The very best of William Shakespeare

TinFoilHat said:
Shakespeare is a ****.

Well, he isn't...The cunts are the people who decided his works are more significant that other playwrights of his time and then bored millions of kids into having to study it.

To appreciate his work you have to act it, not read it. Reading it is dull imo.
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I couldn’t agree more. We got 4x Shakespeare stories and WWI poetry to study. No Dickens or Bronte or Austen or Orwell or anybody that spoke proper.
 
Citizen of Legoland said:
Finally got round to watching The Hollow Crown and thought Simon Russell Beale’s Falstaff was just magnificent, one of the best things I’ve ever seen on telly.

I also finally remembered what I studied at school for O level, it was Henry IV Pt 2 and Henry VI Pt 1. I never could get my head around why we started studying halfway through the Henry IV story and then missed out Henry V altogether. That said, I think they were the best two stories of the series.

Like others have said, I normally find following the text for WS extremely testing, but found the more I watched (with subtitles) the easier it got. He don’t half ramble on at times though. The worst bit was in Henry V, I think, when Katherine was learning English words, my god that was a dull scene.

Going to try and watch some more Shakespeare.
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At my school, we studied "The Scottish Play" and went on a trip to the Free Trade Hall to watch a stage play. I don't like to see his plays performed with actors in modern dress, jeans and T-shirts etc. Doesn't sit right with me.
 
Fiftyyearsandcounting said:
At my school, we studied "The Scottish Play" and went on a trip to the Free Trade Hall to watch a stage play. I don't like to see his plays performed with actors in modern dress, jeans and T-shirts etc. Doesn't sit right with me.
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Yes I agree if they’re using the same lines as the original, it just doesn’t work for me either.

I watched Macbeth earlier this year, first time ever, and thought it was a pretty rubbish story.
 
TinFoilHat said:
Shakespeare is a ****.

Well, he isn't...The cunts are the people who decided his works are more significant that other playwrights of his time and then bored millions of kids into having to study it.

To appreciate his work you have to act it, not read it. Reading it is dull imo.
Click to expand...
As an English major who studied some of Shakespeare's contemporaries -- especially Marlowe -- as well as spent a bit of time acting in said Elizabethan period plays, I'd say that I found some of his contemporaries more entertaining and better at history-in-action but not remotely close when it came to comedy and effectively non-existent when it came to tragedy. Shakespeare was The Beatles; everyone else was in his wake (and many of his contemporaries and near-contemporaries either said it, or published words that indicated their envy).

I don't know how many dozen Shakespeare performances I've attended -- including at the reconstituted Globe which I find really special -- but I actually enjoyed reading many of his plays as long as I had lengthy footnote keys so I could understand and get the jokes and references. Without that the dullness barrier is definitely there.

I count 16 of his plays I've read. Far and away my favo(u)rite is The Merchant of Venice. The debate over how to play Shylock (villian or sympathetic or both) is something I loved discussing in school. That said, my second favo(u)rite is The Comedy of Errors which I found truly funny. Of the tragedies, it's Othello.

All this said, Dickens is still my favo(u)rite English writer.
 
As an amateur actor I love Shakespeare’s work, there’s new depth to find each time you read one of his plays. Even more so when acting onstage. The characters are superb, whether tragedy, comedy or history.

I think my favourite to watch is probably ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, and to act in ‘Macbeth’ but all his plays have fantastic lines.

The Globe is fascinating to visit, even though it’s a reconstruction and obviously Stratford. I agree though I do prefer to watch his plays performed with traditional costume rather than modern interpretations.
 
Semper aggressus said:
The Globe is fascinating to visit, even though it’s a reconstruction and obviously Stratford. I agree though I do prefer to watch his plays performed with traditional costume rather than modern interpretations.
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I love going to the Globe. I think I've been 3 for sure or maybe 4 times. I took my oldest last year -- she acted in high school, does community theatre in the summer and is currently in a main stage college play -- and she absolutely loved it. I mean she was rapt. I find the desire to recreate it in its approximate location and as close to the original as technology and modern building codes allowed such a wonderful civic (albeit private) endeavo(u)r. God bless Sam Wanamaker.

I also absolutely agree that "new" interpretations are usually less appealing than the traditional stagings. Goes for film adaptations too.
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
As an English major who studied some of Shakespeare's contemporaries -- especially Marlowe -- as well as spent a bit of time acting in said Elizabethan period plays, I'd say that I found some of his contemporaries more entertaining and better at history-in-action but not remotely close when it came to comedy and effectively non-existent when it came to tragedy. Shakespeare was The Beatles; everyone else was in his wake (and many of his contemporaries and near-contemporaries either said it, or published words that indicated their envy).
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If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my Body And give the Letters which thou findst about me To Edmund Earl of Gloucester: seek him out upon the English Party. Oh, untimely death, death–” “I know thee well, a serviceable Villain; as duteous to the Vices of thy Mistress as badness would desire.” “What, is he dead?” “Sit you down, Father; rest you.”

:)
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
As an English major who studied some of Shakespeare's contemporaries -- especially Marlowe -- as well as spent a bit of time acting in said Elizabethan period plays, I'd say that I found some of his contemporaries more entertaining and better at history-in-action but not remotely close when it came to comedy and effectively non-existent when it came to tragedy. Shakespeare was The Beatles; everyone else was in his wake (and many of his contemporaries and near-contemporaries either said it, or published words that indicated their envy).

I don't know how many dozen Shakespeare performances I've attended -- including at the reconstituted Globe which I find really special -- but I actually enjoyed reading many of his plays as long as I had lengthy footnote keys so I could understand and get the jokes and references. Without that the dullness barrier is definitely there.

I count 16 of his plays I've read. Far and away my favo(u)rite is The Merchant of Venice. The debate over how to play Shylock (villian or sympathetic or both) is something I loved discussing in school. That said, my second favo(u)rite is The Comedy of Errors which I found truly funny. Of the tragedies, it's Othello.

All this said, Dickens is still my favo(u)rite English writer.
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Dickens for me also.
I bought his complete works, in leather bound volumes, from an Oxfam charity shop. They wanted £0.50 per book (they were even willing to sell individually. Years on and I still feel embarrassed about how little I paid for them. I've read them all, I think The Pickwick Papers is probably my favourite.
His best opening lines?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"
“Marley was dead: to begin with“.
“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.”
 
Fiftyyearsandcounting said:
Dickens for me also.
I bought his complete works, in leather bound volumes, from an Oxfam charity shop. They wanted £0.50 per book (they were even willing to sell individually. Years on and I still feel embarrassed about how little I paid for them. I've read them all, I think The Pickwick Papers is probably my favourite.
His best opening lines?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"
“Marley was dead: to begin with“.
“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.”
Click to expand...
Oddly enough my favo(u)rite is Our Mutual Friend. It seems nuts, right? But for whatever reason I absolutely adored that novel even though even for Dickens a lot of the characters were one dimensional. But that's what I liked about it -- stepping out and above the city and character-sketching it as if some of its millions of inhabitants he could only see as ants. There's symbolism in that too. I can't get away from the wonder of A Christmas Carol (who can?) but I also loved Bleak House (dark as it is) and Little Dorrit, which I think the best of his noveliz(s)ed social commentaries.
 
1961_vintage said:
Which annotated/footnote version would you recommend? Arden?
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Arden Third Editions will give you the text and detailed notes on the same page, which will save you keeping your thumb in the back pages and flipping back every few seconds.

The third editions texts are part of an ongoing project and represent the current state of the art in Shakespeare scholarship.
 

‘This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle… This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.’​

(Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1)
 
Fiftyyearsandcounting said:
Dickens for me also.
I bought his complete works, in leather bound volumes, from an Oxfam charity shop. They wanted £0.50 per book (they were even willing to sell individually. Years on and I still feel embarrassed about how little I paid for them. I've read them all, I think The Pickwick Papers is probably my favourite.
His best opening lines?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"
“Marley was dead: to begin with“.
“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.”
Click to expand...
My favourite first line of any book is this:

"Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French."

The Luck of the Bodkins by PG Wodehouse.
 
TinFoilHat said:
Shakespeare is a ****.

Well, he isn't...The cunts are the people who decided his works are more significant that other playwrights of his time and then bored millions of kids into having to study it.

To appreciate his work you have to act it, not read it. Reading it is dull imo.
Click to expand...
Yep, the most annoying thing about all of my schooling was the fact that we had to read plays and at no point did they ever think to bring us to watch any of them. I tell a lie, we did get to watch the Romeo and Juliet film. I loved Hamlet when the put it on the BBC with David Tennant, but I'm sure I would have hated it if I'd had to just read the book of it. I like reading, but I'm not going to read a movie script any time soon either.
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
Oddly enough my favo(u)rite is Our Mutual Friend. It seems nuts, right? But for whatever reason I absolutely adored that novel even though even for Dickens a lot of the characters were one dimensional. But that's what I liked about it -- stepping out and above the city and character-sketching it as if some of its millions of inhabitants he could only see as ants. There's symbolism in that too. I can't get away from the wonder of A Christmas Carol (who can?) but I also loved Bleak House (dark as it is) and Little Dorrit, which I think the best of his noveliz(s)ed social commentaries.
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At least one of them had a happy ending :)
 
GortonBlue62 said:
Arden Third Editions will give you the text and detailed notes on the same page, which will save you keeping your thumb in the back pages and flipping back every few seconds.

The third editions texts are part of an ongoing project and represent the current state of the art in Shakespeare scholarship.
Click to expand...
Thanks a lot - that's really helpful.
 
Just watched Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Exchange last week, brilliant. Contemporary clothing, Manchester vernacular speaking rhythms with a cast of colour too. All saying nearly 400 year old dialogue, with laughs, tears, cheers and jeers, same as it's always been.

Have been lucky enough to have seen a selection of the bard's work at the exchange including Macbeth, King Lear and a Midsummer night's dream. The highlight was The Tempest, with Warrington's own Pete Postlethwaite as Prospero the wronged Duke of Milan. He was mesmerising, but thin and gaunt looking, dead of cancer about 6 month's later.

Most of the matinée performances I've been to there's been plenty of school kids in. My school days we watched a grainy video of Polanski's Macbeth, and a rather flat version of Julius Caesar from the 50s. A workmate from Stretford told me that in the late 80s their school were taken to RSC Stratford to see Branagh in Henry V! How the out of towners lived, lol.

Ofthe 3 plays I did at school, only Caesar made any sort of impression, only cos in my mind I linked the power politics to yuppies/ consumerism of thatcher. Macbeth might have been better if we'd had a decent teacher, merchant of Venice is and always will be utter wank.

One line that always makes me smile and think of my daughter, "though she be little, she be fierce." ;-)
 
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