Shakespeare Fans discussion
Why Read Shakespeare?
Thanks for the topic Candy.My earliest memories are of memorising Hamlet's speeches - most of his speeches - to act out on the walk to high school, where I crossed waste ground and was unheard. His speeches got me addicted; I don't know how I came across them - definitely not through school, where Shakespeare was hideous and mostly R&J. Even when we did a play I liked, I hated to 'study' him in a class that didn't care.
I don't have a lot of Shakespeare in my life, so bless this group. Except for my sister, also a fan. Nobody else to discuss him with - ever.
Mod
so I would get a play and read one. And that was it. Then Frances Yates came my way in university and I became hooked.
I don't know anyone in "real" life who is into S at all. Most people who know I read the plays joke...like "why read a play?" I am so glad for this group!!!
I am also writing a character who is a Shakespeare actor so these days that is in the back of my mind while reading...
Candy wrote: "I don't know anyone in "real" life who is into S at all. Most people who know I read the plays joke...like "why read a play?" I am so glad for this group!!!..."I feel akin, Candy. My friends only laugh at me or worse than that. Growing up, very few books in the house; my sister invented going to plays, which was never done in the family before. Until I got to university I felt so alone... Alas one can't stay at university forever although I tried, and that's where we need groups like this.
Mod
Candy wrote: "I do think of online groups like this as a neighbourhood pub or a fun class gathering after class...."Why?
Why read anything?
Because it gives you something. You enjoy it, or get something else from it.
The fact that a specific author was responsible for it, to me, is a side issue.
I enjoy the ol' Bill I've read/seen...but I'm not a fan-boy...top writer though.
Mod
More like...you know there are a lot of writers and many who you can share over coffee with a neighbor, in a book club...but there are some writers where it really is a challenge to find other readers. Like James Joyce, Borges, Burroughs, Bolano. You can pass a John Grisham novel or Jane Hamilton novel to a participant at church or community meeting or mommy toddler drop in, but you take 2666, or corlianus, Titus or Junkie to such a setting you'd be hard pressed to find a willing soul no?
And besides...I wanted to see who was around and find out more about participants here O.B. you know some fun chit chat and visiting.
I enjoy the nostalge. Come on, guys, nostalge at us.And sorry, Old Barb (if you forgive the familiarity - I always liked your name, and we've met in a group or three) Shakespeare is an existence on his own. - From a worshipper.
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Candy wrote: "Hi...I thought it might be fun to find out why the folks here read Shakespeare...when did they feel they started to like him? Froma high school teacher? From acting classes? From college studies? ..."OK...missed where you were going with the thread when I posted last night...and had enjoyed a few pints of porter into the bargain.
We got some of the plays at school. Saw "the Scottish play" a few times (some dreadful, some smashing).
It was seeing them performed that got me into ol' Bill.
But when I stop and think about it the fact that I read the plays is a bit odd. I don't read screenplays...
Was ranting in the pub last night about Brando and whether he was any good or not. I think he blew his cool with "Apocalypse Now".
Now I think that one of the things about Shakespeare is that he maintained the standard of his work throughout. He didn't do a Brando or a Jimmy Dean (like Marlow). He kept going and was at the top of his game pretty much all the time.
But at the minute I'm not reading or seeing any Shakespeare. Loads of stuff by old dead Greek guys.
Bryn wrote: "I enjoy the nostalge. Come on, guys, nostalge at us.And sorry, Old Barb (if you forgive the familiarity - I always liked your name, and we've met in a group or three) Shakespeare is an existenc..."
Nae bother Bryn...
Remember that reading S has always been popular. As soon as his plays came out there was a demand to read them, and Romeo and Juliet was reprinted over and over throughout S's lifetime. In the early 18th century, when his plays were not regularly performed except as "adaptations", it was reading S which kept hime alive. Warburton, the great 18th century Shakespearean scholar, never saw a Shakespeare play performed, which seems very odd to us. It could be that ours is the first age when most educated English speaking people read S only rarely.
I'm going back to the original topic. My students would probably think I'm lying, but I hated Shakespeare in high school. But I had an old burnt out Humanities teacher who threw Lear at us without any guidance except his own over the top, occasional readings. I had very few good English teachers in Catholic high school, and the one who thought he was coolest had us analyze "Stairway to Heaven" with religious overtones.I didn't start to like Shakespeare for realsies until I hit my sophomore year of college and did the sonnets with a great teacher who used to jump up on his desk and recite in this quavering, Neil-Younglike voice--I could hear the magic in the words then.
Soon after I read Hamlet-in a class, I believe--and just fell hard--mostly for the character of Hamlet, but with subsequent rereadings--I have to admit, I've probably read Hamlet well over 40 times-- plus watching movies-- and can recite ridiculously long chunks of it if you'll sit still long enough to listen to me...those rereadings made me understand the context more thoroughly and made me absolutely adore the language.
Soon all Shakespeare became crystal clear to me. I took two Shakespeare courses in grad school where I learned to appreciate the comedies and histories, but other plays for a long time I merely liked . However, I became hardcore about the language when I started teaching Brit Lit. I got bored after a time with MacBeth over and again, and decided to let my classes pick which play sounded interesting to them. This forced me to thoroughly research the plays, and have kids act them out..that was when I really began to see what the big deal was all about.
I am a idolator.
Tracy wrote: "and did the sonnets with a great teacher who used to jump up on his desk and recite in this quavering, Neil-Younglike voice-- ..."I wish I'd been there...
Tracy, this is beautiful and I had to thank you for your anecdotes.
A world with Shakespeare in it... just gives me faith at times.
Mod
Then...the first time I read Lear I was so so. But for a book club I went back to it...and it was as if I was slapped across the face when I started to see something in Cordelia I had missed. And I saw the whole play as so topical for life and the way fathers are in the last generations: selfish, needy and spoiled at being the "leader" of a family...a very bad idea! A family should be the leader of a family...not one person!
I had a similar "awakening" with hamlet...when on a re-read I started to feel something special for Ophelia and to feel as if she wasn't depressed or crazy. I started to explore the idea that she saw her role as girlfriend and how womens side of relationships was such a rip off. I landed up writing and filming a short film with a contemporary version of Ophelia as the source for my female lead.
Thanks for the nice comments. A great book to read if you are a thorough Shakepeare accolyte is Anthony Burgess' Nothing Like the Sun (if you haven't already). If you treat it like fiction and think about Burgess as the great linguist mining the finest ore, it is very fun and beautiful. It sat on my bookshelf for a year or two after I rescued it from a dollar book sale, and after the good vibes of Hamlet success with my latest AP class (and reading Burgess' opinions that he was more proud of it than Clockwork Orange)I decided to give it a try. It is definitely only for superfans--but I gave it 5 starpoints.
Your film sounds intriguing. I have a friend in Chicago who makes movies--sounds like you two might have similar interests.
Hamlet. Oh yeah. I saw my first production when I was about 11 on the Hallmark Hall of Fame. I believe it was John Neville in the role. I was hooked! Since then I have seen it more times than I can count, Richard Chamberlain, Christopher Plummer, (I think it was his prdduction that had Michael Caine as Horatio, and every scene together was played almost as a love scene...electrifying!) and Richard Burton, Mel Gibson (actually very well done) Kevin Kline, Derek Jacobi, David Tennant (the last 2 both had Patrick Stewart as Claudius)...oh so many more, including a very interesting live production at the Pasadena Playhouse with Robert Vaughn as Hamlet (made more interesting by the fact that The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was still on TV, and you know how many times the word "uncle" occurs in the play, and a wonderful version at the Redlands Shakespeare Festival 2 years ago...Yes, I am totally hooked on the play, and though I love oh-so-many of Shakespeare's works, Hamlet has been my addiction since then. I must own 20 versions, some of which are unspeakably awful.
Hamlet became sort of a subtheme/subtext in my series "The Glastonbury Chronicles", as Stephen and Kevin and their subsequent incarnations are sort of Hamlet and Horatio in that incredibly tight relationship they have. I think my favourite part of the play is when Horatio tries to drink from the poisoned cup, and I invariably always wish Hamlet wouldn't stop him. That's the kind of relationship.
It is also pertinent that the first volume has Stephen's uncle trying to kill him and that he murdered Stephen's father...and several other things. It progressed from there, to the point that the final lines of the 3rd and 6th book of my series end with lines from Hamlet.
Yes, I am hooked, and the main character in my other series, Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe, will eventually meet up with Shakespeare, John Dee, Christopher Marlowe and several others of that period (still researching, should start writing that one in a few months).
I was given a tiny leather-bound copy of Hamlet by a friend in 1962. I carry it with me always, in a Sucrets box in my purse, even though I also have it in Kindle format on my cell phone.
Will order "Nothing Like The Sun" also.
I was 12 the first time I read R&J. It was not assigned reading for a class. I've always been a bookish person! When I was 11, we moved from Connecticut to Massachusetts. It was a traumatic move for my family for many reasons. My new school was religiously-affiliated, and everyone in my small class (20ish students in a combined 5th / 6th grade class room) had been together since kindergarten. I was lonely.I also spent a lot of time at the library. It was perhaps 1.5 miles from our apartment, and my sister and I would frequently walk down there and spend hours sitting and reading. I decided it was time for me to read "great literature" and discovered that the 810 and 820 series of the Dewey Decimal system had those types of books. This was a smallish library, and those sections were about 3 bookshelves. I decided I would read them all (I didn't), and R&J was one of the first books I picked up from there.
In high school, we read several plays. I was also required to memorize a passage from one of the plays, and the teacher gave us a list of acceptable passages for this exercise. I chose Macbeth's soliloquy after he learns of his wife's demise: "She should have died hereafter, there would have been time for such a word..." I can still quote all of it.
I was a science major in college. While I took a number of literature courses, none of them included Shakespeare plays. It's been a long time since I've read any Shakespeare.
However, last year, we got season tickets to the local Shakespeare theatre. Despite the name, only 2 of the 8 plays performed annually are actual Shakespeare plays. We went to R&J, but unfortunately missed the Cymbeline performance.
We have season tickets for next year as well. This year, the two Shakespeare plays are Othello and Titus Andronicus, neither of which I've read. I figured I will read the plays shortly before we are attending the performances. I believe this will be the first time since high school that I'm actually reading one of the plays!
Mod
I feel myself in your story, Greengirl, without the move, though. Othello is a great play,but I have never read Titus Andronicus, because I hear it is so gory. I have an idea of the basic plot, I think. One of my history teacher friends always teases me to do it with my class because he loves horror movies and knows I'm squeamish.
@Candy -- As you know, we moved to Orlando from Boston about 10 years ago. I often say that I feel like I moved to a cultural void. (This feeling was very much reinforced this year as I have been to both Seattle and New Orleans for the first time ever. I really, really miss big city living!) Last year I decided that, even though I do think this is a generally true statement, that it is less persuasive for me to say it when I wasn't taken advantage of the cultural opportunities that existed here, meager as they may be. Hence season tix to the Shakespeare theatre. We also got season tix to the Philharmonic's Pops series for last season, and are continuing that for next season as well. For next season, I also bought season tix to the Broadway in Orlando series. Between the two play series, we'll see 14 plays next year, plus the 5 Philharmonic performances!@Tracy -- the local theatre's description of Titus Andronicus does include a mature audience due to violence warning. I don't know anything about that play!
GG:We are neighbors suffering the same Tropical ennui--I'm due south of you. But of "all prison's, Orlando's the worst". To paraphrase.
Mod
Its like the story of the two monks travellng. They finally arrange to stop over in a village after sleeping in forests for weeks. One monk is going to go to a brothel, and the other is outraged and going to a temple.
When they meet the next day the monk who was at the brothel said all he thought about was the other monk at the temple. The monk who went to the temple said, all he thought about was the monk who went to the brothel. So who was more "spiritual" right?
When I was little, I only knew Shakespeare as a random guy who wrote a lot of things, or was he a philosopher? I never really cared. Then when I was in high school, I went to a friend's house and saw Romeo and Juliet. I thought at first it was a stupid play about a boy and a girl who committed suicide because of "love". Anyway, I felt that I should give it a chance, and I read the prologue. It was enough to see that the language is well-written and poetic. Thankfully, it was a two-column book with commentary and explanation so I could better understand it. Then I finished it and began to recite it again and again just for fun. :D
After R&J, I bought a Complete Shakespeare book, and started to read the comedies (because they are so funny), and then the tragedies. I even memorise some of the sonnets and Mark Anthony's speech in JC - all just for fun. I love Shakespeare.
Just like some of you, I can't find a fellow Shakespeare lover nearby. I'm not living in English-speaking country and most people here think that Shakespeare is too hard to understand.
Candy wrote: "Hi...I thought it might be fun to find out why the folks here read Shakespeare...when did they feel they started to like him? Froma high school teacher? From acting classes? From college studies? Or as a way to pursue the study of lifes big questions?How does Shakespeare play into your "real" life? Do you have friends who act in plays? Or discuss the plays? "
Well I was introduced to Shakespeare in middle school/Junior High. The play was Macbeth and I would end up reading it two more times in high school. I didn't start liking Shakespeare until I saw Kenneth Branagh's version of Hamlet my 1st year of college (by that time I had also read/watched Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Shakespeare's Sonnets)-it was love from then on.
Shakespeare plays into my real life by making me stop and think. All of his plays seem to address the universal realities of what it means to be human, no matter what era you live in. Hamlet is the greatest example of this for me and you can read my review to see why in detail.
I always recommend for questions like this one that people find a copy of the documentary Looking for Richard. Such an underrated but powerful look at what/why Shakespeare is for the modern world.
In school we did Romeo & Juliet and King Lear and I secretly really liked them (secretly because it just would not of been cool to admit you liked them!)then i started reading the sonnets which i loved, but i've never known anyone else who likes Shakespeare. Despite buying a complete works years ago i hadn't read any more of the plays until recently when, after watching the BBC's Hollow Crown i decided to get in there and read the complete works, so i've read Othello and and just started Hamlet.
Lynda wrote: "In school we did Romeo & Juliet and King Lear and I secretly really liked them (secretly because it just would not of been cool to admit you liked them!)then i started reading the sonnets which i l..."I think people who read classic are actually cool. It needs contemplation and deep thinking when one decides to read them. I cannot find fellow Shakespeare lover nearby, so I jump to the internet and find people like you. We can talk about it, right? ;)
By the way, Hamlet is an amazing play.
Listra wrote: "By the way, Hamlet is an amazing play. "Agreed!!
I wanted as many Shakespeare lovers as possible to know that my book, Rap-Notes: Shakespeare's Greatest Hits (Vol. 1) is now available on amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.I'm hoping lots of middle- and high-school kids who might be intimidated by the Bard's language will enjoy getting an overview of the plays in a fun way and then go on to read the glorious originals.
Since I was a kid my family would go see the plays at the college and then in high school I was cast in The Tempest. I've read most of the plays and sonnets.
My family never read much of Shakespeare, and as I am brazilian, all my literature education was much more based in the portuguese authors. So, it was a bit complicated to know Mr. S.When I was 12 I started drama classes, just because it was a kind of excuse to still buy costumes.
It was in a rainy day, when my mom got stuck in the traffic and I had to wait for her 'till late in the drama school that I first heard the words of shakespeare. I knew who he was, I knew he had wrote a play about two lovers who died in the end and something else about a guy and a skull, but I never had heard the words he wrote. It was a boy, a bit older than me, declaiming that macbeth line: tomorrow, tomorrow...
Tomorrow came and I made my mum buy me something from that guy called Shakespeare. First came Romeo with his juliete, macbeth, hamlet, and then I got addicted. It was love at first sight.
And well, the drama classes made me addicted too. And now I finished high school I'll try to go to the "drama university".
And yes, I wish my friends were more into this "shakespeare stuff"!
PS: Sorry for the mistakes and the poor language, I know Shakespeare would't forgive me, but english is not my mother language!
Well at least you have the unique perspective on it. And don't worry about the english, in Shakespeare's day modern english still wasn't even standardized so people spelled in all kinds of crazy ways.
I love this thread. When I was a very young kid, kindergarten, I think, my mother had gone back to graduate school and was reading Shakespeare. She had an edition of the complete works that was illustrated by Rockwell Kent, and I was fascinated by these. And that led me to try to start reading them in elementary school. I remember asking my mother to tell me the story of Cymbeline one evening when I was in the bathtub. So Shakepeare has all these intimate associations for me.In 7th grade, our wonderful English teacher had us do Act 4 scene 1 of Macbeth for the Hallowe'en program for the whole school. I got to be one of the Macbeths (two alternate casts). That's the scene where the witches conjure Banquo's descendants out of their cauldron. At least that's how we staged it. I was utterly smitten. The, the next year, in our Unitarian Sunday School, the 7th and 8th graders put on the whole play (judiciously cut). (No wonder people think Unitarians can't really be religious....) Anyway, Shakespeare has always seemed a part of life to me. I'm very lucky, I know. He's indispensable.
I like reading classic literature because of the historical aspect and the timelessness of it. Plus, Shakespeare is really entertaining.
If anyone is interested in reading his works in order please join my new group: http://www.goodreads.com/group/invite...
Tracy wrote: "It's the language."Yes, the language, the invention- you can see, feel our english language as it develops in his plays. And along with that the dramatic invention, as he uses plots familiar from classic sources to create dramas with a subtlety of characterization unknown before him.
Tracy wrote: "It's the language."Yeah, so true. His plays without the words would lose their power.
I've always been an actor and open to new ideas. The Shakespeare thing really started before a school open night past year. My friend had Shakespeare on her iPod and we acted out the first scene of MSND. There were only three of us, but it really sparked something. I'm working to convert my sisters the the Shakespearean way if thinking. I love the no fear by spark notes and learnt to read Shakespeare using them. I'm working on some Shakespeare books on wattpad.
Hi Shakespearegirl-I'd love to send you my ten-minute summary of MSND in rap.
It's part of my new book and audio, "Rap-Notes: Shakespeare's Greatest Hits." (By Mr. Z)
I'm not sure how to send the mp3 to you without knowing your email. So go to Rap-Notes.com and leave a comment and I'll send you a free mp3 of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Mr. Z
Candy wrote: "Hi...I thought it might be fun to find out why the folks here read Shakespeare...when did they feel they started to like him? Froma high school teacher? From acting classes? From college studies? ..."I had a wonderful professor in college named Marjorie Garber who could perform Shakespeare's lines with the most intense feeling---not too much, or over the top, but just perfect, just right. I listened to her lectures with interest, but when she started to perform some lines, I held my breath and almost died from pleasure!
I took a class in Shakespeare in graduate school and wondered why when Romeo and Juliet are together they don't interact with other characters.
Later, when I was working as a professor in Japan, I started wondering why the first line of "Romeo and Juliet" is about coal (also the second line).
And then it hit me.....some months later, after I had researched about the coal pollution problem in London....that "Juliet is the sun"...
My heart was beating fast and it was almost as if there was an explosion in my brain.
And my life has not been the same since....
Mod
Today I am thinking about it and again...asking myself why? What is my compulsion...because it really is a compulsion...
There is a feeling there is a mystery in the plays for me. Something to solve. I also feel that each time the plays challenge my brain. They seem to magically make me feel more alive...as I think about a character. I love thinking about how I would make the stage, the clothes...who would play what. And what lies inside the plays...why does it feel so multilayered?
Gemma wrote: "Candy wrote: "Hi...I thought it might be fun to find out why the folks here read Shakespeare...when did they feel they started to like him? Froma high school teacher? From acting classes? From col..."Gemma-
How I envy your having had Marjorie Garber as a teacher. I love her wonderful mind, as I've gotten to experience it in her books. And your description of that wonderful intellectual explosion, as a new way of experiencing suddenly supercedes what had been possible before, well you evoke it beautifully!
I've already shared my earliest experiences with Shakespeare. Later, besotted with that kind of theater, I became an actor, and went to Juilliard, where we worked endlessly on vocal technique, speech, and basic text-work. That meant a lot of time spent on making the language of other periods come alive, and sounding natural. It was glorious getting to know that language so well, working on it until it felt like a perfectly reasonable way to express oneself. Once you get that language in you, well the paltry means of expression that passes for communication nowadays just seems poverty-stricken....
I will also confess that it made me a very prickly audience member. Most of the productions of Shakespeare that I see nowadays, and this includes many acclaimed ones from England, I cannot bear, usually because of the terrible verse speaking. For example, nowadays, many actors, particularly younger ones, seem to think that by emphasizing the personal pronouns (I, you, we, etc.) that they are making the language more "personal" or something. The key to verse is the scansion. If you have a question about meaning of a line, read it in strict iambic pentameter, with the emphases where they naturally occur. I challenge anyone to point out lines in Shakespeare where the first person pronouns are always emphasized. Far more often they are not the most important words in the line. It always makes the actors sound as if someone is arguing with them about WHOSE prayers they are talking about, or WHOSE kingdom, or WHOSE love. Honestly, what are they being taught, if anything?!
Oh dear, you see how cranky I get. But it is just because I love the work so, I hate to hear it torn to tatters, to very shreds.....
best to all,
G
Gilbert wrote: "Gemma wrote: "Candy wrote: "Hi...I thought it might be fun to find out why the folks here read Shakespeare...when did they feel they started to like him? Froma high school teacher? From acting cla..."Fantastic comment. I could not agree more with you that there is no good reason to read Shakespeare's lines, which are more like poetry, like modern plays with the pronouns all obvious and in-your-face.
Have you (or has anyone out there) read a great book by Ron Rosenbaum called The Shakespeare Wars? He identifies a certain magic which is accessible only to those performing Shakespeare----not just reading it. He mentions "secret plays".
I agree that there are secret plays in Shakespeare's plays. In fact, it is likely that your "right brain" knows them and can access them a bit. Just as performers can access these secret plays. Because "right brain" thinking is spatial, nontemporal, non-verbal. It is a secret, "unconscious" type of thinking, like daydreaming.
Shakespeare is special to me because he concretely accessed the "right brain" with gestures or positions of the actors (having Juliet aloft, actually she is the sun). That is, he could go at audiences with both left brain (words, plot, time-dependent story) and a right brain (non-temporal, gestic, subconscious) approaches. I mean that he did this deliberately. And he called it "magic".....
Gilbert wrote: "Gemma wrote: "Candy wrote: "Hi...I thought it might be fun to find out why the folks here read Shakespeare...when did they feel they started to like him? Froma high school teacher? From acting cla..."Yes! That pronoun thing! Good catch on what is wrong...
I was never exposed to Shakespeare at school. I had a one semester course in college. Then I went to get a Master's degree in English literature at Wroxton College in England. The first play that transformed my life was Richard II. Ian Richardson who most Americans saw in The British House of Cards as Francis Urquirt, switched roles with another actor called Richard Pascoe. One night as Richard and one night as Bolingbroke. The poetry washed over me and I was hooked. I spent the next 20 years of my life living a short drive from Stratford. I have seen all but five plays performed. One particular play was Macbeth. Dame Judy Dench and Sir Ian Mckellan played the leads. We went back to see it four more times. It is nothing like the film they made of this production. The film is quite disappointing. Shakespeare was never meant to be simply read it is meant to be breathed and performed.
Louise wrote: "I was never exposed to Shakespeare at school. I had a one semester course in college. Then I went to get a Master's degree in English literature at Wroxton College in England. The first play tha..."Hello Louise,
I agree completely with you about how Shakespeare's plays are to be experienced in performance, not read. I saw that wonderful Richard II when it toured to Brooklyn, lo many years ago, now. The whole company was magnificent. I don't remember who played John of Gaunt, but the beautiful speech about England was unforgettable. In that same tour, they brought a ravishing "Love's Labour's Lost" in which Richardson played Berowne. I'll never forget how he stepped to the edge of the stage for his long, intricate speeches in rhymed couplets, dense with rhetoric and satire, and did... nothing. He stood still and spoke with such concentration- the images were so specific in HIS mind that they were transported by the beauty of his speech and the clarity of his thought into OUR minds. It was a miracle of sorts. He trusted the verse, and he had the technique, the power of concentration, to make it come to life, without jumping about, pointing and waving his arms. He was amazing.
Oh, how one can go on about such events- when Shakespeare has been transmitted so effectively- it changes one.
All best,
Gilbert
Gilbert wrote: "Louise wrote: "I was never exposed to Shakespeare at school. I had a one semester course in college. Then I went to get a Master's degree in English literature at Wroxton College in England. The..."Beautifully true. I can picture it.
Shakespeare Fans
Books mentioned in this topic
Macbeth (other topics)Romeo and Juliet (other topics)
Julius Caesar (other topics)
Shakespeare's Sonnets (other topics)
Hamlet (other topics)
How does Shakespeare play into your "real" life? Do you have friends who act in plays? Or discuss the plays?