Contemporizing the Classics

<I>Contemporizing the Classics: Poe Shakespeare Doyle</I> is a how-to on the art and craft of transforming a classic into a feature-film screenplay with a modern storyline.</P><P>The introduction probes an issue that weaves throughout: role of artistic license in balancing fidelity to the original versus dramatic needs of the script.</P><P>Contemporization of a classic being the most flagrant form of dramatic license the introduction presents three guidelines for a considered exercise thereof.</P><P>Each part debuts a feature-film script that resets a classic work(s) in the present.</P><P>Part One offers a contemporary visualization of Macbeth in the process turning an Elizabethan tragedy into a dramatic comedy.</P><P>Part Two applies the guidelines to several renowned works by Edgar Allan Poe.</P><P>Arthur Conan Doyle's <i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i> having frequently screened as a period piece Part Three gives the hound a twenty-first century twist.</P>