I do think that by doing so it looses a lot of its original meaning. I believe that literature can be interpreted in to many different meanings and ways that other people don't see. To one person Shakespeare can be a legendary writer and to anot her person he can be some idiot that wrote a lot of garbage. 

After reading this section, I find it interesting that Shakespeare can be interpreted in several various ways. I have seen a few different productions of Shakespeare plays and I can understand the different ways that people have perceived the various plays. Personally, I believe that the difference between a “more faithful” versus a “more free” adaptation of a Shakespearean play is that a show that is “more faithful” tends to follow the time frame and setting that the play was placed in, whereas a “more free” adaptation can change to different time frames and have different surroundings than the play was actually placed in. With a more “faithful” adaptation of Shakespeare we learn more about the history behind the play and what it truly is about. Unfortunately, with a more “freer” adaptation we can lose the history behind the play because the context of the play can change based on the decisions of how the play was interpreted.
 
In a faithful version of a play, the language, setting, costumes, and all other major aspects remain as the author originally wrote them; a free adaptation may change one or more of these elements. A more faithful adaptation has the advantage of being credible, in that people know it is unadulterated Shakespeare. However, when some people see a production of Shakespeare that is faithful, they may have a bias against it because they believe it will be boring or that they will be unable to relate to it. 
One advantage to free adaptations is that placing a Shakespeare play in a different context can illuminate how certain themes are universal, regardless of time and place. Unfortunately, it seems that many free adaptations are created for the main purpose of drawing in a larger audience, and not necessarily because it furthers that audience’s understanding of the original Shakespeare play. Many years ago I saw a musical version of Twelfth Night called Play On! that was set in 1940s Harlem and featured the music of Duke Ellington. It was very entertaining in its own right, but it didn’t really add anything to the original play. The same goes for a recent Portland production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that was set in Athens, Georgia, instead of Athens, Greece. But I am really looking forward to watching Richard Loncraine’s version of Richard III because it looks like the movie may be one of the few adaptations that actually enhances Shakespeare’s play. 
 
Shakespeare has a specific ways of doing things so when studying his work it is only right to stay "faithful" because when he wrote these plays he intended for them to be put on in front of an audience. When played for an audience there was a more beautiful appreciation for them, but when we use "more free" in terms of Shakespeare we do whatever and assume whatever we want about Shakespeare's plays. With a "freer" adaption of Shakespeare we lose what was meant to be of Shakespeare's plays. Sure, there are the movies, but we just watch them instead of discuss the best parts of the film and compare them to the writings. What we do gain though, is a better understanding of a different way of writing, sometimes a more beautiful way of writing. The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Shakespeare's plays is "old" the language is more drawn out and complex and it opens our mind to think harder, but when we stop thinking that this language used to be used all the time, there is a lesser sense of a Shakespeare feel and it is hard to understand and translate the lines because we just assume we already know what he meant in his writings.

When we talk about an adaptation being more "faithful," I think that the focus would be on Shakespeare's vision of the play, rather than a particular director's vision of it. I think that a "freer" adaptation would focus more upon the director's vision of the play, and their interpretation of it. I think the primary differences would be seen in those examples given above - both setting and dialogue. A director may feel that a particular scene is too long, or completely unnecessary, and may alter the play accordingly. Same with the setting - as seen in Julie Tamor's Titus, changing the setting gives the production an entirely new feel and interpretation.
I think the "point" of a faithful adaptation would be to gain an understanding of authorial intent. What did Shakespeare himself have in mind for this play? What was his imagining of it? When we have a faithful adaptation of Shakespeare's works, we could also lose any sense of our own identification with the characters, because it is seen as "way back then" and we aren't able to relate as well to them. 
I would liken what Julie Tamor and Baz Luhrmann did with Titus and Romeo & Juliet, respectively, with what Shakespeare himself did with Richard III. He took an established work (in this case, historical facts), and interpreted it in his own way and molded it to his own vision. Shakespeare adapted the story of Richard III in order t