How 10 Things I Hate About You made Shake­speare hot property

Ask any Eng­lish teacher and they’ll tell you that con­vinc­ing a class­room of teenagers to care about Shake­speare if they aren’t already pre­dis­posed to the­atre is an uphill bat­tle. A bunch of adults dressed in peri­od out­fits, speak­ing a bare­ly recog­nis­able ver­sion of Eng­lish does lit­tle to entice a class­room of bored teens. But if you swap the stage for a screen and trade the for­mi­da­ble seri­ous­ness of RSC-trained actors for a cast of bright young things, sud­den­ly their inter­est is piqued.

When 10 Things I Hate About You was released in 1999, no one could have pre­dict­ed that 25 years lat­er the film would still be fond­ly remem­bered as one the best mod­ern-day adap­ta­tions of a Shake­speare play. Loose­ly based on The Tam­ing of the Shrew, the sto­ry of a love­able rogue soft­en­ing the heart of an embit­tered female lead delight­ed audi­ences and launched Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger into super­star­dom, fol­low­ing the trend of teen-film-as-star-vehi­cle set by Baz Luhrmann in 1996 with the release of Romeo + Juliet.

When Luhrmann swapped fair Verona for Venice Beach, Cal­i­for­nia (with gaudy flo­ral shirts and frost­ed tips to match) he cap­tured the atten­tion of teenagers world­wide, cre­at­ing what was dubbed ​‘Shake­speare for the MTV gen­er­a­tion’. The film very quick­ly became a sta­ple in high school class­rooms, and the role that it played in cement­ing Leonar­do DiCaprio as the heart­throb of his gen­er­a­tion is unde­ni­able. In much the same way, Heath Ledger’s cheeky smile and effort­less charm as rebel-with­out-a-cause Patrick Verona made him a cer­ti­fied Hol­ly­wood heart­throb, and what fol­lowed was a decade of film­mak­ers try­ing (and fail­ing) to recre­ate that same magic.

The turn of the cen­tu­ry brought with it an onslaught of mod­ern-day Shake­speare adap­ta­tions, all of which met vary­ing lev­els of suc­cess. In 2001, Mira­max released Get Over It (loose­ly based on A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream) while Lion­s­gate had O (a high school bas­ket­ball take on Oth­el­lo, also star­ring Julia Stiles, which had been pushed back from a 1999 release due to the Columbine tragedy). 2006 gave us not one but two Shake­speare adap­ta­tions in the form of John Tuck­er Must Die (loose­ly based on The Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor) and She’s the Man (inspired by Twelfth Night and writ­ten by the same writ­ers of 10 Things). While the last two films were minor box office suc­cess­es, these films failed to achieve the crit­i­cal suc­cess of Romeo + Juli­et or 10 Things I Hate About You, result­ing in Hol­ly­wood tak­ing an extend­ed break from mod­ernised Shake­speare adap­ta­tions for the bet­ter part of 20 years.

Then came 2023’s Any­one But You. Loose­ly inspired by Much Ado About Noth­ing, the film found an audi­ence amongst both Shake­speare afi­ciona­dos and those yearn­ing for an alter­na­tive to the fran­chise tent poles that have dom­i­nat­ed the mul­ti­plex­es over the past ten years. As a result, Will Gluck’s charm­ing film became an unlike­ly run­away box office hit and earned the title of high­est-gross­ing live-action adap­ta­tion of a Shake­speare play, claim­ing over $200 mil­lion at the glob­al box office.

Alas, the film’s finan­cial suc­cess couldn’t shield it from the usu­al crit­i­cisms that plagued the Shake­speare adap­ta­tions of the ear­ly noughties, dis­ap­point­ing view­ers who went in expect­ing a more faith­ful adap­ta­tion of the play and suf­fer­ing from a weak script and pre­dictable plot. Hoist by its own petard, the film may have failed to impress Shake­speare con­nois­seurs, but the sur­pris­ing box office turnout proved that the appetite for mod­ernised Shake­speare adap­ta­tions is still very much alive. But what exact­ly is the unique for­mu­la that has evad­ed film­mak­ers since 10 Things?

The suc­cess of Gil Junger’s film, writ­ten by Karen McCul­lah and Kirsten Smith, lies in its rev­er­ence for the text and genre, and in mod­ernising the orig­i­nal text the film was able to rem­e­dy prob­lem­at­ic aspects of the play. Where the play’s Kathe­ri­na is manip­u­lat­ed into sub­mis­sion by suit­or Petru­chio, Stiles’ Kat Strat­ford remains firm in her fem­i­nist beliefs, even when she is being romanced. Kat is face­tious­ly referred to as ​“the shrew” but isn’t made to com­pro­mise her ideals – rather it’s the oth­er char­ac­ters who must meet her in under­stand­ing. She is argu­men­ta­tive, but her anger is borne out of a deeply upset­ting inci­dent she expe­ri­enced, there­fore her stand-off­ish nature feels jus­ti­fied rather than mis­placed. In its will­ing­ness to blend con­tem­po­rary teen life with clas­sic Shake­speare­an ideals, 10 Things ele­vates itself from a run-of-the-mill teen com­e­dy with wit and charm, chal­leng­ing the orig­i­nal text whilst still pay­ing respect to the Bard.

It is through this process of mod­erni­sa­tion that 10 Things sets itself apart from even Romeo + Juli­et. Where Romeo + Juli­et is mod­ern in every­thing but speech, pre­serv­ing the lan­guage of the play to cre­ate blend­ed mate­r­i­al per­fect for high school essays, 10 Things is unabashed­ly a teen rom-com first and a Shake­speare adap­ta­tion sec­ond. It cap­tures that spe­cif­ic, earth-shat­ter­ing feel­ing of being young and in love – a core tenet of many Shake­speare­an plays and teen rom-coms alike – and that light­ning-in-a-bot­tle mag­ic of per­fect cast­ing and clever writ­ing can’t be eas­i­ly repli­cat­ed with­out care for the genre. In 10 Things, teen love doesn’t feel friv­o­lous or unim­por­tant; when Kat breaks down in front of her class, admit­ting in despair that she can’t hate Patrick no mat­ter how hard she tries, the moment feels as impor­tant as if we were watch­ing a mono­logue deliv­ered on stage. When Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Cameron lifts a quote direct­ly from the orig­i­nal play to exclaim ​“I burn, I pine, I per­ish!”, we believe in his sud­den state of lovesick anguish.

Of course, the most mem­o­rable per­for­mance in the film comes from Ledger as charm­ing brute Patrick Verona. When Patrick slides down a flag­pole and dances his way across bleach­ers croon­ing along to Frankie Valli’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You, you can prac­ti­cal­ly hear the hearts of a mil­lion teenagers melt­ing. Not many can pull off the pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion of love, but in Ledger’s deft hands, a cringe-wor­thy dis­play of pub­lic affec­tion becomes an endear­ing moment for the roman­tic com­e­dy his­to­ry books. No one has quite man­aged to cap­ture people’s hearts as quick­ly as Ledger did in 10 Things I Hate About You, and the utter­ly ridicu­lous image of him light­ing a cig­a­rette with a Bun­sen burn­er and hold­ing up a copy of The Fem­i­nine Mys­tique had a dev­as­tat­ing impact on my psy­che, the effects of which I’m still deal­ing with today. These moments don’t feel forced or con­trived but are paid off by a strong script and ful­ly realised per­for­mances from the cast.

A suc­cess­ful Shake­speare adap­ta­tion will last long in the minds of its audi­ence and offer a way into the text with­out rely­ing too heav­i­ly on rigid for­mu­lae or archa­ic lan­guage. As sea­soned Shake­speare vet­er­an Sir Ian McK­ellen once said, to ful­ly under­stand a Shake­speare play it needs to be seen, not just read. True skill lies in being able to adapt these plays to piqué the inter­est of a younger audi­ence, and writ­ers Smith and McCul­lah laid the blue­prints with 10 Things – with a sprin­kling of quotes from Shake­speare and a char­ac­ter who declares her­self ​“involved” with the play­wright, the film stands out as a strong Shake­speare adap­ta­tion. The last­ing impact of 10 Things I Hate About You 25 years after its release and the recent finan­cial suc­cess of Any­one But You proves that Shakespeare’s plays are still rife for inter­pre­ta­tion – whether or not some­one can make a film as mem­o­rable and sin­cere as 10 Things is anoth­er ques­tion entirely.