William Shakespeare stole most of his best ideas - which is precisely what all the best writers do. His two plays based on the life of Henry IV are based partly on the historical facts surrounding the rule of that king and the turbulent times in which he lived but also in older storytelling traditions - some extending back to the Greeks - that emphasize the importance of as well as the complexity of the nature of filial devotion and the ways in which powerful men use the attractiveness of that power to get other men to do what they want.
Gus Van Sant also stole much of the script for My Private Idaho, in many ways capturing the tone and spirit of Shakespeare's work. This is not to say that the quality of language is as impressive in Van Sant's work, but it is also important to understand that it may be more difficult for us as citizens of the 21st-century to hear the poetry in contemporary English. This is not, of course, to say, that Shakespeare's writing is not poetic: Of course it is. But it is to argue that Shakespearian English has an advantage in terms of sounding poetic to the modern English speaker because the dialect of Renaissance English is now sufficiently different from our own speech that we can better appreciate the cleverness of Shakespeare's word-play.
Van Sant has the ability to marry style to character, which is one of the most important elements in making Shakespearian drama so compelling. We feel that even the minor characters in Shakespeare's plays sound authentic: They do not sound like each other or like minor characters from other plays. Van Sant also has this talent in this story about two young men, the larger gay culture of which they are apart, and the process of growing up.
At the same time that his dialogue and his characterization succeed on a number of levels, the quality of his dialogue is hampered by what seems to be something of a tin ear for meter and rhythm. Shakespeare's words - even thou...