Shakespearithreadi

[Elok]

I set myself a sort of casual goal, a long time ago, to read every single play in the canon. Including bad plays, like Two Gentlemen of Verona, and apocryphal ones, like Edward III. I didn't go after the goal at all seriously; I put it on the back burner at leisure, reread my favorites, put down my Riverside Shakespeare for months at a time. It's been years since I set that goal, but yesterday afternoon I dug through the last impenetrable line of Love's Labour's Lost, and I was done. At one point in my life or another, I have read every surviving play at least once. Yay, me. So...anybody on here want to discuss The Bard?

Yes, I know, this is a pretty math-and-science-nerd kind of board, and there are probably forums out there dedicated to discussing Shakespeare. But I assume that such forums, like academia itself, will have become infested by perverted PoMo jagoffs of the worst description. If you don't know the kind of people I'm talking about, you might not want to know. Let it suffice to say that most Shakespeare criticism these days is not about Shakespeare, it's about Marxism, or Psychoanalysis, or "Queer Theory," or some other hack ideology the critic wants to use a literary masterpiece as an excuse to talk about.

Anybody have a question/comment/argument/complaint about Shakespeare? Favorite, or least favorite, play? He's really not as inaccessible as most people seem to think. Yes, the works are peppered with references to obscure events or concepts, words that no longer exist in the English language, and puns so complex they resemble a verbal ball of yarn. But any half-decent annotated edition will help you with the first two when context won't, and as for the latter, those barrages are generally employed for throwaway gags anyway. Give him a shot. You'll be rewarded in proportion to effort.

[SlowwHand]

Well-done.

If I've read any, it's been a very long time ago. This makes me think of reading some of it. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" would probably be a good one with which to start.

[EPW]

I've read: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest, and Romeo and Juliet. Pretty standard High School reads. Out of those, I like Julius Caesar the best as a whole. I really like JC's "But I am constant as the Northern Star" speech right before they assassinate him, its just a really cool metaphor. Act 5, Scene 1 of Hamlet is the most emotionally powerful thing I've ever read(at least at time I read it, it doesn't have the same punch now). The Tempest has the cool speech at the end, and the "brave new world" line, but the rest of it was kinda dull as I recall. I'll have to reread it some time. I haven't read Macbeth and R&J sense High school and I don't remember much about them.

[Al B. Sure!]

Surprised about The Tempest... usually Othello is one of the middle school/high school standards along with Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo & Juliet.

Henry the IV Part 1 is another common one taught in schools.

[Aeson]

I've read the complete works, and it continually surprised me at just how gay communists can be.

[Provost Harrison]

I never could understand a word they were on about anyway...

[Zevico]

I've read the complete works, and it continually surprised me at just how gay communists can be.

Que?

[Elok]

Plays I recommend highly:

Richard III (the title character is a highly endearing sort of sociopath)
The Merry Wives of Windsor (Henry IV without royalty, just John Falstaff being his drunk, lecherous self and paying for it)
Troilus and Cressida (farcical, satirical sendup of the Iliad, if not of the ideals of chivalry in general)
As You Like It (Rosaline rocks)
King Lear (of course--possibly his best play)
Twelfth Night (servants behaving badly)

Not recommended:

Love's Labour's Lost (it's just one long mass of indecipherable wordgames, even to professional scholars)
Two Gentlemen of Verona (not really terrible, but mediocre, and the ending is absurd)
Titus Andronicus (gruesome, to say the least)
Timon of Athens and Pericles (apparently unfinished plays, or else corrupted)
Henry VIII (Elizabethan soap opera)

Coriolanus is pretty much my favorite play, but that's just because I love the title character. It seems most people don't share my fondness for him, and consider him an arrogant, bigoted jerk.

[Guynemer]

Coriolanus is a pretty good stealth pick for favorite play, though I tend more toward the traditional top picks personally (Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Othello).

I disagree with you on Titus Andronicus; yes, it is highly brutal, almost certainly his most violent play, but who doesn't enjoy a bit of the good ol' ultraviolence once in a while? If you haven't seen Julie Taymor's film adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role, you're doing yourself a disservice.


I haven't read all of them, though that is an ambition of mine as well. I have yet to read some of the more obscure ones (Pericles, Timon), and didn't care for all of the comedies (LLL especially).


Back in my undergrad days, a handful of like-minded students and I would get together weekly and read the plays aloud, and discuss them as we went. It was really quite fun.

[Elok]

I might give Hamlet another try someday; it's currently a bit ruined for me due to sheer overexposure. I've taken a whole lot of Shakespeare classes in my life, and had to read Hamlet for every single one--and discuss, endlessly, just why that rascal was so indecisive. But I used to dislike Romeo and Juliet as well, and a quick reread has shown me I was wrong. I might toss Titus on the reread heap too, although it honestly left a bad taste in my mouth.

That one adaptation of Titus I didn't see all of, to be honest, only the second half, and I saw it some time ago. However, I think great care should be exercised in swapping out settings, and the Hopkins version is (to my way of thinking) an excellent example of why: the changed backdrop often clashes with the script, distracting from it instead of complementing Shakespeare's poetry like it should. This is especially the case when few attempts are made to create a cohesive world, as in that film. The director apparently picked & chose elements of background, costume and arrangement which she felt would make some stylistic point, and didn't bother over integrating them so they made sense together.

The result? Even greater distraction. It was like watching a Shakespeare-themed hallucination. Why does Tamora have her goods out when she's tempting Titus as the Spirit of Vengeance (I forget what idea she called herself in the play)? Why does Titus wear a big, goofy chef's hat while he's serving the blood-pies? What are those naked people doing lounging around in the swimming pool the whole time? Yes, it's very evocative of decadence or absurdism or whatever, but WHY?

[Elok]

Surprised about The Tempest... usually Othello is one of the middle school/high school standards along with Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo & Juliet.

Henry the IV Part 1 is another common one taught in schools.

I read The Tempest in seventh grade. It's fairly friendly to modern readers, even young ones. Then came R&J in ninth grade, Julius Caesar in tenth, Macbeth and Hamlet in eleventh or twelfth (I had the same teacher both years). Othello might have been in there somewhere, I don't recall.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

The Tempest is an incredible play- it's just not as showy as the big tragedies. Shakespeare was at the peak of his game, and playing around with his own image as a creator/manipulator just as Prospero did. It was way ahead of its time.

As for the big tragedies, I always thought Macbeth, Lear and Othello were better than Hamlet. Macbeth had the best lines and psychodrama, Lear had the bigger emotional punch, and Othello had the best villain ever.

[Elok]

I think Richard III gives Iago a good contest, at least.

[Guynemer]

Iago breaks the mold, in a way; he doesn't have some grand scheme or ambition. He just straight-up hates Othello. It's almost the banality of evil, in a way. Great villian. I'm also partial to Macbeth as a character too, the way he slowly grows into his villiany; he doesn't spring into a fully-formed bad guy in Act 1, scene 1, the way many other Shakespeare villians do.


Speaking of Shakespeare, I've heard of a new graphic novel/comic book called Kill Shakespeare, that features many of his characters, Fables-style. Has anyone here read it?

[Elok]

That's not ringing a bell, no.

What I like about Richard III is that he's not just evil, he appears to have some kind of cognitive difficulty with the basic idea of decent human behavior, with grimly humorous results. Here's a man who walks up to a woman and says, "Okay, so I killed most of your immediate family and ruined your life, you hate me, I guess I can see that. Your grandson was going to be king, I took that from you by killing him--but hey, I can give it back to you! Just fix me up with your daughter who happens to be my niece, and I'll pop out another heir apparent for you in a jiffy. Whaddaya say? What? Aww, c'mon, don't be that way, I'm trying to make it up to you here. Don't make me beg here! What? You'll think about it? Awesome! Goodbye, now! Heheheh...sucker."