Click HERE for "WILL DISTILLED - Part 1"
In honor of Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s production of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (ABRIDGED) [REVISED], we asked people to give us one sentence summaries of Shakespeare’s plays. The synopses that resulted were sometimes poignant, mostly outrageous, always (abridged) versions of Shakespeare’s classics. As Shakespeare himself once wrote: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
RICHARD III: Prototype "Game of Thrones" without dragons or wolves, where Richard III is Tyrion.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: Women never do anything wrong; men are stupid and paranoid.
THE TEMPEST: The reason why the English are obsessed with weather.
A COMEDY OF ERRORS: Check that the person you fall in love with doesn’t have a twin.
TWELFTH NIGHT: Same as above, plus make sure your boyfriend isn’t a girl in disguise.
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL: "101 Medieval French Ways of Letting Her Know You’re Just Not That Into Her," and "What to Do When She Intimately Embarrasses You in Front of the King."
KING LEAR: King picks wrong daughter to exile, regrets it, goes crazy, loses a civil war.
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL: Girl heals the king to marry a guy who doesn’t love her; following him to the wars she kind of wins him back.
TITUS ANDRONICUS: Pride, revenge, rape, death, cakes made of people.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: An innocent girl is framed for infidelity, people get angry when they realize it wasn’t her, then they have a bunch of weddings.
RICHARD III: A deformed noble kills his entire family to be king then is killed by a character we barely met who then becomes king.
A COMEDY OF ERRORS: Maury says to the audience, “When it comes to the identity of the man locked in the cellar, you, Adriana, are not the wife,” but it doesn’t really matter because the story is really about another set of twins anyway.
MEASURE FOR MEASURE: A girl who spends her whole life maintaining her single status and chastity for religious reasons, saves her brother’s life and wife, catches a corrupt public official, and is rewarded with marriage.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA: A guy rejects his girlfriend for being unfaithful to him after he basically sells her as a sex slave to a rival army.
CORIOLANUS: A story that proves politicians have been whiny, little babies since the Roman empire, and that they’ll give you lip service when they need your vote, put armies in places they don’t belong, and ultimately get put in their place by a woman.
THE WINTER’S TALE: Woman pulls ultimate prank on husband by pretending to be a statue for years; Shakespeare pulls ultimate prank on readers/audiences by having someone exit, pursued by a bear.
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR: After being two-timed by the same guy, a group of women get revenge by making him hide in a laundry basket.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING/THE WINTER’S TALE: Faking your own death is the best revenge ever—that’ll make them love you again!
ROMEO AND JULIET: Two fourteen-year-olds without proper parental supervision cause a bunch of havoc, get people killed, and take part in a suicide pact.
Henry IV, PART ONE: Hal’s too busy whoring and cavorting with Falstaff to be the king. The king-to-be decides to man up in battle and extinguish Hotspur.
Henry IV, PART TWO: More whoring, more drinking, more Falstaff. Hal’s crown finally stops his shenanigans and makes him no fun.
AS YOU LIKE IT: Court life is hard. Run away to the woods. Wear a disguise (bonus points if you pretend to be a boy). Weddings everywhere.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM: A lot of people with relationship problems camp in a forest for the night to fix them, mostly thanks to fairy magic.
Click HERE for "WILL DISTILLED - Part 1"
