SHAKESPEARE FOR TV GENERATION.(TV/Radio)

Byline: PATRICIA BRENNAN Washington Post

The plan was this: Condense six of William Shakespeare's plays into 30-minute animated presentations.

The man to do it, British Shakespeare scholar Leon Garfield, thought the work "rather an immense task." He was somewhat concerned that the project might be a bit presumptuous or be considered a sort of short-cut, a Cliff's Notes.

"But then I reflected that I was doing something completely different," he said. "As long as I convinced myself that I was trying to produce something completely different, I saw nothing wrong in that. I kept thinking that a great many people wouldn't see any Shakespeare at all …