My colleague Jonathan Alexander and I are reviewing a new Manga Shakespeare series, produced by Wiley Press of Cliff Notes fame.

Now, a world without Cliff Notes would be a better place. (At the very least, it would reduce my annual plagiarism queue by half!) Wiley's Manga series, though, is surprisingly smart: although the plays are highly abridged, all the words are by Shakespeare himself, and the cutting, by author Adam Sexton, is more directorial than synoptic. Sexton gives extended attention to the soliloquies, dividing most of them over several spreads with both lyric explanations of the key imagery and clever dramatic interventions (such as handing some of "To be or not to be" over to the Ghost). Even the Fifth Soliloquy, which appears only in the Second Quarto and is usually cut from performances, gets its own page.

Wiley isn't the first to come up with a Manga Shakespeare. Self Made Hero, a dedicated manga house, came out with their versions of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet in 2007. Although I haven't read these yet, the approaches look hipper and more futuristic -- Verona becomes Tokyo, and Elisinore is cyberspace.



As an English professor, I'd prefer a Manga remix to a Cliff Notes summary any day. By cutting narrative explanations and focusing on the words and actions of Shakespeare's characters, the Manga series makes readers ... well, read.