14 ms·
My ranking of every Shakespeare play
- lbeckman314 3y agoWhat are the handy SHA-1 sums for? "(By the way, a couple of handy SHA-1 sums for those who know how to use them:)" 0ae909e5444c17183570407bd09a622d2827751e 55c77ed7afb8d377c9626527cc762bda7f3e1d83
- lkbm 3y agoTorrents for the TV adaption he mentions.
- lbeckman314 3y agoAh, thank you!
- karaterobot 3y agoI've read all the plays, but haven't seen many of them performed. My ranking would be different than his, but that's just how these types of things go. I appreciate the effort.
- all2 3y agoThere are a fair few that were made into movies in the 60s and 70s that are definitely worth a watch. I saw Taming of the Shrew for the first time in a long time and caught some hysterical jokes that I completely missed as a kid.
- ojbyrne 3y agoThat was fun to read, even though I would disagree with much of the article. I generally like the comedies least, the OP likes them most, but it's nice to see people talk about Shakespeare in an article linked here. A couple of comments I would make: * "People will think I’m crazy, but yes, I’m placing Henry IV above Henry V." I doubt many people would think you're crazy, the Henry IVs are generally considered better and for the reason mentioned: Falstaff. * On performances of Richard III: "I liked two different performances for different reasons. The 1995 major film puts the play in the World Word II era. It’s solid and does well standing alone. The BBC production has linked casting with the three parts of Henry VI, which allows one to enjoy it in full in its broader context. It’s also well-performed, but obviously has less spectacle and a lower budget." -- you really need to watch the 1955 version for Laurence Olivier's performance. Also on editions: The Riverside Shakespeare is great. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1036552 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1036552
- jfengel 3y agoSo much depends on the performance. Some of the comedies make great productions, suitably edited and with the right amount of physical comedy. Right on the page they are nearly all a slog. The tragedies make better reading.
- ghaff 3y agoThere have been some really good productions of the comedies, e.g. Emma Thompson's Much Ado About Nothing. But often as I have seen some of them over the years, the mistaken identities/gender swapping/etc. all sort of blend together for me past some point. (Case in point, when I looked up my example, I originally typed in As You Like It.) I definitely remember the tragedies as more distinct entities.
- as_bntd 3y agoLaurence Olivier is a great actor. I've enjoyed several of his films, including his Hamlet adaptation (which he also directed). I have yet to watch Richard III though.
- tomcam 3y agoI thought he overacted that role. I feel it requires a much lighter touch than most actors give it.
- as_bntd 3y agoIt was my first encounter with Hamlet so I didn't have another frame of reference to judge the performance. And I had already watched him in other movies such as Rebecca (I didn't like the movie except for the (some of the) end) so maybe I was used to his acting.
- tomcam 3y ago...or maybe my own taste sucks. Most movie historians adore the guy.
- as_bntd 3y ago> Like many collections, they omit The Two Noble Kinsmen due to unclear authorship, and for this reason I’m omitting it from my list as well. > Also, around 20% of plays credited to Shakespeare were collaborations of some degree, though the collaboration details have been long lost. Isn't it accepted that The Two Noble Kinsmen was a collaboration? EDIT: > [On Hamlet] You’d be hard-pressed to find something that beats the faithful, star-studded 1996 major film adaption. Personally, I liked the (less faithful) 1948 film. EDIT2: I also found it amusing that the play he liked the best is the only Shakespeare play I've actually acted in (before his favorite adaptation came out).
- jfengel 3y agoSeveral are confirmed collaborations, including Pericles and Henry VIII (and 1 Henry VI is almost certainly). The exclusion of 2NK is a bit arbitrary but you draw the line somewhere. I also excluded it from my quest to do every play. In the end I did it as a Zoom production, which kinda half counts, as is appropriate. It was actually a good deal better than I expected. I found some very good writing, and the plot was easier to clean up than, say, Two Gents or All's Well.
- dan-robertson 3y agoI ‘studied’ Much Ado About Nothing in school (as the author wished for) but it was lost on me. Probably the issue is not normally the specific choice of play. But there are lots of things that are hard about Shakespeare in school, even ignoring the unfamiliar language. (A friend from another country said they studied some Shakespeare which had been translated into his language so didn’t sound so unfamiliar, but I can’t imagine something like that being done for english-speaking schools). I feel like The Tempest is lower than I expected. I think it is often liked for not so easily fitting into one of the traditional genres. I feel like I see productions advertised reasonably frequently but I also did this at school so maybe I notice them more for that reason. I think the OP has the same favourite play as fictional classics professor Jim Lloyd, which is interesting for some, I guess.
- ojbyrne 3y agoAs well as comedies, histories, and tragedies, some plays include The Tempest are often classified in a 4th genre - "romances" [0] 0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_late_romances#:~:text=The%20late%20romances%2C%20often%20simply,also%20included%20in%20the%20grouping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_late_romances#....
- necubi 3y agoThe comedies are so much better performed than on the page. I find the humor gets a bit lost in the archaic language, but a good cast is able to bring it for modern audiences.
- as_bntd 3y agoThe problem with the stage is that it is much harder to stay on top of the plot. Especially when you aren't used to the language.
- muffinman26 3y agoIf you have good enough performers, unfamiliarity with the language won't get in the way. It might seem a bold assertion, but there's a reason that classically-trained Shakespearian actors are often cast in sci-fi shows (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as perhaps the most famous examples). They're trained to convey more information through intonation and gesture so that you don't need to know the words they're saying, which translates well to performances in invented languages.
- jfengel 3y agoTimon of Athens is much better if you view it as a black comedy. One of the best compliments I ever received was an audience member who said, "Why don't they do this play more often?" Well, it really sucks if you take it seriously.
- dang 3y agoA well-known software consultant/writer once told me that his years-long hobby, with his wife, was to watch every film of every Shakespeare play. They were working their way through all the Hamlets, all the Macbeths, all the etc., in chronological sequence—indexed by (play, film date), not (film date, play). That's a lot of Hamlets. Not sure what they were doing with the Shakespeare movies that got made since they started.
- irrational 3y agoDid that include things like the modernized Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio or Gnomio and Juliet?
- bombcar 3y agoAnd brings up the question - do you classify the Lion King as a Hamlet? ;)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lr4444lr 3y agoMy shrink pointed out in a conversation once as a tangent that Hamlet was not-so-subtly a psychoanalytic masterpiece: Hamlet watches his uncle carry out the Oedipal fantasy of killing his father and marrying his mother, and is haunted by a "ghost" to take action. It is not Shakespeare's only play to feature historical fiction or political machination by a long shot, so one should probe for other reasons to explain why it's proved so enduringly popular.
- vr46 3y agoHamlet has all the best lines, but by god do you have to slog through so much of the play to get to them, including Ophelia's endless wailing. I've seen it half-a-dozen times and it is never ever not a slog in some way, not with Andrew Scott, nor with Benedict Cumberbatch or Paapa Essiedu. It's just a bloody long play, or feels like it, and I imagine in Shakespeare's day, audiences wandered in and out of the auditorium casually to stretch and top up on booze + vittles whereas now you're fused into the seat on arrival and too stiff to get out at the interval without a winch.
- bombcar 3y agoI’ve had a director argue pretty convincingly that Hamlet is a “built your own adventure” play where you’re supposed to select some scenes and remove others, and that it may have arisen from multiple revisions.
- el_nahual 3y agoAnyone who likes Shakespeare--or anyone who wants to like it--should watch this marvelous BBC Series called "Playing Shakespeare": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2VnxiW3oqk&list=PLboSQWmG70j_S2nWkRlncZYW49nLeFKWj https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2VnxiW3oqk&list=PLboSQWmG70... It's produced by the Royal Shakespeare company and is comprised simply of some of the greatest shakeasperean actors (Judi Dench, Ian McKellan, David Suchet, Patrick Stewart) talking about different elements of how to act shakespare. I recommend starting with Episode 8, "Exploring a character" if only to see David Suchet utterly outclass (the much more famous) Patrick Stewart in their portrayal of Shylock.
- deepspace 3y agoThis clip by Ian McKellan talking about acting Macbeth was an eye-opener for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGbZCgHQ9m8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGbZCgHQ9m8 It shows what a genius and consummate professional McKellan is, and demonstrates the effort he puts into preparing for acting.
- AquinasCoder 3y agoTo add to this, I have a much deeper appreciation for all the works of Shakespeare I have seen performed rather than merely read. Even hearing certain soliloquies out loud makes them much more powerful and engaging. I think Shakespeare is better if you suspend belief a bit in some plot machinations and enjoy the work as performed and written. It's not that you shouldn't analyze the work and think deeply on its themes, but I find that many approach Shakespeare as a philosopher first rather than as a playwright and poet.
- gjkood 3y agoOT wrt. Shakespeare, but David Suchet's portrayal of Agatha Christie's Poirot is one of my favorite shows. What a wonderful classy portrayal of the character! I enjoy it more with each repeated viewing.
- tagawa 3y agoWhat a wonderful discovery - thank you!
- 3y ago
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoLoved this. But would like numbers next to the plays. Since it is a ranking.
- dbtc 3y agoOk. let titles = document.getElementsByTagName('h3') for(let i = titles.length; i > 0; i--) { titles[i-1].textContent = i + ' ' + titles[i-1].textContent }
- FrustratedMonky 3y agogetElementsByTagName('h3') How do you know all 'h3' is a play title?
- dri_ft 3y agogetHenriadByPlayName('1h4')
- irrational 3y ago> Like many of you, I had assigned reading for several Shakespeare plays in high school. I loathed these assignments. I wasn’t interested at the time, nor was I mature enough to appreciate the writing. Even revisiting as an adult, the conventional selection — Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, etc. — are not highly ranked on my list. For the next couple of decades I thought that Shakespeare just wasn’t for me. I feel this. I think trying to teach these things to immature teenagers is a real disservice and forms a lifelong disdain for many of the great works. I was in my late 30s before I tried Shakespeare, Old Man and the Sea, The Count of Monte Cristo, etc. again. I loved them, but I easily could have never touched them again after the hatred I developed during high school.
- brewdad 3y agoWe found a local group that does Shakespeare in the park every summer. When our son was about 12, we took him to a couple shows including A Midsummer Night's Dream which he had acted out in class that year. Seeing it on stage, with actors who know what they are doing, made Shakespeare "click" for him and really for me too. We've probably seen about 10 different performances by now and all of us actually look forward to the next one. I highly recommend it for anyone who thinks they don't like Shakespeare but is open-minded enough to give it a shot again.
- allturtles 3y agoHow do people find The Hollow Crown as an adaptation of the Henriad cycles? [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hollow_Crown_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hollow_Crown_(TV_series)
- twiddling 3y agoSimon Russell Beale's Falstaff was superb IMO. Hiddleston as a good Hal. Jeremy Irons was, well, Jeremy Irons I rather enjoyed the first four. the latter three with Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III were rather weak. Especially when you look at Olivier's film.
- vr46 3y agoOh Lord, SRB in the Almeida’s Richard II was a chore, good at despair but the play was pared down and confusing instead of challenging.
- bazoom42 3y agoThe Richard II eith Ben Whishaw is great! Didn’t care that much for the rest.
- paulsutter 3y agoNot trying to start any debate here with Shakespeare fans, just intend this as a supportive word for those of us who just don’t enjoy Shakespeare - Voltaire declared Hamlet a ‘vulgar and barbarous play’ and that ‘one would take this work to be the fruit of the inspiration of a drunken savage’ - George Bernard Shaw: ’. “There is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare,” he said. “It would be positively a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him.” - Tolstoy: “I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: “King Lear,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamlet” and “Macbeth,” not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole of the civilized world to be trivial and positively bad, or whether the significance which this civilized world attributes to the works of Shakespeare was itself senseless.”
- irrational 3y agoSounds like a more eloquent version of modern stone throwing against popular books. Hang out on r/books and you soon read similar diatribes against Project Hail Mary, The Way of Kings, etc.
- sho_hn 3y agoHuh, PHM is unpopular? Artemis was fairly boring, but Hail Mary was a wonderful pageturner.
- stavros 3y agoIt's not unpopular, there are just people who dislike it.
- themadturk 3y agoI wouldn't exactly call Artemis boring, but PHM was much better.
- 3y ago
- AlbertCory 3y agoFavorite quote by Azimov: He was on some talk show, and the host asked why he wrote Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare: aren't there already thousands of books about Shakespeare? He said, "Yeah, but not by me."
- munchler 3y ago> Romeo and Juliet ... A beautiful play, but I just don’t connect with its romantic core. Anyone who has children understands that this play is 100% a tragedy and is in no way romantic. Two teenage idiots think they're in love and end up killing themselves stupidly to prove it. The adults are also doofuses. The play itself is brilliant, but horrifying.
- bazoom42 3y agoThey are in love. This is what makes it such a tragedy. Romeo and Juliet are not idiots, they are clearly the most sensible persons in the play. And it is anachronisic to call them teenagers, since the idea of “teenage” as a stage between childhood and adulthood is a 20th century innovation. In the universe of the play, they are adults and of marrying age. Apparently some teachers try to teach the play as a warning against young love - probably because they are afraid of students emulating the sex and suicide. But if you actually read the play, it is entirely on the side of the young lovers and condemns the parents and society. Radical, even today!
- rcxdude 3y agoit can be both: clearly the feud is idiotic, but also the framing does go a little out of its way to show how their love is largely young infatuation. it's tragic through the interaction of multiple reasonable and unreasonable elements in all the characters.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago>but also the framing does go a little out of its way to show how their love is largely young infatuation. I'm not sure that Shakespeare really had a concept of beyond young infatuation like we have today, probably the best examples (where the couple still feels like they have anything to do with each other more intimate than running a household) would be Claudius and Gertrude and Macbeth and his wife, neither of which couple had so much to recommend them over Romeo and Juliet.
- 3y ago
- dekhn 3y agoI remember the teacher talking up Romeo and Juliet and being fairly unimpressed. But when I read King Lear, I was electrified- that scene with the king ranging around in the field while the fool says smart things is really good IMHO. I saw the Scottish Play put on by my high school theater and it was also great. Over time I've come to appreciate his fragments: "But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? Tis the east, and Juliet is the sun..." It came as a big surprise after reading and parsing out whole plays that other kids in my class were just reading some short guide and talking like they understood it. THe best movie version of the Tempest is Forbidden Planet, which can also just be viewed purely as science fiction.
- bazoom42 3y ago“Prosperos books” is a brilliant version of the Tempest. Forbidden Planet is a great movie in its own right, but at best “inspired by”. It uses a similar setup, but the story is entirely different.
- ghaff 3y agoThe Tempest is one I keep coming back to.
- MrVandemar 3y ago> I saw the Scottish Play ... Remind me, which one was that again? :-)
- redcap 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scottish_play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scottish_play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth#Superstition_and_%22The_Scottish_Play%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth#Superstition_and_%22Th...
- dekhn 3y agoIt's the Scottish Play. Do you refer to it any other way?
- throwway120385 3y agoIf anyone is interested in a retelling of King Lear as a samurai film, Akira Kurosawa has an interesting take on it in the movie Ran.
- topkai22 3y agoShakespeare remains a great example of the network effect in art. His works on their own are good, but not necessarily better than all other options in isolation. However, for various reasons Shakespeare became incredibly famous/popular and so many subsequent works reference Shakespearean works. Now it’s impossible to avoid Shakespeare if you want to fully understand a huge swath of English literature. Meaning people will keep putting on Shakespeare, and and others will continue creating derivative works, continuing the popularity.
- jsmith99 3y agoMeasure for Measure is one of my favourites and I'm glad they enjoyed it so much. But it's much darker than they imply. The Duke is not necessarily 'soft hearted', more manipulative; and the ending where he informs Isabella he will marry her is not usually played as a happy ending anymore. The play has the only Shakespearean comic scenes that are still remotely funny. Angelo's struggle with temptation is also fascinating. The BBC radio play of it is also excellent https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b0wrpp https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b0wrpp
- sramsay 3y agoBeen teaching Shakespeare at the college level for a long time. At the end of the semester I like to ask them which play they'd cut from the syllabus next semester and which they'd insist on keeping for the next group. Measure for Measure consistently tops the list of keepers year after year.
- pdonis 3y ago> The play has the only Shakespearean comic scenes that are still remotely funny. This seems rather extreme. None of the other comedies make the grade? Not to mention comic scenes in the history plays (for example, pretty much any scene with Falstaff in Henry IV), and even in some of the tragedies (for example, Osric inviting Hamlet to duel with Laertes)?
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoI can't agree with the description of Macbeth "dropping the ball with the porter scene". It's a darkly hilarious release of the tension in the previous scene. Macbeth is losing his mind in guilt, and then suddenly you're in a comedic relief scene, with a hungover drunkard cracking jokes about whiskey dick. His initial monologue has perhaps not aged as gracefully, but the humor in this hungover buffoon incorporating the knocking at the gate he's supposed to be tending can be funny enough in its own right.
- sandkoan 3y agoYou're absolutely right. The comedic relief scene is almost necessary to avoid us being stretched too taut after the previous. Thomas de Quincey has a great piece reflecting on the very same: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/macbeth/knockingatgate.html http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/macbeth/knockingatga...
- bombcar 3y agoHe was saying the scene is incredibly important and the version of Macbeth he liked best dropped the ball on the porter scene. Which, as you say, is a critical ball-drop because that scene is very important for the audience.
- adamgordonbell 3y agoAs a kid having to read Shakespeare what was lost on me, because of the language, was the language. Will worked hard to turn a phrase. "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." "The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream." These are catchy lines, even today.
- dbtc 3y agoHe wrote for our time too
- Solvency 3y agoIt's almost like basic human behavior transcends time.
- bombcar 3y agoShakespeare has such influence that’s it’s almost more correct to say he wrote English than that he wrote in English.
- codersfocus 3y ago150+ words are said to be coined by him
- MrJohz 3y agoIn fairness, I think a lot of that is him writing in a vernacular English that wouldn't have been recorded much in official documents or other writings. So he probably didn't coin it so much as save it for posterity. Otherwise his plays would have been like those fantasy novels whether the author gets slightly too excited about using their made up words for everything.
- 3y ago
- Jun8 3y agoObligatory comment for the few who do not know: nothing was Elizabethan slang for vagina, which makes the title of Much Ado About Nothing funny (https://amp.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jun/05/much-ado-about-nothing-review https://amp.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jun/05/much-ado-abo...). Hamlet also has the same pun: Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap? Ophelia: Ay, my lord. Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters? Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord. Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs. Ophelia: What is, my lord? Hamlet: Nothing. Hamlet means country as in cuntry. My high school English teacher never pointed these out!
- seagullriffic 3y agoThis is great, thanks. For anyone who might take a recommendation, the 1993 "Much Ado" is, indeed, excellent. It's a play filled with joie de vivre and the movie reflects that. Featuring an unexpected Don John. Then the 2012 Much Ado is one of the better things Joss Whedon did.
- bawolff 3y agoWhedon's much ado is what got me interested in shakespeare as an adult. I liked how it let the funny parts still be funny but the dramatic parts were allowed to be serious and not played for a laugh.
- mickhead23 3y agoAttn music lovers: if you're bored by Shakespeare like I am, try some opera adaptions. Often it's a richer and more rewarding experience. Verdi did some. Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi is based on Will's sources and is much better than his play.
- smitty1e 3y agoI watched Stacy Keach as Lear, which features a line to the blinded Gloucester fit for the ages: "Get thee glass eyes, And like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not."
- voz_ 3y agoShakespeare is food for the soul. I never tire of it. Every time I go back and re-read it, there is something new to discover.
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoShakespeare may be the closest writing to the Bible that I have read. There's a bunch of great depth in history in commentary. I've read half of his works. I would not know how to rank them. I have done textual analysis of them. I would venture to say that if you do not like reading them, they are actually plays, and they should be seen on the stage. It feels in a lot of the gaps. I did my best to quote Shakespeare or his idioms in every corporate meeting. People have begun to catch on.
- frankfrankfrank 3y agoAhhh … someone clearly does not understand the point or background of Timon of Athens
- SkipperCat 3y agoGreat article. One thing that breaks my heart is that Shakespeare is taught in school by reading the plays. That's a sub-par way to consume the content. Students should watch the plays. Its the acting that brings out the brilliance of the content (and the content is truly brilliant). Kenneth Branaugh performance of Henry V is my all time favorite. Watching Marlon Brando as Marc Anthony was also amazing. I still go back and watch his eulogy for Caesar on Youtube every so often.
- wiredfool 3y agoI've read about half of them, seen more than a bunch live and in film, enough to annoy the kids. Some versions I like: * David Tenant's Much Ado about Nothing. Kenneth Branagh's is good too, and easier to find. * Branagh's Henry V. * I actually like Mel Gibson's Hamlet. * Almost any Midsummer's Night Dream. It's just a fun play, even kids can enjoy it. * The Coen Bros' Macbeth on AppleTV * Rosencrantx and Guildenstern are Dead. Hamlet, but exits are entrances.
- computershit 3y ago> Almost any Midsummer's Night Dream Couldn't agree more. It's easily my fav Shakespeare because it is so much fun.
- mjmsmith 3y agoI'm sure it's considered problematic now for various reasons (maybe it always was), but Polanski's Macbeth still holds up for me. Jon Finch (Macbeth) and Terence Bayler (Macduff) were great.
- arethuza 3y agoPolanski's Macbeth was the one we were shown in school - probably around 1980 or so.
- jonstewart 3y agoThis is a surprising ranking. I haven't read or seen every play yet, but I've seen or read a majority. The Tempest is one of my favorites! The '79 Trevor Nunn/RSC Macbeth with Judi Dench and Ian McKellen is incredible! I'd have liked more detail from the OP about all the versions watched, and also which of the plays he'd read.
- kayo_20211030 3y agoYes. Of course, it's the OP's personal ranking, but for me The Tempest would have been higher, in the top 5 for sure.
- emehex 3y agoI think your own personal ranking will depend entirely on the production. For instance, I saw the Stratford (Ontario) production of Timon of Athens a couple of years ago and it’s now one of my favorites. King Lear, by contrast (and on the same stage) was a drag for me. Much Ado About Nothing, though… Chef’s Kiss!
- duxup 3y agoI was 13 or 14 and one day with nothing to watch on TV I turned on my local PBS station. Henry V (1989) was on. I saw some sort of medieval show and thought “knights and castles… cool”. I knew of Shakespeare but really hadn’t given it much thought. I lived in a rural area, not much of that around and I didn’t feel connected to any of that stuff. The movie really grabbed me, I didn’t understand every word but I didn’t have to. I watched it over and over again. Shakespeare, felt real, and I thought if that did maybe a lot of the arts would? The world was much bigger for me after that.
- exhilaration 3y agoI feel the same way about the 1996 version of Romeo & Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_%2B_Juliet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_%2B_Juliet), which I guess you might call a modern reboot of the play. I thought it was fantastic, really made Shakespeare feel real to my teenage self. My high school English teacher at the time hated it though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- padheyam 3y agoAre there any links to watch/listen to all of the Shakespearean plays?
- heintje_ghulam 3y agoProbably the best thing I have ever seen on the stage is a production of a slightly abridged version of Henry VI. A review of that production is here: https://leonrubin.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/henryvi_paper.pdf https://leonrubin.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/henryvi_paper.... . I hardly ever hear anyone talk about these history plays but some of them really are incredibly good as that review indicates. Maybe seeing a production rather than just reading them on the page helps (this version was also shortened but honestly it was so good that I suspect if they'd just performed the entire thing I would have still loved it).
- rcarmo 3y agoI can’t upvote this enough. Very good overview.
- denton-scratch 3y agoAs a kid, I saw the Peter Brook production of AMND at Stratford. It bowled me over. I never saw another Shakespeare production so powerful. I was privileged to go to a school that did regular Shakespeare productions (with kids acting all parts, and doing stuff like lighting). The head of English was a good stage director. They did Lear, Henry IV 1&2, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Merchant, 12th Night. I must say, I've never found a screen production of Shakespeare as gripping as these stage productions featuring my own schoolmates. Doing Shakespeare readings in class is absolutely the wrong way to do it. It just kills it; no wonder so many kids these days hate Shakespeare.
- jmyeet 3y agoWhenever I see anyone talk about Shakespeare, I always go and see how they describe Romeo and Juliet. The author has little to say: > Another classic reading assignment that requires no description. A beautiful play, but I just don’t connect with its romantic core. I do this because so many completely miss the point of this play (as the author appears to). First and foremost, it's not a tale of romance but one of agency. It's one of the few plays that specifically mentions age. Juliet is 13 years old. That's not an accident. Shakespeare did this for a reason. Some will argue it was just a different time. If so, you're seeing the play through the lens of it being a love story. Juliet takes back her agency by choosing not to marry Paris, to marry Romeo and ultimately to end her life. Remember this was at a time where a queen (Elizabeth I) ruled in her own right rather than as an extension of her husband's divine right. Women at this time were largely extensions of their father's then their husband's autonomy. So if you see this purely as a love story (involving a 13 year old no less) I can see you having issue with it or not connecting with it. But look a little deeper and you see Juliet as someone who asserts her autonomy as a person, ultimately to tragic consequences.
- rhdunn 3y agoIf you want an idea of what the plays sounded like at the time they were written, check out the work by David Crystal in his efforts to reconstruct Original Pronunciation (OP). There are YouTube videos of him and his son (Ben Crystal) talking about this and giving sample readings. They can do this by several methods. You can compare rhymes in the works -- e.g. loved and proved rhymed. You can study what people at the time documenting pronunciation wrote. You can compare existing accents to uncover ways in which pronunciations of words have evolved and diverged. You can apply and reverse sound changes in the words, such as reversing effects of the Great Vowel Shift. Doing this gives some interesting puns and plays on words that are not readily apparent when reading the plays with modern accents. The OP accent has elements from other accents, as those have retained some of the historic qualities. For example, OP is a rhotic accent (the Rs are pronounced) which is a feature that is present in several modern accents like Scottish, American, and parts of England.
- padobson 3y agoI bought a copy of Hamlet with copious footnotes a year ago, and I really enjoyed reading it - but I found the language too taxing for leisure reading. I'd return to my work and find my mental energy had been drained! I can certainly see the value of reading Shakespeare, but I'd almost need a long vacation to devote to picking up the language. It makes me wonder how much of my school years I wasted, because I probably could have mastered Shakespeare at the time and still have that tool in my toolbelt today.
- klik99 3y ago> More interesting is the historical context behind the play. It’s based loosely on events around the founding of Jamestown, Virginia. The character of Stephano, is likely based after one of my ancestors, Stephen Hopkins, who led a failed mutiny at Jamestown. Shakespeare wrote the Tempest after reading news and hearing about the Jamestown incident. Interestingly, after Jamestown Stephen Hopkins returned to England and then made the trip a second time, this time on the Mayflower, where he was at the first Thanksgiving.
- p3rls 3y agoMy ranking of every Shakespeare movie Does it have Kenneth Branagh? Yes? 10. No? 0.
- Balgair 3y agoAside: Dear HN reader, if you are somewhat curious about 'getting into' Shakespeare, I thoroughly recommend it. During the pandemic, I managed to get into him. It took me ~2 years of reading him, getting used to meter, the phrasing, the ideas, the structure. Yes, ~2 years of ~30 minutes/day on weekdays. About 250 hours total, give or take. Dear Reader, it is totally worth it. The depths of English that you reach are just amazing. The feelings and thoughts, so well said. The simple and yet universal themes, the characters, the actors that do him such justice and some that do such injustice, the theater of it all. It is a truly enriching experience for your life. It's tough, no doubt, but my oh my, dear Reader, it is worth it.