Apr 24, 2007 04:30 AM
What light through yonder window breaks? It is a video game and Juliet is the star!
On the 443rd anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth, the University of Guelph yesterday launched an interactive adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, using 21st century technology in an attempt to get schoolchildren excited about English literature's most famous writer.
Entitled 'Speare, the video game requires the player to lead "an elite squadron of spacecraft" to overcome a dangerous enemy, which has plunged the entire Prospearean Galaxy "into an age of dark despair" by capturing the ancient text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
A successful mission, the narrator says in the game's introduction, will do nothing less than "restore literature, knowledge and peace to the universe – to usher in a new age of compassion and learning."
While such a take on the tragic love story might cause literary scholars to bristle, Shakespeare to turn in his grave and tweens to roll their eyes, those responsible see the game as a logical and powerful way to improve the literacy of kids aged 10 to 15 and interest them in the Bard's works.
"If I write my extremely scholarly article on Romeo and Juliet as an anti-war story, how many of the kids out there in grade school and high school are going to pay attention? Zero," said Daniel Fischlin, a Guelph English professor and one of the game's creators.
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