Shakespeare quotes..

[Ming the Merciless]

Arnold Schwarzenegger got his first film part, Hercules in New York, when is agent fibbed to the produced that Arnie was a famous Shakespearean actor back home in Austria.

To be back or not to be back? That is the Terminator.

 

[Heltor Chasca]

Have you ever seen Shakespeare live where the audience gets involved? The original stalls in a circular arena. As they were intended. So very different to the dry texts of what you may have read at school.

I went to see plays in Stratford with a girlfriend years back. We laughed all the way back to the hotel. Brilliant.

But you know I am a heathen peasant. It’ll be a hard sell on me.

I also did MacBeth for my O’ level lit. I avoided saying it but I HATE Shakespeare because of that. There I said it.

(I did pass)

 

[postman]

No contest The Beatles everytime.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

And Shakespeare's insults are legendary

"Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch"

 

[PeteXXX]

If Shakespeare had been a cyclist...

Open your ears! For who could possibly block them when loud Rumor speaks? I make the wind my bike, and ride it from the Orient in the east to the place where the sun sets in the west, describing the events taking place in the world. I continually tell lies and I tell them in every language, stuffing men's ears with falsehoods...

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood

From King Lear

 

[gavroche]

Shakespeare is like cricket, so boring.

 

[Reynard]

Taken from a work which is based on lies and propaganda to discredit the last true king of England (Maz might be a 'Ricardian' )

There is actually a fair bit of pro-Lancastrian / Tudor propaganda lurking in Shakespeare's historical plays, not just in Richard III - although Richard III is pretty well much the most overt example. Part of this stems from the tradition of patronage, which was common for writers of the day. Namely you had to come up with material that bigged up those who were paying your bills, especially as work "praising" the current regime is seen to legitimise it.

Actually, I think that his historical plays (those based on English history) are the least good of his works, purely because of the propaganda aspect. The plays that deal with human nature are far more watchable and enjoyable. Although Titus Andronicus is particularly gruesome and complicated, and most definitely not for the faint-hearted.

 

[Rusty Nails]

I passed my English Lit. 'O' level with Henry V as the main text. Having had to study Shakespeare up to 'O' level I found it very dry and lost interest.

My wife loves Shakespeare and persuades me to go to the theatre with her to watch his plays. I started off going just to keep her company and to my surprise found them really enjoyable and nothing like the dry plays I studied at school. Occasionally I struggle, as with the recent version of Macbeth, where I found it hard to follow because of the mixture of poor accoustics and very strong Scottish (obviously) accents.

I blame my very boring English teacher for my original dislike.

 

[Reynard]

I was very lucky growing up, as I went to school in the Barbican. The Barbican Centre is the London home of the RSC, so we got to see the plays we were reading in English performed by the best. That makes a big difference.

Also, there was a community theatre a bus ride from home (in a converted church) that staged Shakespeare "in the round", so for only a couple of quid a pop, I got to see a lot of the plays performed as they should have been.

 

[Andy in Germany]

But you know I am a heathen peasant. It’ll be a hard sell on me.

I also did MacBeth for my O’ level lit. I avoided saying it but I HATE Shakespeare because of that. There I said it.

(I did pass)

I sympathise: had the same experience with school sports.

I did Macbeth twice in School. First time I loathed it: the teacher wasn't bad, but he didn't communicate it in a way I could understand. The next year I had a much better teacher and understood it a bit more.

Then I did my theatre degree and realised that it was basically a vanity piece written -probably on spec- for James VI / I, one of the stranger monarchs of the UK and a very good advert for republicanism. When I'd learned about James a lot of the weirder stuff in 'Macbeth' made much more sense.

The mildly racist fluff piece worked on James's prejudices like a Daily Mail editorial on an EDL lodge meeting: the king elevated the street scribbler to a sort of court playwright, so it's partly James's fault you had to sit through these plays in English lessons...

 

[Profpointy]

I passed my English Lit. 'O' level with Henry V as the main text. Having had to study Shakespeare up to 'O' level I found it very dry and lost interest.

My wife loves Shakespeare and persuades me to go to the theatre with her to watch his plays. I started off going just to keep her company and to my surprise found them really enjoyable and nothing like the dry plays I studied at school. Occasionally I struggle, as with the recent version of Macbeth, where I found it hard to follow because of the mixture of poor accoustics and very strong Scottish (obviously) accents.

I blame my very boring English teacher for my original dislike.

To be fair to the Bard, the recent film version of Macbeth was a big disappointment. OK, it looked great, and I liked the accents and real dark ages feel, but unless you knew the play you'd struggle to follow it. I must have seen half a dozen versions and know some of the speeches, but even I struggled to follow the action. I was half way through one scene before realising it was the Banquo's ghost scene. It was also a considerable achievement to make Macbeth, which is after all a play full of action, into something boring