All of the world’s a stage — and the proper inspiration for a romantic comedy plot line! Many beloved romance-focused motion pictures have taken inspiration from the Bard himself: William Shakespeare.
10 Issues I Hate About You, the 1999 cult basic that starred the likes of Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger, was initially impressed by Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
The film adopted sisters Kat and Bianca Stratford (performed by Stiles and Larisa Oleynik, respectively) as they navigated highschool romances. Whereas Bianca was forbidden up to now till her older sister did, Cameron James (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) concocted a scheme to have the ability to ask out Bianca: Get resident unhealthy boy Patrick Verona (Ledger) to woo Kat.
The film’s plot is much like the sixteenth century play, wherein Lucentio is unable to marry his love, Bianca, till her “shrewish” older sister, Katherina, marries first. The eccentric Petruccio groups up with Lucentio to attraction the reluctant Katherina and switch her into an obedient spouse.
“We have been recruiting so a lot of our buddies to seek out fairytales, or fables, and one night time a good friend was like, ‘You guys ought to do Taming of the Shrew, that will be nice,’” screenwriter Kirsten Smith recalled to Refinery29 in June 2019 of her writing course of with cowriter Karen McCullah. “He prompt switching the genders, however after contemplating it, we determined it could be higher [in its original form.] It was a reasonably intense two-month search looking for the proper factor [that] would lend itself effectively to highschool.”
She continued: “We sought out to seek out this excellent teen thought, and as soon as we landed on Taming of the Shrew, we went to Mexico the place Karen had a timeshare, and we spent every week outlining the script on the seaside. We went again to our respective states and wrote the script lengthy distance. It was earlier than web [was a big thing] so we have been like mailing one another pages and faxing one another scenes. It was very low tech!”
10 Issues I Hate About You was simply the tipping level for romantic comedies based mostly on Shakespeare’s acclaimed performs. Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum notably starred in 2006’s She’s the Man, which drew inspiration from Twelfth Night time. Within the movie, Bynes’ Viola schemed to take her twin brother Sebastian’s (James Kirk) place at a brand new boarding college to hitch their soccer staff after her personal squad is lower. There, she quickly falls in love along with her roommate, Duke (performed by Tatum), who’s infatuated by in style classmate Olivia (Laura Ramsey).
The OG play adopted the same story when Viola — separated from her twin Sebastian — posed as a boy whereas working for her crush, Duke. Nonetheless, Duke is in love with Countess Olivia and enlists Viola to court docket her on his behalf regardless of Olivia falling for Viola’s Sebastian.
“I completely fought for Channing [to get cast in] that film as a result of he wasn’t well-known but,” the Amanda Present alum informed Paper journal in November 2018, calling the film an “fascinating” expertise as an entire. “He’d simply finished a Mountain Dew industrial and I used to be like, ‘This man’s a star — each lady will love him!’ However [the producers] have been like, ‘He’s a lot older than all of you!’ And I used to be like, ‘It doesn’t matter! Belief me!’”
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Scroll under for extra of the most effective romantic comedies that have been tailored from Shakespearean origins:
