Contemporizing the Classics

Contemporizing the Classics: Poe, Shakespeare, Doyle is a how-to on the art and craft of transforming a classic into a feature-film screenplay with a modern storyline. The introduction probes an issue that weaves throughout: role of artistic license in balancing fidelity to the original versus dramatic needs of the script. Contemporization of a classic being the most flagrant form of dramatic license, the introduction presents three guidelines for a considered exercise thereof. Each part debuts a feature-film script that resets a classic work(s) in the present. Part One offers a contemporary visualization of Macbeth, in the process turning an Elizabethan tragedy into a dramatic comedy. Part Two applies the guidelines to several renowned works by Edgar Allan Poe. Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles having frequently screened as a period piece, Part Three gives the hound a twenty-first century twist.