To mark the 409th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, and to celebrate his birthday, Hungry Wolf Press released a brand new series; BARD409.
This series takes Shakespeare’s plays and original dialogue, and reimagines them as novels by literary giants such as Charles Dickens and Emily Brontë. Using a customised Large Language Model to create an accurate and authentic likeness of these authors, I conducted the novels over the course of several intensive months. I have finished Macbeth and Othello so far, with Romeo and Juliet set to release shortly!
I will be releasing more information about the process and the techniques involved, but for any tech-sceptics do not worry, these books have been heavily edited and worked on by a human (me), yet I used the technology to assist in creating the vivid styles and voices of other beloved writers.
Like nearly every high school student in England, I studied Shakespeare. Unlike most of the others in my class, I loved it. But even though I enjoyed performing Shakespeare in the classroom, I must admit that I did not enjoy reading it. I appreciated it, of course! William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the finest writer in the English language. But given that, isn’t it a crying shame he never wrote a novel? In my opinion, the novel is one of humanity’s greatest literary contributions. Could Shakespeare’s plays be rewritten as short novellas, I wondered? Then another question struck me: who on earth could possibly step into Shakespeare’s shoes and retell his stories as novels? These would need to be high literature! After all, Shakespeare is firmly part of the canon now. That’s when it occurred to me: perhaps a host of other great writers could help do the Bard justice. So, I decided to summon a ghostly pageant of literary giants to help bring this vision to life.
For each novel, I create a customised Large Language Model (LLM) which approximates the voice of the author I chose for that specific project. For instance, I chose Emily Bronte for Macbeth, because she wrote so well about love, ghosts and the misty moors. For Othello, I turned to Charles Dickens. Each model is fed custom instructions and background information, as well as broader themes.
As a reader, what you need to know is that these books were made through several drafts and painstaking human edits. The motifs and nuances I’m proud of—like the scorpion symbolism in Macbeth or the chess imagery in Othello—were all inserted by hand or via custom instructions.
Therefore, I see my role in these novels as rather like being a conductor at an orchestra. It may seem to some that I merely waved my arms around, but actually the entire product is a result of painstaking practice, rehearsal, custom model training and re-tweaking, multiple prompts and then human revision and overwriting. As a result, I am proud of the books and I sincerely hope that you will enjoy them for what they are.
As a novelist and holder of a PhD in applied linguistics, I felt well-placed to attempt this project.
There were struggles too, such as the way the Macbeth model kept murdering King Duncan too early… it was really bloodthirsty. In one version, Duncan was dead by Scene 2! The Dickens model kept creating interesting and plucky little characters who would serve no purpose in my novel — such as a little street urchin who overheard one of Iago’s soliloquies in Venice, as if being set-up, Dickens-style, to unravel the whole web of lies.
And of course, I am aware that the use of AI takes a toll on the environment, which is why 10% of all proceeds from BARD409 will be donated to ecological charities. It has been a privilege to work on these books and I enjoyed conducting and composing them immensely, I hope you will enjoy reading them.