Shakespeare: C/D?

http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article2723246.ece

crybabies

Final-year undergraduates study all 36 of Shakespeare's plays

this seems somewhat unnecessary

Yeah, several of them are a bit rub.

Delightful to see that my former tutor (Professor McCabe) is still the voice of reason.

This question is subject to debate?

If someone thinks Shakespeare is overrated, then they simply lack the capacity to appreciate his excellence. This is no sin. Many people share this lack. It is generally founded upon ignorance, which again is no sin, since it is the usual starting condition for all of us.

The remedy is to read his plays and poems in the company of someone who can share their appreciation with you. And if all a person really wants to do is sit back and sling insults at his work, then this remedy is placed out of reach; some ignorance is irremovable.

lol

seriously though, a curriculum of english literature should not lean so heavily on one author. what is the purpose of a degree in the entire literature of a nation (or even a language) if it's so limited in scope. it's not a question of whether shakespeare is overrated or not.

If the question under review is whether Oxford undergrads in literature shall be required to study Shakespeare in massive or merely large doses, then it seems like that is quite seperable from the question of whether Shakesepeare was classic or dud.

Maybe it needed a new thread, rather than a revival of this one.

waste not, want not.

Then perhaps it better belongs in a revival of Should Shakespeare still be taught in schools?

oh well too late :(

If 'tis done, when 'tis done, 'tis best 'twere done quickly.

I thought I loved Shakespeare but then I read this:
http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/12081.html

i don't see the big deal about this; of course english lit grads should study milton et al in addition to shakespeare. that said, emphasizing shakespeare is quite understandable; there's no other author in lit history who comes close to his influence.

what about the bible?

well that was written by a bunch of people written by god so it's really an unfair fight

Reading all 36 is excessive.

I couldn't access the other thread, so..

SEARCH:

-Hamlet (Best play ever)
-Henry IV (I & II) (Hotspur = Best Shakespeare Character)
-Henry V (Hal >>> Henry)
-Julius Caesar (Hm. Haven't read this in a long time.)
-Macbeth (Isn't Anything : Macbeth :: Loveless : Hamlet)
-King Lear (So many villains!)
-Othello (Good read, usually bad performance unless Iago is less Jack Nicholson and more Dustin Hoffman)
-Romeo and Juliet (Please never let me have to see this again!)
-Richard II (Flawed but awesome!)
-Richard III (Overrated! Ruined by actors. LOL at Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl)
-Measure for Measure (Underrated! Great vehicle for actors)
-Cymbeline (Underrated!)
-Winter's Tale (Overrated! 'Bohemia' section so boring.)
-Pericles (Problematic. I go see this whenever I can because no one can really figure how to do it well.)
-As You Like It (Good popcorn Shakespeare)
-Tempest (I need to read this again. Never seen full performance, but i think on it fondly.)
-Midsummer (So fun. Summer drama camp staple! I always forget how odd the changeling child sub-plot is.)
-Troilus and Cressida (Underrated! The oddest ending of any of his plays I've read. Myrmidons are too cool.)

DESTROY
-Merchant of Venice (Almost saved by the first line, but the rest of the play is unpleasantly strange. Three caskets? wtf?)
-Two Gentlemen of Verona (Early verse with few highlights. Intriguing rape content.)
-Henry VI (1 - 3) (I don't even remember what happens in these plays they are so boring.)
-Merry Wives of Windsor (Booooooooo.. Falstaff sucks now. Verdi did it better.)
-Antony and Cleopatra (Great individual lines, but melodrama overwhelming. Antony botching his suicide and getting carried to the next scene is entertaining, though. So is the snake-charmer character.)
-Titus Andronicus (Ridiculous. I guess Peter Hall replaced the usual slaugterhouse with bloodless stumps and people in the theatre wretched.)
-Love's Labour's Lost (The biggest non-history snoozer. Stupid, stupid plot.)
-Twelfth Night (Probably good, I just don't like performances I've seen. I've never read/studied it)
-Taming of the Shrew (Ditto.)

????
Timon of Athens (I'm going to go buy this right now.)
Comedy of Errors
All's Well That Ends Well
Coriolanus
Henry VIII
King John
Comedy of Errors
Much Ado About Nothing

wait, i messed up that analogy. Macbeth : Hamlet :: Isn't Anything : Loveless.

That amounts to exactly the same analogy, says An Mathematician. Good post, it's just tricked me into taking Troilus &C to bed.

hott

we'll see. am a bit worried abt whether there is room for all the myrmidons.

poortheatre's roundup seems mostly OTM (tho he's forgetting "the two noble kinsmen," which WS wrote half of), but "twelfth night" is quite funny. i prefer it to "as you like it."

fun metric note: everyone in the play calls Troilus 'TROY-lus' and Cressida calls him "TROY-uh-lus." i always thought that was cute. like, 'no, that's my man, and his name is troy-uh-lus.'

I thought I loved Shakespeare but then I read this:
http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/12081.html

-- abanana, Saturday, 30 June 2007 21:04

this is very roffley, ty

interesting:

http://vimeo.com/17116790

i'm guessing arthur phillips is playing games here, and his next book is going to be fakespeare?

I’ll be on GMB around 8.10 talking about why Shakespeare should be scrapped from the school curriculum (mostly because it’s boring and we have hundreds of other more relevant writers to study).

— Rebecca Reid (@RebeccaCNReid) April 25, 2019

I was hoping she'd put up a better fight than "plays aren't meant to be studied"

It's a weird mix of jaded English grad with guardian-esque study👏other👏things👏 with everything else in between once she finds herself up against the wall.

Ham. O God, your only jig-maker! What should a man do but be merry?

— Willy Shakes (@IAM_SHAKESPEARE) April 25, 2019

Ham

I’m surprised people are so cross about this tbh. There are so many other brilliant playwrights we could be studying. If you think Shakespeare was good you should try John Osbourne or Polly Stenham.

I don't who this woman is but John Osborne?!??!

... you'll notice I can spell John Osborne.

btw Simon Hedges show up on that thread.

Milton's annotated copy of the First Folio?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/16/when-milton-met-shakespeare-poets-notes-on-bard-appear-to-have-been-found

Goods songs alluding to Shakespeare.

From the "slings and arrows of outrageous romance"
I stole that from Willy the Shake
You know, "neither a borrower nor a lender be"
Romeo, Romeo, talk to me

Clunky yeah, but perfectly fits the drunk on tequila narrator

My daughter is going to apply to a performing arts school and part of the audition requires a 90 second Shakespeare monologue. No one in the house knows dick about Shakespeare, except the very obvious things that we probably want to avoid because they're just too common.

Any suggestions?

obviousness in itself isn't a problem for an audition in my experience, and there are simply fewer good women's monologues than there are men's

does she know any plays that she already enjoys?

also, and sorry to state the obvious, but the key is to find something where she gets the meaning, the emotion and the situation

my daughter still swears by Juliet and she's done a fair bit of Shakespeare thru school and theatre groups - she's in her second year at a PA school now. Juliet's pretty relatable i think

She is reading Much Ado About Nothing as part of a class and she has shifted from hating Shakespeare to enjoying it. To my knowledge that is her entire Shakespeare experience. She knows the basic plot of Romeo & Juliet from cultural osmosis.

She has a couple of months to prepare, and the person we were consulting with suggested that whatever she chose, she should rewrite it in standard english just to make sure she has a clear understanding of everything in the piece.

I didn't even think about the fact that there would be a limited number of options because of the gender thing. And Juliet makes sense because of the age.

first and most important: best of luck!

there are ofc some classic parts. lady macbeth, ophelia, cleopatra is *strong* (as is her maid charmion iirc). titania in a midsummer nights dream. 12th night has some good speeches.

if i were her id probably google women speeches shakespeare and see what she likes?

seems weird to limit her to women's monologues

gender wasn't a constraint at the time; just pick something that resonates!

Margaret

Henry VIII (a.k.a. All is True) is b-list Shakespeare but has a very good monologue for one of ‘enry’s wives (forget which one).

Yeah I wouldn’t limit it to women’s roles! Aaron the Moor’s monologue about how much he loves being evil would be pretty fun to do, not the most beautiful writing but it always makes me laugh.

Might be a bit leftfield but I really love Mistress Quickly on the death of Falstaff in Henry V.

Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. A' made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child; a' parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o' the tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. 'How now, sir John!' quoth I. 'what, man! be o' good cheer.' So a' cried out 'God, God, God!' three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a' should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So a' bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.

If she's reading Much Ado, could go for Benedick's 'this can be no trick' monologue?

good point on not limiting it - stoopid of me to assume. but finding something you like still important. and i wouldn’t worry about finding quick routes to stuff.

Thank you's! So many good suggestions, this place is the best.

Shakespeare's dramatic universe, according to G. Wilson Knight:

http://www.waggish.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/a.jpg

A diagram so simple it would take a a series of 24 one hour lectures to explain it, at which point it will dawn on the audience that the explanation is just plain wrong.

potion speech ("i have a faint cold fear thrills thru my veins") a good juliet deep cut if "gallop apace" feels too basic lol-- lots of ~speech actions~ to take, lots of arguing with oneself, some metal imagery, great finisher

big fan of clarence's dream in richard 3 ("o i have passed a miserable night") just for the doomy drowning imagery

highly recommend cassius' long probing promethean speeches to brutus in act 1 of caesar particularly "well honor is the subject of my story..." which again has a lot of opportunities to shift gears, weigh the effect you're having, react to the reactions of invisible brutus

seconded "this can be no trick..." which still reliably kills

my go-to hamlet's "rogue and peasant slave": also a lot of action in that one, lot of ups and downs lol

o i thought the whole revive was from just now sorry. well whatever she picked best of luck.

couple of underrated faves from richard 2: the hamlet preview "i have been studying how i may compare / this prison where i live unto the world" and the wildly delusional one that builds to "not all the water in the rough rude sea / can wash the balm off from an anointed king: / the breath of worldly men cannot depose / the deputy elected by the lord: / only americans can do that"

i caught mckellens ?lecture? to the rsc about macbeths "she should have died hereafter" monologue this week on youtube and it is a magical magical breakdown - not that every inference or allusion necessarily works but the process of his building the emotional/intellectual platform from which he delivers the performance is -and the word is a cliche- fascinating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGbZCgHQ9m8

This is great ty

Although it's notable as the only speech where Macbeth achieves clarity. I'd say Lady Macduff even has a better role

macbeth is a busy mawn until then

Arguably there's clarity in the 'firstlings of my heart' speech but he's also (authentically) batshit at that point in the play. The McKellen exposition is so great.

These John Barton masterclass videos are the best (McKellen is in there, Patrick Stewart, Ben Kingsley, Judi Dench).

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

ty will get on those

Barton has excellent cardigans and excellent vocal idiosyncrasies (metafuh and problim to name a couple).

episode two of that in particular, where they talk about working w the verse, is totally revelatory, not just for delivery but for understanding

another great unbartlettized juliet one is her pair of speeches to the friar ("tell me not, friar, that thou hear'st of this" and "o bid me leap rather than marry paris") after he's been like well, i guess this teen wedding i officiated didn't work out, that's a pity, and she's like excuse me do you think this is a game? aren't you supposed to be the grown-up here? don't you know you're in this with me? "god joined my heart and romeo's, thou our hands"-- then when he lets a second of uncertainty elapse without having a sententious speech ready she hits the textbook every-word-is-one-syllable maximum-emphasis line "be not so long to speak. i long to die"-- then her tumbling childish-tantrum list of things she'd rather do than marry paris ("chain me with roaring bears") spirals before your eyes into an adult premonition of her actual future, as she tries for the worst thing she can think of and hits on exactly what's going to happen ("or bid me go into a new-made grave / and hide me with a dead man in his shroud"). you get to act younger than romeo and older than the nurse and the friar just stands there terrified watching a human consciousness struggle to doomed life on the stage and thinking: i have made a huge mistake

Watched the 2021 Macbeth last night for the first time and enjoyed it. My partner also was flitting thru YouTube and caught some of the Ian Mckellan archives

Reading the tragedies over the past year has been a delight. I started with Hamlet and as you tune in Shakespeare's language the plays have gotten better and better. Antony getting the mob going in Julius Caesar was a marvel.

I will try to get into the comedies but there were few rewards in A Midsummer's Night Dream. Might re-read that over Xmas.

I reread The Tempest on Thanksgiving. Man, Prospero gets more and more unsympathetic with each reading. The play stops cold too when he exposes poor Miranda to three pages of exposition.

I've been reading Othello this weekend. Might watch one of the versions on Youtube later. Emilia rules, Roderigo is a chump.

I've also been reading some Bradley and G. Wilson Knight. GWK has some hilarious takes - he more or less depicts Hamlet as the villain of the play, while repeatedly talking about how wise and sensible Claudius is.

Idk if Claudius is sensible but Hamlet is absolutely the villain

"a" villain, not "the" imo. Claudius still murdered his dad!

Hamlet more of a dick than a villain i think

yeah hes not made the best of the opportunities that still remain for him, you cant gain am insta following in wollowing

Okay, yeah, point taken, I shouldn't have said 'hilarious' (didn't mean to imply that it's a worthless interpretation). He has a picture of Hamlet as a kind of inhuman superman who has seen death and therefore rises above the merely human failings of the rest of the characters, and crushes them all - whereas "a balanced judgment is forced to pronounce ultimately in favour of life as contrasted with death, for optimism and the healthily second-rate, rather than the nihilism of the superman." I think maybe he pushes the idea of Hamlet's cynicism and nihilism further than feels true to me, idk.

Hamlet fucks about trying to prove to himself that his father's ghost is telling the truth - either as an excuse not to do anything or to give himself the courage to revenge him. i don't think certainty or nihilism are his issues at all.

and it's the healthily second-rate characters who have the gung-ho spirit that finishes the play with bodies everywhere so i'm not sure that's a victory for Life either

The play stops cold too when he exposes poor Miranda to three pages of exposition.

i had this interrupted by a klaxon going off above ariel’s summoning chamber in the lab— prospero and miranda turn upstage to look— they both turn back— “now cease thy questions,” prospero says, immediately neuralizes her, and props her unconscious body against a flat. always got a startled, uncomfortable chuckle: man i dunno about this guy!

xyz u should read as u like it

Hamlet is not a villain. And certainty and nihilism *are* his issues.

There are many key moments but one of them has to be the soliloquy just before the play within a play. He wonders if he is a coward and sees in himself a deficiency of feeling. Instead of righteous rage, he felt neurosis and self hatred in response to his father’s death; his grief took a more complicated form than he expected. Only after does he shift gears and say no, the ghost might have been a spirit who took advantage of my weakened mental state — basically a delusion. He doubts his sanity. He affirms that the play within a play is the right thing to do. He needs to verify what happened.

Meanwhile, in his “delay” he has done more damage than he knows. Ophelia has ready been traumatized by him, and she knows the madness isn’t an act. She sees that his personality has deteriorated and talks about it right after the “nunnery” encounter. He is not rooted in anything solid; he is a mass of rage and fear.

Basically, he is experiencing a mental health crisis. It doesn’t look like what he believes “madness” is. It is not losing his “reason,” it’s the fact that his rationalizations are spinning out in multiple directions, trying to keep up with his volatile mood.

It is doubt that makes him “mad.” And he resolves it in act 5 by embracing fate and an identity as a divinely ordained king — “hamlet the dane” — but this too is a tragic and partial solution. He couldn’t take doubt — maybe he couldn’t take modernity — so he embraced the traditional code, for a moment, but this world is dying and he knows it. The future belongs to the osrics he disdains — the rising bourgeoisie — not princes like himself.

When he tells laertes that his madness was “not him” it is supposed to come off wrong. It was him, the whole time, all of it. he was digging into himself, and the process was ugly.