Luhrmann's daring approach to Shakespeare, and its clear favor with young viewers, led immediately to more teen adaptations, including Ten Things I Hate About You, which was based on The Taming of The Shrew; O, based on Othello; and Scotland, PA, based on Macbeth.

	References to The Taming of the Shrew
	In the film Ten Things I Hate About You--Gil Junger's twist on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew--the cast of the Bard's play is cleverly transposed to the year 1999. While the film was only loosely based on Shakespeare's comedy, many hints to the original are scattered throughout the remake. Bianca and the shrew, Katharina, become Bianca and Kat Stratford (their last name coming from Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon). In the original play, Bianca and Katharina reside in Padua, while Junger names the high school set, Padua High. Finally, in Shakespeare's play, the character of Petruchio comes from Verona in search of a rich wife. In the modern-day adaptation, the tamer of the shrew becomes, simply, Patrick Verona.

These new versions share a complete updating of the stories into contemporary youth culture, retaining only the fundamentals of each play's plot but eliminating the poetry, the weighty themes, and in many cases, the complexity.

Ten Things I Hate About You presents a thoroughly updated take on a classic story. In place of the play's language, director Gil Junger substituted the very specific teen lingo of the film's time. Witty references to Shakespeare abound, in the English teacher who translates love sonnets into rap, the high school named Padua High, and the character names, from Kat and Bianca Stratford to Patrick Verona. Although the play, which traces Petruchio's "taming" of a headstrong girl, reflected the disempowerment of women of its day, the 1999 film updates the gender politics so as not to offend a modern audience. Now Kat is merely a loner, misunderstood by her peers and certainly not in need of domestication. Her sister Bianca, in the play the sweet and pretty one, here is the shallow prom queen, a contrast that plays to the contemporary audience's preference for independence and rebellion. Every aspect of the film, from costume to soundtrack to casting, represents its day, and is as such simultaneously easy for its audience to understand and swallow, and farther away than ever from its source.

Similarly, the film O jettisons most of the original Othello. The play's themes of honor and reputation are translated to a more simplified focus on jealousy. Director Nelson also transported the venue from the battlefields to basketball courts, a fitting modernization of the issues of competition and glory. The setting is Charleston, on an ante-bellum campus the filmmakers chose for, as they state in their press release, the "rhetorical value" of its "slave-owning past." The actors rehearsed the play before filming the movie, to maintain a sense of the original characters within the remake.

Copyright 2002 Lions Gate Entertainment Josh Hartnett, in the role of Hugo Goulding in the film O. The character Hugo is drawn from Shakespeare's Iago in Othello.

Copyright 2002 Lions Gate Entertainment Julia Stiles, in the role of Desi Brable in the film O. The character Desi is based on Desdemona Brabanzio from Shakespeare's Othello.

Copyright 2002 Lions Gate Entertainment Mekhi Phifer, in the role of Odin James in the film O. The character Odin is based on the title role in Othello.

Perhaps, however, the more important question is not how close the movie sticks to the Bard's original text, setting, costumes, etc., but how true it is to the spirit of the play. Viewed with this criteria, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, despite its surface modernizations, remains close to its source, while some other, equally radical adaptations skim over the essence of the plays--their fundamental themes and concerns.

What looking at all of these adaptations over time suggests is that Shakespeare has always in some sense been modern. In the final analysis, his genius lies in his ability to transcend time and place, age and language, stage and screen.