scene individable, or POLL unlimited: works of william shakespeare

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just gonna leave this here a couple months

dates are a little arbitrary of me but within range. he really churned it out, huh

Poll Results

OptionVotes
King Lear (1605) 11
The Tempest (1611) 7
Macbeth (1606) 6
Hamlet (1602) 6
Cymbeline (1610) 4
Twelfth Night (1601) 3
Julius Caesar (1599) 2
Much Ado about Nothing (1598) 2
Othello (1603) 2
Titus Andronicus (1592) 2
Measure for Measure (1603) 1
Hate this guy 1
Henry V (1599) 1
The Winter's Tale (1609) 1
Henry IV, Part 2 (1598) 1
The Comedy of Errors (1594) 1
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) 1
Henry IV, Part 1 (1597) 0
Antony and Cleopatra (1606) 0
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1607) 0
Coriolanus (1608) 0
Henry VI, Part 1 (1592) 0
Henry VI, Part 3 (1591) 0
Henry VI, Part 2 (1591) 0
Henry VIII (1612) 0
The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613) 0
I like the sonnets 0
The Taming of the Shrew (1592) 0
All's Well That Ends Well (1605) 0
Richard III (1593) 0
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597) 0
The Merchant of Venice (1596) 0
King John (1596) 0
Romeo and Juliet (1595) 0
As You Like It (1600) 0
Richard II (1595) 0
Troilus and Cressida (1601) 0
Love's Labour's Lost (+ lost sequel Love's Labour's Won) (1595) 0
Edward III (1593) 0
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590 or before) 0


difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 04:19 (six years ago) link

Hamlet (1602)
Measure for Measure (1603)
Othello (1603)
King Lear (1605)
All's Well That Ends Well (1605)
Macbeth (1606)
Antony and Cleopatra (1606)

look fuck off

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 04:20 (six years ago) link

Richard II (1595)
Romeo and Juliet (1595)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)

v lyrical stretch here. trying new things

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 04:24 (six years ago) link

Henry VI, Part 1 (1592)
The Taming of the Shrew (1592)
Titus Andronicus (1592)

hilariously hacky year: a prequel, a meanspirited sex comedy, and gorn

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 04:28 (six years ago) link

then coming off that: richard iii. about how it plays imo.

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 04:30 (six years ago) link

if henry iv were one play i might vote for it over whichever of that absolutely absurd 1602-06 sequence of tragedies i end up at. as it is, dark horses include midsummer's (presages hamlet's trippiness), julius caesar (protip for your modern production: less vulgar winking about trump, more theater of cruelty-- cinna the poet should make them carry out the sobbing toddlers they shouldn't have brought), okay 2 henry iv still (i like not such grinning honour as sir walter hath) and uh lol romeo and juliet actually (sexy potboiler for teenagers lowkey about death and time). i have v 8th-grade taste in shakespeare. if you are more sophisticated, consider richard ii or something.

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 05:07 (six years ago) link

King Lear, every day of the week

Twelfth Night in the comedy subdivision

The Bridge of Ban Louis J (silby), Saturday, 20 January 2018 05:14 (six years ago) link

yeah voted lear w/o much debate

Clay, Saturday, 20 January 2018 05:19 (six years ago) link

hamlet-othello-lear is an amazing crescendo and poss even a dialectic (psychedelic deconstruction of human experience ---> okay again, BUT EVIL ---> BOTH AT ONCE??? idk) but sometimes i think (fear?) the only point to any of it is to pass thru it so as to report from the nihilistic horizon of macbeth. to return would be as tedious as to go o'er.

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 05:29 (six years ago) link

(but you get to return anyway, to tony+cleo the hangover movie: lush, languorous, camp, full of sex talk and slapstick, in the end wholly commandeered by as alive an egomaniac as hamlet or iago and carried away into death to leave us to live with bureaucracy. love's like an astronaut: it comes back but it's never the same)

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 05:48 (six years ago) link

(and antony, enthroned in the marketplace, did sit alone, whistling to the air, which, but for vacancy, had gone to gaze on cleopatra too, and made a gap in nature)

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 05:56 (six years ago) link

A & C is generally underrated, but not quite at the top o' the heap. Lear nips in ahead, as does Hamlet. Midsummer Night's Dream in the comedy subdivision. Richard II among the English history plays.

A is for (Aimless), Saturday, 20 January 2018 06:06 (six years ago) link

this reminds me i need to watch the 1935 version of Midsummer Night's Dream. i've only really read Macbeth and R&O and that was back in high school. at any rate i still need to read most of these.

fwiw i actually spent last in a wikipedia hole reading about one of the texts that influenced King Lear, A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures

https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-declaration-of-egregious-popish-impostures-by-samuel-harsnett-1603

this lead me to read about what "popish" mean, leading me to read about the Popish Conspiracy, etc., etc., on and on and suddenly it's 2am lol

AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 20 January 2018 15:39 (six years ago) link

Lear or Tempest, probably the latter cos everybody loves Lear

will maintain for the rest of my life that Hamlet is a deliberate spoof on revenge tragedies

hell is auteur people (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 20 January 2018 15:51 (six years ago) link

Macbeth for me I'm a simple man of simple terrors

remember the lmao (darraghmac), Saturday, 20 January 2018 15:52 (six years ago) link

i have to think on it but i think macbeth maybe for me too

Mordy, Saturday, 20 January 2018 15:57 (six years ago) link

My Shakespeare prof at college made a really good observation (he may have been quoting someone else) that had Shakespeare's plays had not been easy for him to write they would have been impossible. The rate he cranked them out, the difficulty of revision, the consistency and quality, writing with quill, by candlelight ...

Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 20 January 2018 16:02 (six years ago) link

I read Titus Andronicus and watched the Anthony Hopkins film recently and actually loved it. Something intense about the sheer hate and brutality. Answer is probably Hamlet rn.

No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 20 January 2018 16:30 (six years ago) link

Torn between, oh, 11 or 12 of these.

Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 20 January 2018 16:33 (six years ago) link

Lear is the best but also the hardest to go back to, especially as I and mine get older

for repeat entertainment value, Macbeth (murder, horror, tight running time) just edges Hamlet (murder, horror, smartmouth emo lead, but tl;dr)

Brad C., Saturday, 20 January 2018 16:42 (six years ago) link

Is this a dragger etc

remember the lmao (darraghmac), Saturday, 20 January 2018 16:54 (six years ago) link

Tempest has the best words I don't know what else matters

hell is auteur people (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 20 January 2018 17:06 (six years ago) link

I'm pretty sick of Hamlet atm. Seen too many in the last few years.

Heavy Messages (jed_), Saturday, 20 January 2018 17:07 (six years ago) link

Hamlet 2 was pretty dope tho

AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 20 January 2018 17:11 (six years ago) link

I didn’t care for Polonius: A Hamlet Story

The Bridge of Ban Louis J (silby), Saturday, 20 January 2018 17:14 (six years ago) link

Voted for Lear. Macbeth and Tempest, though!

Cherish, Saturday, 20 January 2018 18:00 (six years ago) link

King Lear (Peter Brook, 1971)

xyzzzz__, Saturday, 20 January 2018 18:05 (six years ago) link

I also liked Joss Whedon's film of Much Ado About Nothing as well. Those are my two fave Shakeys on film.

xyzzzz__, Saturday, 20 January 2018 18:07 (six years ago) link

Throne of Blood might be my fav Macbeth

The Bridge of Ban Louis J (silby), Saturday, 20 January 2018 18:29 (six years ago) link

Always feeling it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNhGhVvUcu8

xyzzzz__, Saturday, 20 January 2018 18:33 (six years ago) link

Macbeth.

I mean..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Y7xxnMiXg

piscesx, Saturday, 20 January 2018 19:15 (six years ago) link

for repeat entertainment value, Macbeth (murder, horror, tight running time) just edges Hamlet (murder, horror, smartmouth emo lead, but tl;dr)

For repeat entertainment value, little beats Richard III. For depth and wisdom, maybe Lear, or in some ways, maybe The Tempest, which is his most self aware and a fine sendoff.

Someone should poll all the different radical "Richard III in space" or whatever adaptations of Shakespeare.

Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 20 January 2018 19:15 (six years ago) link

The Tempest is easily the strangest of his great works. It works fantastically as an insubstantial pageant, but the allegorical elements are insufficiently meshed together to withstand scrutiny, which weakens it.

A is for (Aimless), Saturday, 20 January 2018 19:22 (six years ago) link

I've heard it described as sort of a Shakespeare's greatest hits: magic and mix-ups, romantic entanglements, father and daughter stuff ... missing the history, I guess. And Prospero's final monologue is like the Bard taking a bow.

Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 20 January 2018 19:25 (six years ago) link

t/s reading vs watching/listening

read a lot of the plays through school / undergrad but i'm not sure i really began to love Shakespeare (or even that i necessarily "got it" to any great extent) until i found torrents with the complete sets of BBC tv performances and Arkangel audio versions (god bless these latter-day Robin Hoods, whoever they are). the BBC performances are a particular treat cause they're full of performers who were all over Radio 4 in the 70s and 80s so you'll be sitting there watching e.g. Julius Caesar and you'll suddenly realise that the bloke playing Cassius was also the voice of Legolas in the Brian Sibley radio adaptation of LOTR and it's like unexpectedly meeting an old and cherished friend and i just love it

the answer to the poll is probably Lear but i'm going to throw a vote to Julius Caesar because it's in my head now and i get quite sentimental when i think of Brutus

Windsor Davies, Saturday, 20 January 2018 20:02 (six years ago) link

Got my bedtime reading for the next couple of months sorted then!

cajunsunday, Saturday, 20 January 2018 20:03 (six years ago) link

Every time I reread Anthony and Cleopatra I'm gobsmacked by the number of speaking roles -- is it his largest cast of characters? I mean, fuckin' Taurus gets a line.

morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 20 January 2018 20:41 (six years ago) link

I bet one of the biggest casts is one of the Henry plays.

I know most words is Hamlet (the character) by some fair amount.

Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 20 January 2018 21:35 (six years ago) link

i have only been exposed to half the work (if that), so i would probably yield a very predictable top 5.

also best not to mention how much i like Taming of the Shrew

ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 20 January 2018 23:24 (six years ago) link

post completely in character: i like hamlet the best

#TeamHailing (imago), Saturday, 20 January 2018 23:31 (six years ago) link

Ophelia is such a lovely name, it's a shame it's tough to name someone after her. Same with Desdemona, to a slightly lesser extent.

Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 20 January 2018 23:33 (six years ago) link

trying to imagine all the theatre criticks paying heed to his each new play like idk kendrick lamar albums or something nowadays

like, he drops a midsummer night's dream and everyone looks at each other - the 'richard iii guy' is legit, fucking legit

#TeamHailing (imago), Saturday, 20 January 2018 23:33 (six years ago) link

Anthony & Cleopatra is the one that I've read the most and feel like I know the best. But I love The Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream.

jmm, Saturday, 20 January 2018 23:36 (six years ago) link

I've only seen Hamlet staged twice, well over 25 years ago, but guess who played the lead both times?

http://www.lortel.org/Archives/Production/1814

http://www.lortel.org/Archives/Production/1253

ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 20 January 2018 23:48 (six years ago) link

ha!

#TeamHailing (imago), Saturday, 20 January 2018 23:50 (six years ago) link

Not to mention pre-Niles Crane as Laertes in the first one.

I've never seen a live Lear, but James Earl Jones as Othello is the greatest Shakespeare performance I've seen (1982, with Christopher Plummer as Iago).

ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 20 January 2018 23:51 (six years ago) link

caught antony sher as iago as a schoolboy - really quite something

#TeamHailing (imago), Saturday, 20 January 2018 23:59 (six years ago) link

Sher is bringing his Lear to New York in the spring.

ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 21 January 2018 00:05 (six years ago) link

Cymbeline

flappy bird, Sunday, 21 January 2018 00:13 (six years ago) link

Iago as schoolboy sounds interesting

remember the lmao (darraghmac), Sunday, 21 January 2018 00:41 (six years ago) link

Christ, is this a POO? Gah. Fuck that. I might be up for a PO5.

If pressed, I might bypass the greatest hits in favor of later, weirder stuff, but I am still a sucker for a lot of pretty famous bits.

My non-obvious faves right now are: Measure for Measure, Winter's Tale, Twelfth Night.

godzillas in the mist (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, 21 January 2018 00:51 (six years ago) link

I saw Mark Rylance as Henry V in a Royal Shakespeare Company production in summer '97 -- every girl was swooning.

morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 21 January 2018 00:54 (six years ago) link

he still had hair!

morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 21 January 2018 00:54 (six years ago) link

I just saw The Tempest directed by Teller (of Penn and Teller) with music by Tom Waits, was neat.

Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 21 January 2018 00:58 (six years ago) link

I wish I'd seen the reverse-cast Othello with Patrick Stewart. My wife saw it and said it was solid.

While Derek Jacobi is probably my favorite Hamlet, I grudgingly admit that I thought Mel Gibson was... not bad?

godzillas in the mist (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, 21 January 2018 01:00 (six years ago) link

Hamlets are always too old is the problem.

Heavy Messages (jed_), Sunday, 21 January 2018 02:58 (six years ago) link

Andrew Scott, who I saw recently, was pretty good. Not wildly good like the reviews would have you believe. Also the director stole every staging idea from Thomas Ostermeier's Richard III which, incidentally, is the best Shakespeare production I've seen and includes Richard singing Tyler The Creator's "Goblin". A fucking walking paradox, indeed.

Heavy Messages (jed_), Sunday, 21 January 2018 03:05 (six years ago) link

watch from here if you want to see that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsOtCIpi-M0&t=46m57s

Heavy Messages (jed_), Sunday, 21 January 2018 03:20 (six years ago) link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsOtCIpi-M0

46:50 ish

Heavy Messages (jed_), Sunday, 21 January 2018 03:21 (six years ago) link

I have no idea how translation works. Like, how does Shakespeare get translated to French and stay Shakespeare? It's some sort of strange alchemy. Like, with Shakespeare, how does alliteration and wordplay and puns and stuff translate? Its Englishness seem innate.

I read a good translation of Dostoyevsky and same thing, think, man, this must be just an approximation of what it says in the Russian, right? How is it even done?

Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 21 January 2018 03:43 (six years ago) link

The Tempest is easily the strangest of his great works.

I've heard it described as sort of a Shakespeare's greatest hits

for me these are both A+C. the tone is so odd, the canvas is so huge, alfred otm that literally everyone gets a moment (like in tolstoy), it indulges in luxurious showstoppers like the barge speech (right after macbeth which is so brutally lean), it lets cleopatra rip weird holes through it all over. like falstaff she possesses an ego bigger than history but unlike falstaff she is apotheosized rather than diminished. prospero's monologue is justly meta-famous but for me the really mindblowing artist's farewell is when cleo issues her orders to the snake. also there is a scene where everyone gets drunk on a pirate ship

t/s reading vs watching/listening

performing imo; nothing gets you closer. partic in the meta moments (always frequent), to be standing inside the text is so weird and ravishing. and at the 20th rehearsal actors will still be coming in talking to each other like, hey did you ever notice that he uses this image twice but it's inverted the second time and blah blah... the level of attention everyone pays is by necessity so much higher than in any class, and everyone works together revealing the patterning

i have never seen a profesh cast do shakespeare tho lol, can be pretty good i guess? it's the sitting there that whole time i'm not sure about.

For repeat entertainment value, little beats Richard III.

richard iii the character is terrifically fun and well-written obv except when he's not, but richard iii the play's kinduva slog imo. the pulpy mckellan movie wisely takes several machetes to the text, but then all that's left is this pupal iago and a lot of scaffolding. also it's frontloaded: does it peak again after "was ever a woman in this humor wooed"? maybe it does.

will maintain for the rest of my life that Hamlet is a deliberate spoof on revenge tragedies

of course! existence as hack play you're trapped in. hero as dramatic automaton cursed with consciousness. we'll teach you to drink deep, ere you depart.

fave shakespeare movies: chimes at midnight and the mason/brando julius caesar. i actually watch the branagh hamlet a lot just because it's complete (and pretty); i skip around in it and use it as text. it has some fascinatingly dreadful performances in it. (it also has charlton heston, who brings the house down. weird.) the max reinhardt midsummer's night dream adam mentions above is variable i think-- cagney as bottom is must-see because it's cagney as bottom, but tbh i think he's turned up too high on the (impossibly beautiful) wakeup soliloquy. (normally of course it's a category error to complain that cagney's turned up too high. maybe it is here too.) i don't remember the lovers being much cop. joe e. brown's good. mickey rooney is annoying (another error?). the spectacular-pageantry stuff is pretty draggy to actually watch but good to get high and take screenshots of. i have a lot of fondness for the whole project tho cuz i love how game reinhardt is to make a Sophisticated Theatrical Spectacle out on the coast with the yokels, how committed the movie is to being a movie, with joe e. brown and jimmy cagney, yet how it is also a natural extension of early 20c theatrical experimentation blah blah blah-- it's a neat artifact.

Like, with Shakespeare, how does alliteration and wordplay and puns and stuff translate?... How is it even done?

glib answer is it isn't; glibber answer's in klingon

difficult listening hour, Monday, 22 January 2018 02:10 (six years ago) link

Twelfth Night is perfect.

olly, Monday, 22 January 2018 02:18 (six years ago) link

Cosign

godzillas in the mist (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 22 January 2018 02:48 (six years ago) link

Have yet to see the Fully Queer Twelfth Night of my dreams, maybe someday

The Bridge of Ban Louis J (silby), Monday, 22 January 2018 03:09 (six years ago) link

Good. I'm glad we're discussing the comedies. A Midsummer Night's Dream and esp As You Like It rule. Is Rosalind the most alluring woman in literature? Fine. She is.

morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 22 January 2018 03:14 (six years ago) link

i was watching attack of the clones the other day, and there's that unfortunate digression where threepio's head gets switched with the head of one of the useless battle droids, and he flails around a while ruining the otherwise pretty good battle of geonosis set piece, and then artoo restores him and he stumbles to his feet and says "i've had the most peculiar dream!" and i was suddenly like, wait a second

difficult listening hour, Monday, 22 January 2018 03:25 (six years ago) link

the comparison is lucas' greatest crime

difficult listening hour, Monday, 22 January 2018 03:26 (six years ago) link

Voted Tempest on purely selfish grounds, it's the one I can rewatch or reread over and over. (I even like Peter Greenaway's admittedly aggravating version, becz Gielgud.) Caliban is one of my favorite characters in anything. So many great plays though, so many indelible characters and lines. The speculation about authorship has always seemed beside the point to me because somebody wrote them, and that's the actual unlikely thing.

otm

The Bridge of Ban Louis J (silby), Monday, 22 January 2018 04:50 (six years ago) link

I know most words is Hamlet (the character) by some fair amount.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, January 20, 2018 9:35 PM (two days ago)

apparently there's two legit answers to this question: hamlet has the most lines in a single play, prince hal/henry v the most if you count the lines from every play a character is in

(The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 22 January 2018 06:03 (six years ago) link

i know all the major stuff pretty well but seeing this list makes me realize how many of shake's works i haven't read yet, or even heard much about: pericles, two noble kinsmen, henry viii, cymbeline.

(The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 22 January 2018 06:09 (six years ago) link

i havent read or seen tempest or lear

always loved Midsummer Night’s Dream. and I am quite partial to Henry V

Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 22 January 2018 06:34 (six years ago) link

Lear

horseshoe, Monday, 22 January 2018 09:59 (six years ago) link

teaching Lear to teenagers right now and am so intimidated by how huge it is.

horseshoe, Monday, 22 January 2018 10:01 (six years ago) link

sometimes I feel like everything is in Lear. it looms like nothing else I’ve experienced.

Clay, Monday, 22 January 2018 10:39 (six years ago) link

Like, with Shakespeare, how does alliteration and wordplay and puns and stuff translate?... How is it even done?

glib answer is it isn't; glibber answer's in klingon

― difficult listening hour, Monday, 22 January 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Its like this interview says:

http://www.bookforum.com/pubdates/19116

“I’ve heard people say, ‘I just want a translation that tells me what the original says,’” Wilson tells me in her office at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has taught for fifteen years. “Obviously that’s never going to happen. If you want to read the original, spend the time, learn Greek. Any translation is going to be shaped in some way by the translator and is going to include the translator’s whole self. People assume that if you’re doing something totally different, you must be doing something illegitimate, imposing your own agenda. That the way it was translated thirty years ago must be the way it always had to be. That is not the case.”

Nevertheless what that is (as the interview goes on) can be just as valuable as merely saying give me the exact text. Its always amazing what is not only able to survive in different languages -- but also what prospers, too.

xyzzzz__, Monday, 22 January 2018 11:43 (six years ago) link

Well like Throne of Blood, which I don’t know if it even makes any attempt to replicate the language in Japanese — certainly none of it in the English subtitles. But it’s still a great rendition of MacBeth that captures not only the plot but the spirit of the thing.

I'm fine with 'old' Hamlets around 40; few young actors have the chops. (ditto R&J, usually) Wish i hadn't been a toddler when Richard Burton did it on Broadway.

ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Monday, 22 January 2018 12:45 (six years ago) link

The speculation about authorship has always seemed beside the point to me because somebody wrote them, and that's the actual unlikely thing.

Most fascinating thing I learned way back when was about the differences between the quarto and folio editions of Lear. There are big chunks of text in one but not the other, which means either a) someone else could write as well as Shakespeare or, more likely, b) despite Shakespeare's usual brilliance someone simply cut a huge hunk out!

Josh in Chicago, Monday, 22 January 2018 13:25 (six years ago) link

Here's what wiki says:

The modern text of King Lear derives from three sources: two quartos, published in 1608 (Q1) and 1619 (Q2) respectively, and the version in the First Folio of 1623 (F1). The differences between these versions are significant. Q1 contains 285 lines not in F1; F1 contains around 100 lines not in Q1. Also, at least a thousand individual words are changed between the two texts, each text has a completely different style of punctuation, and about half the verse lines in the F1 are either printed as prose or differently divided in the Q1. The early editors, beginning with Alexander Pope, simply conflated the two texts, creating the modern version that has remained nearly universal for centuries. The conflated version is born from the hypothesis that Shakespeare wrote only one original manuscript, now unfortunately lost, and that the Quarto and Folio versions are distortions of that original. Others, such as Nuttall and Bloom, have identified Shakespeare himself as having been involved in reworking passages in the play to accommodate performances and other textual requirements of the play.

As early as 1931, Madeleine Doran suggested that the two texts had basically different provenances, and that these differences between them were critically interesting. This argument, however, was not widely discussed until the late 1970s, when it was revived, principally by Michael Warren and Gary Taylor. Their thesis, while controversial, has gained significant acceptance. It posits, essentially, that the Quarto derives from something close to Shakespeare's foul papers, and the Folio is drawn in some way from a promptbook, prepared for production by Shakespeare's company or someone else. In short, Q1 is "authorial"; F1 is "theatrical". In criticism, the rise of "revision criticism" has been part of the pronounced trend away from mid-century formalism

Josh in Chicago, Monday, 22 January 2018 13:27 (six years ago) link

The thing about translations of Shakespeare is that people have been doing it for hundreds of years, and some of it has entered foreign languages as well. 'At være eller ikke at være, det er spørgsmålet'

Frederik B, Monday, 22 January 2018 13:30 (six years ago) link

that's what I said to my Lyft driver last week!

morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 22 January 2018 13:34 (six years ago) link

I wrote 'Frederikke B' as a hilarious linguistic zing, but then realised I was colonising the Danish language, but I'm posting it anyway

#TeamHailing (imago), Monday, 22 January 2018 13:41 (six years ago) link

I went to high school with her.

Frederik B, Monday, 22 January 2018 13:44 (six years ago) link

I think errors is hilarious

YouTube_-_funy_cats.flv (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Monday, 22 January 2018 15:37 (six years ago) link

for me the really mindblowing artist's farewell is when cleo issues her orders to the snake.

Totally, and there's something uncanny about the clown in that scene: "for, indeed, there is no goodness in worm."

"If thou and nature can so gently part, the stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, which hurts, and is desired."

jmm, Monday, 22 January 2018 18:35 (six years ago) link

i was watching attack of the clones the other day, and there's that unfortunate digression where threepio's head gets switched with the head of one of the useless battle droids, and he flails around a while ruining the otherwise pretty good battle of geonosis set piece, and then artoo restores him and he stumbles to his feet and says "i've had the most peculiar dream!" and i was suddenly like, wait a second

― difficult listening hour, Monday, January 22, 2018 3:25 AM (nineteen hours ago) Bookmark

Tom Stoppard did some uncredited (shockingly) script work on the prequels

Number None, Monday, 22 January 2018 23:13 (six years ago) link

performance vs. reading is always a tough one w/ shakespeare. lear is so crushingly dark at the end, feels like no performance could do justice to that. the whole thing feels, not epic exactly, but expansive, like it's somehow taken in the whole of human experience. the end of the play feels like the end of everything. the only thing i can think of that makes me feel similarly is moby dick, tho of course that's self-consciously epic.

there are a few roles in shakespeare that seem almost beyond performing. hamlet is one -- i've seen good productions but never saw a guy doing hamlet and thought, that's the guy i imagine when i read the play. always find myself thinking that the best performances were probably from the pre-film era.

(The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 22 January 2018 23:28 (six years ago) link

I love the romantic atmosphere in Tempest, which is probably what I'll vote for -- though I'm a bit surprised that I'm the not the first to mention Cymbeline! It's kind of action-adventure with, IIRC, a female action(y) lead (Imogen!). If I'm misremembering, then she at least gets to do a lot of cool stuff.

Favorite stage performance was a college production of Coriolanus. Favorite film adaptation is a tie between Ran and Taymor's Titus. (Wish I could see her old stage Tempest -- the clips look amazing.)

Joanna NEU!some (Leee), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 02:04 (six years ago) link

(I guess I like violent spectacles.)

Joanna NEU!some (Leee), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 02:15 (six years ago) link

I have never seen a satisfying performance of Lear...the ending always destroys me even when the production is terrible, though.

horseshoe, Tuesday, 23 January 2018 10:10 (six years ago) link

Timon of Athens is missing :-(

Not that it'd win, like.

But doctor, I am Camille Paglia (Bananaman Begins), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 12:07 (six years ago) link

that's a pretty sad one! it has more of a processional, o.g. greek feel to its tragedy (as you'd imagine) and no women. good play though

#TeamHailing (imago), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 12:18 (six years ago) link

How is it possible this has never been polled before?

Matt DC, Tuesday, 23 January 2018 12:19 (six years ago) link

Another good poll would be fave secondary characters. Yr Falstaffs and Calibans and Bottoms. (Falstaff may or may not count since he got promoted to lead of his own play.)

What's secondary tho

remember the lmao (darraghmac), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 13:00 (six years ago) link

How is it possible this has never been polled before?

The Beatles don't appear in any of the plays

the girl with the rub-on tattoo (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 13:08 (six years ago) link

Lear for the text.

It's not my favourite Shakespeare performance though - the Kevin R McNally performance last year was the only Lear I've seen and it was pretty good but def. missing something. The Peter Brook film also leaves me a bit cold. I do love what Kurosawa did with the structure in Ran (1985) though.

Awfully fond of Othello too. Cannot bloody wait for the André Holland and Mark Rylance performance at the Globe in August.

call me by your name..or Finn (fionnland), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 13:41 (six years ago) link

Another good poll would be fave secondary characters. Yr Falstaffs and Calibans and Bottoms. (Falstaff may or may not count since he got promoted to lead of his own play.)

Never actually read or seen Falstaff's Wedding or anything similar, I'm guessing there's an Elizabethan Joey vibe going down?

Another spin-off poll we did a few years ago:

The 2000-year period of Shakespearean tragedy is one inbred clusterfuck all happening at the same time. Who becomes king?

Matt DC, Tuesday, 23 January 2018 13:44 (six years ago) link

my campaigning for Vincentio to the general silence of all = actually I kind of stand by that

#TeamHailing (imago), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 13:54 (six years ago) link

MFM is amazing and up there with all the other best ones

#TeamHailing (imago), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 13:54 (six years ago) link

Ugh I saw Measure for Measure a couple years ago and found it almost loathesome. Maybe worth a read instead.

direct to consumer online mattress brand (silby), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 15:46 (six years ago) link

MacDuff becomes king but only offstage after

remember the lmao (darraghmac), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 15:49 (six years ago) link

MFM is surely loathsome - it is about how a dictator cements his power using underhand tactics, and redoubles his popularity into the bargain

#TeamHailing (imago), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 15:51 (six years ago) link

The total rancidity of Measure for Measure is its main virtue imo.

Matt DC, Tuesday, 23 January 2018 16:02 (six years ago) link

exactly

#TeamHailing (imago), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 16:09 (six years ago) link

in which shakespeare bodies politics ancient and modern

#TeamHailing (imago), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 16:10 (six years ago) link

Currently teaching Macbeth again. I should probably whisper it but this is the first time it's felt, I don't know, a bit two dimensional. Maybe it's me.
I bloody love the Tempest, and on balance it probably has my favourite lines, but there's too much of the mistaken identity faff arseing around in between.
I've never read or seen Lear. I'm ashamed of this.
Of the minor plays, I think Pericles is my favourite.

I'd have to go for Hamlet, even if I think I might be on the cusp of falling away from it.

The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Friday, 26 January 2018 19:42 (six years ago) link

I’m seeing a production of Timon of Athens in a couple days, I know next to nothing about it.

JoeStork, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:46 (six years ago) link

basically: if you're having money troubles you shouldn't see it

imago, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:49 (six years ago) link

Did anyone watch the show Slings and Arrows, set at a Canadian theatre modeled after the Stratford Festival? It’s kind of an uneven show but has a number of really fantastic moments that dig into what makes these plays work and the difficulty in staging them effectively. The second season revolves around a production of MacBeth, which the director admits he dislikes - a side character argues that it only shows you evil, and teaches you nothing about it. Which I wouldn’t necessarily agree with, but I should reread the play.

JoeStork, Friday, 26 January 2018 19:53 (six years ago) link

Belated post but The Globe's summer theater season tickets are available as of a couple days ago. The groundling tickets for a fiver cannot be beaten for value if you don't mind standing for three hours (I'm happy to do it at gigs for a better view so why not the theatre?).

Hamlet, The Two Noble Kinsmen and As You Like it booked for when I'm down in June. Haven't actually read the latter two yet, but will hopefully get round to it soon.

Othello in August is what I'm looking forward to the most though (Mark Rylance as Iago, oh boy).

call me by your name..or Finn (fionnland), Thursday, 1 February 2018 10:02 (six years ago) link

Super-envious of Rylance as Iago. I saw the National's slightly-less-than-satisfactory production a few years ago, and while I didn't love the cramped staging, I did love Rory Kinnear as Iago.

I am seeing three Macbeths this year. Very excited for all of them.

trishyb, Thursday, 1 February 2018 11:26 (six years ago) link

Oh I saw Kinnear in Young Marx last year and he was superb! Isn't he playing the lead in one of your anticipated Macbeths? I'm guessing the National production.

call me by your name..or Finn (fionnland), Thursday, 1 February 2018 12:20 (six years ago) link

We'll be in Ashland, Oregon this summer during their epic Shakespeare fest, but I forget which play might be going on on our exact date. Twelfth Night, maybe?

Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 1 February 2018 14:09 (six years ago) link

Oof, Rylance as Iago. Have booked a couple of yard tickets. Thanks for the heads up.

The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Thursday, 1 February 2018 16:50 (six years ago) link

Timon of Athens was nicely performed but really weird, I get the sense WS wasn’t in a great place when he wrote (or co-wrote, I guess) this one. There’s a strange lack of drama to the entire thing, Timon doesn’t seem to be particularly important or notable even when he’s rich, and his character arc is just cheerful——>hate u all with nothing in between and no moment of greater understanding. Artimaeus’s endless shit-talking is pretty fun but i was a little puzzled as to why anyone invited him to their parties.

JoeStork, Thursday, 1 February 2018 17:34 (six years ago) link

From this (as usual, v funny) Thomas Bernhard play:

http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/an-alternative-translation-of-minetti.html

It was a real conquest
to get me to play Lear
one more time
and also a crowning moment
Just one more performance madam
then never again
I’ve sworn it
never again
just one more performance
Thirty years I’ve shunned the stage
thirty years of nothing
I have renounced all classic literature
except Lear
Now just one more time I’ll play Lear
in Ensor’s mask
My nerves are frayed
it’s this appalling climate you see

xyzzzz__, Sunday, 11 February 2018 22:25 (six years ago) link

one month passes...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

System, Wednesday, 14 March 2018 00:01 (six years ago) link

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

System, Thursday, 15 March 2018 00:01 (six years ago) link

We'll be in Ashland, Oregon this summer during their epic Shakespeare fest, but I forget which play might be going on on our exact date. Twelfth Night, maybe?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, February 1, 2018 2:09 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd want to see this there - https://www.osfashland.org/productions/2018-plays/manahatta.aspx

Moo Vaughn, Thursday, 15 March 2018 00:04 (six years ago) link

I'm not certain what my favorite is, but probably would have voted for As You Like It on the correct assumption it would get relatively little attention from others

Moo Vaughn, Thursday, 15 March 2018 00:08 (six years ago) link

Whoa @ 4 whole Cymbeline voters!

MarmiteGrrrl (Leee), Thursday, 15 March 2018 00:18 (six years ago) link

that play is trash xp

YouTube_-_funy_cats.flv (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Thursday, 15 March 2018 00:29 (six years ago) link

manahatta I mean

YouTube_-_funy_cats.flv (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Thursday, 15 March 2018 00:30 (six years ago) link

surprised to see the tempest so high and the dream so low

i think i voted hamlet, corny but that's where my head's at rn. v happy with the hamlet/macbeth tie, a deadlock

wish i'd thrown tony+cleo a vote tho jeez

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 15 March 2018 23:02 (six years ago) link

No shame in Hamlet stanning.

My favorites are probably Measure for Measure, Winter's Tale, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Hamlet.

I had a friend in college who lit into me about preferring Ham to Lear, saying "Hamlet is the 19th century man's play. Look to Lear. The problems of Lear are the problems we're concerned with in the 20th century."

It was 1990 then, so the play of the 21st century had yet to be determined.

Starlight Express, maybe?

I leprecan't even. (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 15 March 2018 23:09 (six years ago) link

hamlet again

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 15 March 2018 23:17 (six years ago) link

(nah it's macbeth obv.)

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 15 March 2018 23:18 (six years ago) link

eleven months pass...

Is Rosalind the most alluring woman in literature? Fine. She is.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, January 21, 2018 5:14 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm: she is a chameleonic demiurge of the kind shakes usually reserved for tragedies and AYLI was robbed here. harold bloom iirc likes to imagine falstaff escaping history to arden; likewise i wouldn't turn down rosalind/hamlet slash, fraught as it'd get.

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 14 March 2019 07:15 (five years ago) link

exhilarating to see such a character go undoomed. even iago ends in silence.

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 14 March 2019 07:18 (five years ago) link

jaques, tho, is my boy

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 14 March 2019 07:19 (five years ago) link

I'd want to see this there - https://www.osfashland.org/productions/2018-plays/manahatta.aspx

― Moo Vaughn, Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:04 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm not certain what my favorite is, but probably would have voted for As You Like It on the correct assumption it would get relatively little attention from others

― Moo Vaughn, Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:08 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whoa @ 4 whole Cymbeline voters!

― MarmiteGrrrl (Leee), Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:18 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that play is trash xp

― YouTube_-_funy_cats.flv (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:29 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

manahatta I mean

― YouTube_-_funy_cats.flv (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Wednesday, March 14, 2018 2:30 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 14 March 2019 07:22 (five years ago) link

Currently teaching Macbeth again. I should probably whisper it but this is the first time it's felt, I don't know, a bit two dimensional. Maybe it's me.

feel u, but macbeth's two-dimensionality seems both deliberate and aggressive after the swelling tesseracts of AYLI/hamlet/lear

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 14 March 2019 07:30 (five years ago) link

in the end it's one-dimensional: a collapsed point

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 14 March 2019 07:32 (five years ago) link

yeah Macbeth knows where it’s going and doesn’t really make any bones about it and to me that’s one of its strengths

Clay, Thursday, 14 March 2019 07:45 (five years ago) link

Apparently Manahatta is good now

YouTube_-_funy_cats.flv (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Thursday, 14 March 2019 11:18 (five years ago) link

The sheer tragic focus of Macbeth, the dark hand of fate and all that, is pretty ruthless. Just utterly doom-laden.

Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 14 March 2019 12:04 (five years ago) link

I saw a National Theatre production of Macbeth recently. It was pretty ordinary, partly through some weird casting choices (Malcolm was as camp as a row of pink tents - to the point where it almost seemed pantomimic; Macbeth was lacklustre, at best), but mostly because of the vague 'post apocalyptic' setting, which really lacked any sense of focus.

I really like that idea that Macbeth is actually single-minded and bone sharp as opposed to two dimensional. I'm teaching it again at the moment and it's Act V and the pathos of Macbeth's weariness at his mistakes that's really hitting me.

Good cop, Babcock (Chinaski), Thursday, 14 March 2019 12:09 (five years ago) link

the vague 'post apocalyptic' setting, which really lacked any sense of focus.

ha before posting last night i was having a weird vision of a postapocalyptic as you like it-- fleeing a tyrant-run city to an improvised community in a forest everyone conveniently keeps calling a "desert". pastoral doesn't have to mean lush imo. postapocalyptic macbeth is of course a lil on the nose.

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 14 March 2019 22:13 (five years ago) link

one month passes...

saw As You Like It for the first legitimate time last night, my previous exposure being to a version performed by middle schoolers when I was like 10 and which I remembered nothing of. All superlatives about Rosalind are probably correct. Lots of emotional juice wrung out of the surprisingly-briefly-appearing and superficially ridiculous Jacques. All the comedic episodes of the Forest are gentle delights. Production I saw set lots of poetical interludes to music which was great, music in Shakespeare is great.

don't mock my smock or i'll clean your clock (silby), Friday, 10 May 2019 16:27 (four years ago) link

The songs are in the original -- well, their lyrics, anyway.

adam the (abanana), Friday, 10 May 2019 16:59 (four years ago) link

Most of Shakespeare really needs a lutenist along with the actors. Few productions can afford the extra expense.

A is for (Aimless), Friday, 10 May 2019 17:53 (four years ago) link

his contemporaries, who knew Shakespeare, who socialized and worked with him, had no trouble believing he wrote the works attributed to him. they never seem to have questioned his authorship. there are no sly hints, no furtive winks, no challenges, no puzzled doubts in evidence.

A is for (Aimless), Friday, 10 May 2019 21:50 (four years ago) link

also worth noting how much Elizabethan authors, because they were officially heavily censored, loved to bury clues in their writing, using puns, acrostics, double meanings, and other kinds of wordplay. I didn't read the article in full, but to be convinced, I'd expect at least several instances of Emilia Bassano inserting puns or hidden clues to her authorship into the plays or poems.

A is for (Aimless), Friday, 10 May 2019 22:08 (four years ago) link

i support this. we need a couple hundred years of assuming shakespeare is a woman so that the jobbing journalists of the future can pitch "reviewing the plays, i was shocked to find that othello is written with incredible, even subversive empathy for male experience-- perhaps shakespeare was a man?" pieces. also maybe people will get into shakespeare

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 11 May 2019 01:33 (four years ago) link

i'm playing hamlet this summer lol

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 11 May 2019 01:33 (four years ago) link

Don't rush your lines! Speak them feelingly.

A is for (Aimless), Saturday, 11 May 2019 02:01 (four years ago) link

you should see me saw the air w my hand

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 11 May 2019 03:26 (four years ago) link

vanity unexpectedly demanding this post: (not really)

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 11 May 2019 03:35 (four years ago) link

http://i67.tinypic.com/2coiekp.jpg

difficult listening hour, Wednesday, 22 May 2019 18:52 (four years ago) link

Branagh's new film is a hit job from a man who loathes Shakespeare.

recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 22 May 2019 19:06 (four years ago) link

one year passes...

1. recommendation for an edition of WS's complete works ? i'm in USA and it seems as if THE NORTON SHAKESPEARE is a safe bet ?

2. any thoughts on isaac asimov's two volumes on shakespeare ? i've never thought much of asimov, rightly or wrongly, but peeking at a .pdf that's available online, seems like it might be fun ? i haven't read much shakespeare crticism / commentary outside the BIG THREE (empson, hazlitt, and dr. johnson)

budo jeru, Tuesday, 11 August 2020 00:57 (three years ago) link

I bought the newest Oxford edition like a year ago, seems pretty rad (lots of additional online content) except that there's two additional weighty volumes of commentary I didn't buy and now I feel like I'm missing out on something (or will be when I start digging in).

Ask yoreself: are you're standards too high? (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 11 August 2020 01:01 (three years ago) link

tbc that's the 2005 second ed. yeah ?

budo jeru, Tuesday, 11 August 2020 01:10 (three years ago) link

It's the New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition (2018).

I have/had a copy of the Riverside Shakespeare (edited by my old Shakesbeard prof) which was solid but which has apparently evaporated into mist or something since my undergrad days.

Ask yoreself: are you're standards too high? (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 11 August 2020 01:46 (three years ago) link

one year passes...

I've been watching this series of John Barton masterclasses. There's something kinda fusty about them (like Barton's cardigans) but I've found them captivating tbh. For all his obvious learning, Barton keeps things relatively simple. And what a line-up of actors: David Suchet, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-MPmoQ_s18

Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Thursday, 7 April 2022 19:47 (two years ago) link

yeah i luv these too. lol in that one @ suchet's "naturalistic" salerio.

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 7 April 2022 21:35 (two years ago) link

This looks cool, thanks for the hint.

Came Here to Roll the Microscope (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 7 April 2022 22:48 (two years ago) link

directing ilx's second-favorite shakespeare play this summer. had previously always been nonplussed by its inert single-agent surface but as usual preproduction immersion has given me more than enough to get obsessed with. the drama is there. ("mine would, sir. were i human.") outrageously difficult to edit tho: so gnarled, impacted, dense; so intricately enjambed. i cut romeo & juliet down by a third last year and it was like disassembling lego in comparison.

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 7 April 2022 23:09 (two years ago) link

There’s a strange lack of drama to Timon of Athens

I've been fascinated by it since I saw the BBC version as a kid. Everything said upthread is true; Timon himself is too shallow to be tragic, and once he throws his revenge party, he sits in his cave until the play ends, like he's looking forward to Beckett.

Halfway there but for you, Friday, 8 April 2022 11:14 (two years ago) link

I've tried to imagine what it might be like to play Lear every night for weeks on end and have concluded that it would kill a superhuman to give it its full due that often. Yikes!

more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 8 April 2022 18:22 (two years ago) link

I've been watching this series of John Barton masterclasses.

Obviously a lot of talent there, but Ian McKellen easily outshines the rest. Even reading snippets he always presents an integrated performance that incorporates facial expression and gesture with an apt tone, pace and emphasis. Damn, he's an actor down to his very bones.

more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 8 April 2022 18:56 (two years ago) link

three months pass...

directing ilx's second-favorite shakespeare play this summer.

still not my second-favorite but wouldn't have wanted the summer without it

https://i.imgur.com/BQChwW7.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/tEN5rak.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/uNbgw2y.jpg

(i played the bosun.)

been reading henry vi. the scope! the violence!

difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 12:01 (one year ago) link

I find the Tempest both unbearably moving and irritating (language former, intrigue/mistaken identity latter)! This looks like a good production. I'm going to ask a banal but genuine question: what's directing a Shakespearean play like?

Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 14:42 (one year ago) link

I've recently read Antony Sher's book about playing Richard and Harriet Walter's about playing Lady Macbeth and now want to read as many actors' accounts as I possibly can. Anyone got any recommendations? (I'd love to have a go at a Shakespearean acting class but can't help but feel that ship has sailed.)

Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 14:44 (one year ago) link

i have a book called "shakespeare on stage" of julian curry interviews w (mostly) rsc types about specific roles-- likely glossier than what yr looking for, also hit and miss in terms of actor/role pairings. (don't even dislike him so feel bad for how funny the phrase "jude law on hamlet" reads to me.) more or less recommend tho. anyway acting in shakespeare is always good for you imo!

fine with mistaken identity stuff in tempest as it's just ariel fucking w stefano & trinculo and their gullibility is proportionate to ariel's superpowers (+ stef/trinc's drunken and traumatized state)-- plus the specific phrase "thou liest", as a kind of spell that reveals+widens the chasm of atomized despair underneath these two frightened castaways' surface camaraderie/bravado, is a deep choice-- but i did cut an iteration or two yeah lol.

i came around to loving the play of course and even think its Themes are Urgent And Contemporary but it still seems to me an extremely difficult one with more exposition than plot dominated by an unusually unpleasant protagonist speaking some of shakes' densest+freest verse so i'm surprised it's such a crowd fave-- tho it is def a trip so maybe that's why.

what's directing a Shakespearean play like?

i have only directed shakes actually so i don't rly know. i set aside a few weeks at the start for text work-- just sitting in a circle reading+talking-- normal for professional productions but fairly prolonged for mid-sized-town community theater-- think this paid off as partway thru production i felt a distinct shift where after having started out doing a lot of detailed discussion (caliban week 2: "this is like an english class"-- main difference being it's an english class where you actually settle on the answers to questions) i stopped having to do much except approve/adjust things people were trying. in the end all my fave business was cast-developed but early on i spent a lot of time talking about who they were.

technically things were a little harder lol-- after sticking v cautiously to a detailed+modest plan directing romeo+juliet last year i got cocky and decided to be more "exploratory" w this and it predictably turned into apocalypse tempest. ariel's costume alone a months-long series of spectacular battery-powered dead ends that ended up in plain minimalism. producer on-and-off furious with me. i got covid and had to direct over zoom for two weeks. everyone in a good mood now tho.

work at a theater so early on i herded the cast+crew into private latenite big-screenings of forbidden planet (sure) and jurassic park (magic island, storm, control-freak wizard who discovers source of supernatural power locked inside tree + must renounce it, artist-figure's speech at end simultaneously apologetic and defensive). the former influenced our music (original compositions for droning keyboard) and the latter our ambient jungle noises (maybe excessive). ferdinand and miranda started irl dating and he calls her "alta". rip morbs.

we ran for three weeks on our colossal temporary parking-lot stage-- if it's raining or you're distancing you park in front of it and tune into the show via radio-- then packed up the set and drove it ~50mi up the coast to plonk it down (no longer elevated) in a football field about as big as the town it's in. (no ambient jungle noises necessary here.) had been dreading this final roadshow weekend because every parks dept official i talked to about it, except the one whose idea it was, looked at me like it was the dumbest and vainest project they'd ever heard of, and i feared audiences of actual zero. but we forgot that there was nothing else going on for dozens of miles in every direction, because our three nights there went from 50 to 65 to 90 people sitting on bleachers getting high and watching the tempest, surrounded by pitch and cloudless black, while we city slickers staggered around backstage gawping at the stars. after having to give multiple performances, back in town, across the street from an active construction site full of beeping backhoes and crashing steel (at like 8pm????), to audiences sitting silently inside rows of SUVs, in a plague-ravaged and dying civilization, in the rain, "site B" turned out a utopian coda. we looked like we'd landed in a cheap spaceship:

https://i.imgur.com/7vzf8kN.jpg

just amateur stuff obv, but healthy.

henry 6 report: parts 3 and (especially) 2 full of good stuff if structurally a lot sloppier not just than the henriad but also than richard 3. part 1 struck me as pretty dumb, especially the part where a frenchwoman decides to lure talbot to her house; lures him to her house; says "aha! i have lured you to my house!"; he says "aha! my army is outside"; she is like damn you crafty english!! you are the best. nevertheless some semi-interesting unresolved ambiguity around its heroes+villains i guess-- also worth mentioning there are a lot of good female parts in the first history tetralogy, more than anywhere else outside the comedies: margaret, elizabeth, anne, joan of arc. (also tamora in titus, written amidst these and set in a sealed hobbesian hothouse world that seems v closely linked to the civil-war anxiety worked thru w increasing existential despair in the tetralogy.)

difficult listening hour, Wednesday, 3 August 2022 06:42 (one year ago) link

wavered on whether or not to include the "apocryphal" edward 3 in current survey but was glad i did. wondered if i'd be able to tell which passages are suspected of being shakespeare's-- but not only does the density and refractivity of metaphor tip you off in the first five lines of a scene, if you wait another five lines you'll prob get a reference to philomela+tereus. (or to dido.) he seems to have been brought in partly to punch up the love stuff: a long scene where edward dictates a love letter to the countess philippa, goes back over it, changes it, winces at some lines, congratulates himself on others-- couldn't believe how gratuitously meta it was.

more interesting because afaict this is the debut of shakespeare seriously on (if not in) love. in two gentlemen of verona it's a plot device; taming of the shrew is too satirical to let itself get mushy undistanced; the most convincing "love" moment in the first history tetralogy is richard coming on to anne, a terrific scene but not exactly the balcony. instead, if anything, there's a preoccupation with rape-- especially when (as in the histories+titus) characters are also instantiations of, or contenders for, the state. (in 2H6 jack cade excoriates a quailing mob of followers for accepting ius primae noctis from the enclosing crown, about thirty lines after announcing every london woman's sexual availability is now his to cybernetically redistribute.) but edward, rhapsodizing inside a much shallower and less cynical play, is free to be merely earnest-- which maybe is part of why you suddenly see shakes blushing+revising in front of your eyes.

and after the edward 3 punchups he publishes venus+adonis and the rape of lucrece (each dedicated to patron/beautiful-boy the earl of southampton)-- both again about sexual assault (and one again about the state) but both also preoccupied in much more detail than heretofore with desire-as-such: place in nature, disproportionate and ironic motive force, function as mask (or glover's-kid shakespeare would say dress) for death. the violence of the civil wars is here inside the feelings themselves. not long now till romeo+juliet, in which love+hate are different valves thru which human life gradually discharges the same finite pressure. someone (venus, juliet) will always make a mystical+crystalline case for infinitude-- the more i give to thee, the more i have-- then lose everything. it's maybe not until rosalind that a character has the reach to peacefully close the circuit between the free mind and the constrained body, or the imagined world and the real, or the self and the other, or life and death, or whatever it is that's going on here.

difficult listening hour, Friday, 5 August 2022 21:41 (one year ago) link

just a bit of fun

https://borrowers-ojs-azsu.tdl.org/borrowers/article/view/342/607

seo layer (Noodle Vague), Friday, 5 August 2022 22:29 (one year ago) link

likewise i wouldn't turn down rosalind/hamlet slash, fraught as it'd get.

― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, March 13, 2019 9:15 PM bookmarkflaglink

like romeo i am left so unsatisfied

pressing on. comedy of errors: lynchian farce, much richer/stranger than advertised. the mounting anguish of the antipholi as their identities implode points forward to the high trags but also made me think of after hours. the last few lines-- where the identical servants are left alone onstage to argue over who takes precedence and then give up: "and now let's go hand in hand"-- instantly a favorite shakespeare ending. seems like it'd be unusually fun to do.

love's labor's lost: lmaoooo what the fuck is this. i'm not smart enough. but after three urban-bourgeois comedies (verona/shrew/errors) increasingly vivid in their physical+cultural details ("give her this key, and tell her in the desk / that's covered o'er with turkish tapestry / there is a purse of ducats. let her send it"-- this in errors took my breath away, not sure why-- something about the sight of this elizabethan manufacturer's credenza being projected simultaneously back to greece and forward to me) i do admire the hard shift to fake aristos in a featureless and artificial play-space all talking in the most impacted possible hypershakespeare and wearing buttons reading Hi I Am Constituted Entirely Of Language. someone should set it on a message board.

difficult listening hour, Monday, 8 August 2022 08:41 (one year ago) link

How's King John? I may read it finally this week. Popular in the 19th century, no? Faulconbridge gets the good notices.

Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 8 August 2022 09:30 (one year ago) link

i haven't read it either but in the full chronological survey i'm currently doing like shakes were tribe albums or star wars it is coming up! just some v familiar territory (richard 2, r&j, midsummers) to recross first.

Richard II (1595)
Romeo and Juliet (1595)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)

v lyrical stretch here. trying new things

― difficult listening hour, Friday, January 19, 2018 6:24 PM bookmarkflaglink

hadn't realized here that these directly follow LLL, which shares the formality i was partly trying to get at here-- all very cleanly+artificially structured (R2 is an X; R&J a solar arc; midsummers has two versions of everything) and the verse is v regular (+frequently rhymed)-- but actually in that sense these plays are pulling back a lil from the extreme formality of LLL, where people (sometimes groups of people) keep breaking out in sonnet. i don't know that he's ever again this loyal to form.

at the very same time tho it's also where genre starts to crack-- the most tragic history, the most comic tragedy. characters start talking a lot about dreaming. the flawless verse structure cannot be shored up against a weird psychedelic rot blooming inside their heads. LLL takes place in a playground and ends w a messenger announcing that the king is dead and everyone has to grow up. one of the leads' speech prefixes immediately changes from PRINCESS to QUEEN.

difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 9 August 2022 00:52 (one year ago) link

never been a biographical criticism guy (one of the attractions of shakespeare) but hamnet dies around here of course.

difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 9 August 2022 00:57 (one year ago) link

Thanks for your replies about your production of the Tempest, difficult listening hour. Looks fascinating and a total headache to organise - fair play to you. Was it recorded? Would certainly take a look if it's online anywhere.

Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Monday, 15 August 2022 21:11 (one year ago) link

one month passes...

sweet of you to ask. didn't have a copy at the time but the other night i was standing in the street and someone suddenly rolled up on a skateboard and showed me an edit they'd made of the whole thing on their phone so maybe i will soon. a little shy abt it tbh i mean i tried to do the best i could but many missed opportunities god knows. in the meantime i have this gif:

https://i.imgur.com/ZKQwVi9.gif

did you get to king john, alfred? didn't know it had katherine hepburn in it, tho five seconds' thought and i guess i would have. the bastard doing some interesting identity work. hitting the fave themes.

merchant: the early comedies are best when there is money involved (or better, realer, than money: debt) so from "your mind is tossing on the ocean" on, this is a kind of pinnacle. strangely storybookish portia/casket stuff rly powerful if staged right, a fairy tale with high stakes. shylock a classic member of the "i refuse to accept the terms of this play and i will see it destroyed" club (president: hamlet), with more reason than most, and less success.

not much to say about henry 4+5 that wouldn't take all year but had not appreshed before how much of a culminative synthesis it is: it's trying to top the tavern bawds from taming of the shrew and the slapstick from comedy of errors and the battle scenes from henry 6 and the disassociative which-is-me-and-which-the-crown stuff from richard 2 and the daddy issues from king john, all at once, and as a national epic. and lest the symphony turn totalitarian it's also where shakes' early line of usually-villainous protogeniuses (aaron, gloucester, the bastard, juliet imo) finally gives birth to someone really capable of overturning the order of the play-- not in the story which is only a story, but in yr mind. it's the bayeux tapestry (well yknow in reverse), except the largest figure in it would have been sliced out of the bayeux tapestry by the state. of course, the state slices him out of the henriad too-- but not before he's completely ruined the big patriotic finish for you. just a masterpiece, a recapitulation and surpassing of everything so far. where do we go from here??

merry wives: apparently engels really liked this one. i've played falstaff in it and prob gave myself nodules. the plum role is ford.

as you like it: finally the acid kicks in.

difficult listening hour, Friday, 7 October 2022 09:00 (one year ago) link

I did, yeah! Most of what I read is largely true (Faulconbridge yea, title character nay)

Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 October 2022 09:28 (one year ago) link

title kind of a fakeout, like julius caesar

difficult listening hour, Friday, 7 October 2022 09:30 (one year ago) link

Shakespeare scholars, is there a consensus critical view on where Richard II sits in the hierarchy? i have found myself returning to it often recently but it's not one you (or at least i) hear much about.

i guess i could see people maybe finding it overly fussy? a little too pleased with its own cleverness? you've got the the formality of the structure and the prettiness of Richard's wordplay. then there's the thematic focus on the transition from medieval to modern, the nature and origin of kingly authority, not exactly the timeless and universal themes you find elsewhere in the canon.

but for all that i find Richard a pretty compelling figure with a certain timelessness of his own (at least if you set aside the particular macro-historical context and view him as an individual) - a foolish, unworldly, privileged brat who finds himself completely baffled in the face of the harsh realities (ugh) of the real world (double ugh) which turns out not to operate at all as he imagined.

and even then there are moments where he breaks out of the helpless reverie and is able to address the cynicism and bad faith with the contempt it deserves ("No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man!"

seems like a great role for a talented actor to stretch their legs a bit. as is Bolingbroke tbh (is he a crafty player of the game? is he a fundamentally decent man who, feeling himself justified as having been unjustly wronged, gets swept up in events beyond his control? is he a willing pawn who allows himself to be manipulated by more cynical peers for their own ends? a bit of all of them?!)

good play imo

Windsor Davies, Friday, 7 October 2022 22:03 (one year ago) link

i read somewhere the other day that the reason Henry IV never gets to go on the longed-for pilgrimage is because that right is reserved to the true medieval Plantagenets and not usurpers. Bolingbroke's part is to spend the rest of his days mired in interminable domestic squabbles - a lesser role for a lesser man.

i dunno if i fully agree with that (at least not the final judgement - as a plot point i think it's hard to argue against) but i enjoyed thinking it over

Windsor Davies, Friday, 7 October 2022 22:07 (one year ago) link

richard 2 is major. at work rn but looking forward to not being.

bolingbroke announcing at the end that he’ll clear all this moral and existential fuzziness up with a quick pilgrimage is v funny imo. instead his past eats him.

i’d like to play northumberland.

difficult listening hour, Friday, 7 October 2022 22:12 (one year ago) link

that were some love. but little policy.

difficult listening hour, Friday, 7 October 2022 22:13 (one year ago) link

Bolingbroke of course being a Plantagenet but a usurper for all that.

i think that I prefer a reading of Richard II as a standalone play rather than as the first part of the Henriad

xp yeah Northumberland is a great dickhead role. Mowbray also super fun i'd imagine. "i do defy him. and i spit at him!" fuckin come at me bro

Windsor Davies, Friday, 7 October 2022 22:13 (one year ago) link

he’ll clear all this moral and existential fuzziness up with a quick pilgrimage

a quick crusade i should say. even funnier

difficult listening hour, Friday, 7 October 2022 22:18 (one year ago) link

yeah it's major but its focus is fascinating and weird

Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 October 2022 23:01 (one year ago) link

i guess i could see people maybe finding it overly fussy?

its formality works imo because the fussiness is aesthetic+structural analogue for the ordered toy-history (and toy identity) richard discovers isn't real. thus the shift in style between it and henry iv is freighted with a lot imo-- but yeah of the henriad r2 def stands alone the best. (probably even if you take h4 as a piece.)

then there's the thematic focus on the transition from medieval to modern, the nature and origin of kingly authority, not exactly the timeless and universal themes you find elsewhere in the canon.

lol i love this theme for itself (+ its development in the Hs) tho yes it is now niche-- but (as u also suggest) i don't think it is unconnected to much deeper ones (hamlet's problems after all are also kingly-authority-related). richard after the breaking-the-mirror scene (the crux of the X) is assembling or discovering a naked self he's never known. the crown has always explained him to himself and now it's gone. on some level he has only just finally been born. talking thoughtfully to himself in a locked room for two acts then suddenly getting burst in on by assassins is a little like what happens to the whale in hitchhiker's guide-- but again it's also like hamlet, who in his last minute alive says dying is like getting arrested. and richard's final soliloquy-- "thus play i in one person many people"-- anticipates jaques!

meanwhile, bolingbroke, trending upwards, has sealed himself into an ominous new identity he doesn't fully control. lackeys pile heads at his feet. exton is convinced he's pulled a turbulent-priest move and subliminally ordered richard's death; of course when it's accomplished bolingbroke does the elegant machiavellian thing and disclaims it. but is that really what he meant? or all he meant? "have i no friend will rid me of this living fear? / was it not so? these were his very words. / have i no friend? quoth he. he spake it twice." bolingbroke will spend the rest of the cycle fearing and fighting his alleged friends. "they love not poison who do poison need." the question he's repeating has to mean more to him than a euphemism.

is he a crafty player of the game?... is he a willing pawn who allows himself to be manipulated by more cynical peers for their own ends? a bit of all of them?!

otm-- and what if these don't have secret answers but are the questions on his own mind at the end? ones he thinks might be answered-- or better, made irrelevant-- in jerusalem? it's a pr move of course, but is it only for his subjects? does he want to go there to close a gap he feels between himself and the crown? or himself and god? has he no friend will rid him of this living fear? does he even know who he is anymore?

lol @ the scene where everyone throws down their gages at everyone else.

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 8 October 2022 08:54 (one year ago) link

(the return of the repressed!)

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 8 October 2022 08:59 (one year ago) link

one month passes...

have (temporarily) run aground on troilus+cressida (also started a new job so project has suffered).

julius caesar-- about people-as-crowd more directly than anything since henry vi. (long to stage the death of cinna .) used to assume this was much earlier but it's rly just kept under v deliberate control as befits its classicism and (i now confidently announce) you can totally tell it's from the psychedelic period. similarly (synecdochially) i had never thought of brutus as amongst the shakespearian prometheuses but obviously he is; in his soliloquies shakes is not holding anything back he gives to hamlet or rosalind. it's just that brutus is comfortable with Fate, and thus w his role in this play, in a way they can't be. (which does him p much exactly as much good as being uncomfortable does hamlet.)

hamlet-- "if i were informed that my closest friend was lying at the point of death, but that his life might be saved by permitting him to expound his theory of hamlet, i would instantly reply: let him die, let him die, let him die!"

twelfth night-- you know, i don't love this one. i mean the orsino/viola/olivia stuff is staggeringly beautiful and the genderplay is deeper, more disorienting, less resolved, than as you like it's. (imo tho even with its holiday structure as you like it still only resolves things, "restores order", on the surface. rosalind has learned she can do magic.) would also allow that feste > touchstone-- as character if not as clown. but i still just cannot find a way in to the malvolio / sir toby stuff. prefer the mean pranks in taming of the shrew. prefer the bourgeois antics in merry wives. maybe seeing a good one would help.

speaking of which i saw actors from the london stage do macbeth last month, a nice treat for one of the remoter islands of my remote archipelago. inspirationally minimal. you rly don't need much huh. banquo/porter/lennox/macduff-jr in partic slayed (+ was slain).

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:09 (one year ago) link

Love to see Twelfth Night, Malvolio is a delicious part and his denouement can be wrenching

G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:13 (one year ago) link

yr right of course; his exit is rly something.

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:14 (one year ago) link

My Shakespeare updates: I read R+J last year and I was like yknow what Romeo and Juliet rules. I read Hamlet this year and I decided Hamlet is the villain of Hamlet

G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:15 (one year ago) link

it's me, hi

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:16 (one year ago) link

Someday I will see the fully queer+trans Twelfth Night of my dreams

G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:16 (one year ago) link

Love to see Twelfth Night, Malvolio is a delicious part and his denouement can be wrenching

― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby)

Bryan Ferry played him iirc

Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:22 (one year ago) link

xp i remember you posting that actually and often think of it! i am the same w AYLI (hence parenthetical defensiveness above).

island-hopping this weekend to see a friend's production of his own translation of 12N into hawaiian actually. confidence fairly high on the queer front.

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:22 (one year ago) link

actually.

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:22 (one year ago) link

romeo and juliet is absolutely amazing; juliet is an i n c r e d i b l e part, one of the geniuses; the scene where the wedding musicians are implied to be playing cheerfully underneath an entire prolonged scene of the capulet family screaming in grief is one of the wildest things in shakespeare (when i directed we used a muzak instrumental of "all i have to do is dream")

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:26 (one year ago) link

friar laurence is a dangerous idiot tho

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:27 (one year ago) link

Do you rate Baz’s movie? I also watched that for the first (proper) time in the past year sometime and I really liked it

G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:28 (one year ago) link

It overcame my distaste for Leo

G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:29 (one year ago) link

honestly i prob haven't seen it recently enough. some vivid childhood memories for sure tho (what satisfaction canst thou have tonight?) all i have in the way of semiadult critical thoughts are i remember thinking leguizamo and postlethwaite were A+ and that everybody could maybe have shouted less. i don't remember paul rudd in it but that is perfect casting so presumably he was great.

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:36 (one year ago) link

once i would have said they cut up the text too much but nah cutting up the text is great, especially in movies obv.

difficult listening hour, Thursday, 17 November 2022 03:37 (one year ago) link

seven months pass...

bind me. or undo me. one of them.

difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 4 July 2023 01:06 (nine months ago) link

opened in much ado tonight. "kill claudio" was like firing a gun: i hadn't moved an eyelid muscle in response when the laugh came. as a laugh partisan this was a thrill, like volunteering for a 400-year-old magic trick. backstage a minute later beatrice dabbed her lipstick off me and whispered "why did they laugh?" he's still got it folks.

difficult listening hour, Saturday, 8 July 2023 10:26 (nine months ago) link


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