Shakespeare

[jazzkat]

I really like Shakespeare plays (I don't think films work so well, but that's just me). I think they work on many levels. The linguistic skill is amazing, but they are great studies of the human condition in all its gory detail.
Ok you've got to get past the language, but a few minutes in and you are tuned in pretty easily.
I saw Titus Andronicus a few weeks ago at the RSC in Stratford, brilliant!

 

[TVC]

I'm another one who was turned away as a teenager having been forced to discect the plays and write esseys on the to a point well beyond tedium.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

There are some I love and some that just don't click for me. I'm like that with Asterix and Tintin books, too.

Know what you mean - Asterix is kwaliddy stuff, never really got on with that nobber Tintin, I had (still have) all the Asterix books, I bought Tintin goes to the Moon or whatever it's called but never felt the need to buy any more.

 

[ASC1951]

This is only going to get worse as Michael Goves new curriculum for English will strengthen the importance of Shakespeare, with pupils between the ages of 11 and 14 expected to have studied two of his plays.

How is that "getting worse"? The world's greatest playwright, as relevant now as 500 years ago. God forbid that teachers should be asked to use a bit of imagination in putting it across.

 

[Saluki]

I love Shakespear.
I did Romeo & Juliet at school and loathed it. Stupid teacher read it out in a monotone, including the stage directions and bored us all to tears. Then I did Much Ado and The Tempest at A level with an amazing teacher who was at school with Janet McTeer (so she said anyway) and Mrs Thingamy (I have forgotten her name sadly) breathed life into both plays and encouraged us to watch the BBC Shakespear version of Much Ado with Benedict played by Robert Lindsay. It was awesome. RL was just so bitchy. It was spellbinding. I liked the Branagh film version too but the BBC one was just the best.
Once at University I studied both plays again as well as Henry V, King Lear, Dick the shoot, The taming of the shrew and Hamlet. Again, the BBC versions were excellent, not that impressed with the Aussie blokes film version of Hamlet, he moved scenes about, I am sure he did. Was not terribly impressed with the Olivier version but the Branagh film version was brilliant. He really did look as he was off once more into the breach. Olivier was a wonderful Dick though, ooozing malevolence. Those princes never stood a chance.

I have always thought that there is room in the theatre world for a 'Rocky Horror' style production of Richard III. "When is the winter of discontent?" NOW is the winter of discontent. Yelling out "Don't mention the hump kid" when the princes are on stage. I really think that it would work.

Oh, love Tintin. Have all the books in English and in French. I became a groomer by accident as I wanted a dog like Milou (Snowy) and my Dad said that I had to learn to hand strip a terrier coat before I had one. I learned at a Saturday job and the rest is history. I still have a Snowy dog, the current one is a Parsons Russell not a WFT but she was free to good home.

The same A level lecturer gave me a love of Chaucer (not the modern English version either) too.

 

[Boris Bajic]

Know what you mean - Asterix is kwaliddy stuff, never really got on with that nobber Tintin, I had (still have) all the Asterix books, I bought Tintin goes to the Moon or whatever it's called but never felt the need to buy any more.

1. Flight 714

2. The Calculus Affair

The ones about Moon landings and galleons full of treasure are just a big pile of pants. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is either seven or ought to be seven.

Also, to see what popular communist stereotypes were like in the early 20th Century, have a look at Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. After a quick skim, it's not hard to see why Herge didn't have too many scruples about working for the occupying power in the early 40s.

 

[Yellow Fang]

I am glad some people love Shakespeare, but I am afraid I don't. I am with George Bernard Shaw and Leo Tolstoy. Not that I have read anything else by GBS I ever agreed with. I consider Shakespeare a bit of a fake. OTOH he writes about the quality of forgiveness being twice blessed and all; OTOH he writes a sycophantic play justifying Queen's Liz's grandfather's usurpation of the throne by vilifying Richard III, but says nothing about the far worse tyrant who was her father. When James I comes to the throne, he write a sycophantic play about his ancestors. I suppose criticising royalty was not good for business or your health back then, but it was still not particularly principled. I wonder what a Marxist interpretation of the Once More Unto the Breach speech would be. No doubt Prince Hal considers his humble comrades as brothers at the time of his military adventure, but it would not be too long be feudalism re-established itself. The bits and pieces I hear about his life don't impress me too much neither. The bit in his will about leaving his wife his second best bed is deliberately nasty. I read someone discovered some evidence of a dispute between Will's landlord and the landlord's son-in-law in which Will was mentioned but in which he apparently had no interest in resolving or taking a principled stand on. The recent newspaper story about him being censured for hoarding grain in order to sell it at a higher price just seems to fit in.

 

[vernon]

I used to like Shakespeare's Sister

You're not that old are you?

 

[ASC1951]

I am glad some people love Shakespeare, but I am afraid I don't. I am with George Bernard Shaw and Leo Tolstoy..... The recent newspaper story about him being censured for hoarding grain in order to sell it at a higher price just seems to fit in.

You are confusing the plays with the playwright. George Bernard Shaw was a serial adulterer, for that matter, but was still able to produce several plays that were getting on for half as good as he thought they were.

 

[vernon]

How is that "getting worse"? The world's greatest playwright, as relevant now as 500 years ago. God forbid that teachers should be asked to use a bit of imagination in putting it across.

Actually it's asking a lot of some English Teachers who will have never experienced a full Shakespeare play in written or performance form. Some of them will never have studied a whole book either.

 

[Maz]

Shakespeare's work was not written to be read; it was written to be watched and listened to by the masses. I loathed Shakespeare at school (we had to read Romeo and Juliet). We never even saw the play to give us a fighting chance to understand it!

 

[BigonaBianchi]

I have an A level in English lit...lots of Shakespeare was involved...bit of a waste of time really...but agree that his stuff grows on you with age...


...like fungus.

 

[Hover Fly]

I have seen a few films of Shakespeare over the years:

• Much ado about nothing (Branagh) - quite good. The British actors were better than the Americans, especially Richard Briars.
• Hamlet (Mel Gibson) - ok.
• Richard III (Ian McKellen) - risible and implausible but with a decent song and some good acting by Maggie Smith.
• Titus (Anthony Hopkins) - interesting video nasty.

I studied Macbeth at O level and can't say I actually liked it. Twenty years later I saw it with a works outing with Sean Bean as the chap himself - still didn't like it.

I've seen a few Shakespeare in the park type plays, usually comedies. They are pleasant enough when the weather's fine.

Which means you have seen my one and only film appearance, (soldier loading railway wagon), unless you blinked.

 

[Aperitif]

[QUOTE 2540857, member: 1314"]I disagree that he's the world's greatest playwright. He was a talented hack as a playwright - I'm thinking, for example, about his clumsy structural narrative drive. Themes of love, death and the meaning of one's existence are always universal themes straddling time and space. Other authors are as relevant now as when they wrote their stuff but that doesn't mean they need to be studied as part of a 50s nostalgia twee English dream dry-as-weetabix literary curriculum.

The modern Shakespeare is literature lite for tourists. Which is fine as at the time he was writing he was popular entertainment for the London crowd. Which in some was more noble as it was popular with the great unwashed locals.

He 's a good poet, though, I give him that. His worth remembering for his poetical talent.[/quote]

Which means that The Pogues (for example) were talented hacks at portraying a point of view in their time, User. (And they are crap with a Capital S) Now come on, get a grip and don't be so silly - you're better than that. Shakespeare portrayed concept, life and history.

 

[vernon]

I think that folk's opinions of Shakespeare is shaped by their school encounters with his works. I studied three of his plays: Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth and Julius Caesar. My teacher was inspirational and the analytical aspects of the plays were made very enjoyable. We were taken to see the Roman Polanski film version of Macbeth and prior knowledge of the play made it that much more enjoyable. I'll be forever grateful for the quality of Peter Noble's teaching and the love of literature that he instilled in me.