance. In 2004 I attended one by Christopher Vogler, who used to work for Disney Studios in the 70's. Shortly after he left film school, Vogler read a book that changed his life. It was a book called The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, an anthropologist who studied myths from different cultures. Campbell noticed that people from different parts of the world – without contact with each other – told very similar stories.

diagram of the Hero's Journey

As Vogler read Campbell's book, he identified twelve steps common to every hero's journey and realised it could provide powerful plot structure. His revelation was confirmed when he was invited to an early screening of Star Wars. With a shock of recognition, he realised that George Lucas had been reading Campbell, too. Vogler left Disney not long after that screening of Star Wars, and for over 30 years he's been teaching these 12 steps of The Hero's Journey in seminars and in his book, The Writer's Journey, a must-read for any would-be screenwriter.

This Easter Monday, I thought it would be interesting to see if those Twelve Steps could be applied to the Story of Jesus.

1. The Hero's World
The gospel writer Mark (and Mel Gibson in The Passion of the Christ) begin when Jesus is an adult. Jesus seems to be the ordinary son of a Jewish carpenter in Nazareth in the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. Then one day the Herald comes. "And so John came, baptising in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins..." This Herald is someone known to Jesus. His cousin John, called the Baptist.

2. The Call to Adventure
As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove, and a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well-pleased.'

3. Refusal of the Call
The moment Jesus comes up out of the water and hears God's voice, he realises what he probably never consciously dared to think: he is the son of God, the Messiah. He may have suspected it before, but I don't think he knew for sure. This is a huge revelation and he needs a month in the wilderness to wrestle with the implications. I don't know if you could call this a "refusal of the call", but he certainly has a struggle. It's interesting that Satan, the Threshold Guardian as well as supreme enemy, challenges his revelation. "IF you are the son of God", he says repeatedly, "then prove it by doing such-and-such."

4. Meeting the Mentor
Although angels ministered to Jesus in the desert, Jesus' mentor is God the Father speaking through the Holy Spirit.

5. Crossing the Threshold
Jesus returns from the desert and begins his ministry. He Crosses the Threshold when he comes out of the desert and crosses the Jordan into Galilee. Just stop to think how many people in the Bible crossed rivers. In Christianity, crossing a river is a symbol of baptism. When we are baptised, we cross a threshold from our old life to a new life.

Dali's Christ Crucified

6. Allies, Enemies, Tests, Training and Oracles
As soon as Jesus leaves the wilderness and crosses the Jordan, his ministry begins. He meets and calls his disciples, and is opposed by religious leaders. Various people prophesy about him. He undergoes many tests and trials. He teaches, heals, casts out demons, forgives, and performs many miracles. Miracles like the raising of Lazarus must have given him courage for the Supreme Ordeal. At times, he must have wondered whether he was mad to think he was the Son of God. He was human, after all.

7. The Approach to the Inmost Cave
For Jesus there will be an actual cave, and a literal visit to the underworld. That journey which so many heroes took in the Greek myths, Jesus did in reality. According to 1 Peter 3.19-20 he went to the underworld for three days and preached to the spirits of the unsaved. But that is still ahead. First he must face

8. The Supreme Ordeal or Visit to Death
Jesus submits to torture and crucifixion. Films like The Passion of the Christ give us some idea of the agony he went through. But we can never really grasp the horror of his mental and physical anguish.

11. Resurrection
After three days in the cave – in the underworld – Jesus is resurrected.

10. The Road Back
Galilee was never Jesus' real home. He returns to his real home when he ascends to heaven.

9. The Reward
Just as the reward in most Myth-based films is rescuing a person or persons, so Jesus' reward is rescuing us from Death. Holman Hunt's famous painting The Light of the World shows how Jesus becomes a sort of Herald to knock on the door of our life. We can Refuse the Call if we wish. This image reminds me of 2004 film, The Polar Express. The conductor on the train holds a lamp and invites children to join. But he never insists. The Conductor says this: "The thing about trains... it doesn't matter where they're going. What matters is deciding to get on."

12. Return with the Elixir
Finally there is the return with the elixir. According to Campbell (and Vogler), the hero often looks different and often has new powers. The "elixir" in the Story of Jesus is salvation for everyone, Jesus reconciling God and Man outside space and time.

In the 1930's, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were dons together at Oxford. They were both Christians and both writers, and they met regularly with others to discuss various aspects of writing in a literary group called the Inklings. On one occasion, Lewis, Tolkien and another friend were up all night discussing Myth and its relation to Christianity. Tolkien and Lewis both loved ancient myths, particularly the Greek and Norse myths. But Lewis disapproved of Tolkien using myths in the books he was writing. He called them "lies breathed through silver" and suggested that a Christian shouldn't use so-called pagan stories.

But Tolkien argued that "pagan myths" point to the truth of Jesus Christ.

This was a huge revelation in Lewis's life and he suddenly realised that the "story of Christ is a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference: it really happened."

Recently I was listening to a podcast called Mythology and the Spiritual Journey with Jungian psychologist Dr Richard Naegel. He quotes Joseph Cambell, who said, "Myth is what we call someone else's religion."

Naegel points out, "You don't call your own religion a myth. When you live in a myth you know it to be true... A living myth acts like a lens to align your inner world to your outer world... Stories are about meaning. The weave past, present and future. They give us a place in the universe. "

And I'll end with a quote from one of my own mentors, the late Blake Snyder, who taught with passion and humour about Hollywood storytelling in his Save The Cat books, seminars and podcasts. "Why do we have to go through this storytelling process again and again?" he said in a 2008 podcast for The Writing Show. "Couldn't we just be told one story and then get it? I think it's because stories keep us on track. We need a miracle every day."

[This blog is a shortened and updated version of one first posted in Dec 2004]

Caroline Lawrence writes historical fiction for kids set in Ancient Rome and the Wild West. Christopher Vogler will be teaching a masterclass on The Writer's Journey at Raindance, London on April 28th & 29th.