Troilus And Cressida is excellent, or was the one time I saw it. Thersites is one of his best characters, and the play as a whole is remarkably clear-sighted (read: immensely cynical) in its approach to romance. Yes, there are a billion characters though, and I had a kind of advantage from knowing who they all are anyway.
Measure For Measure is another underrated one - a nasty judicial thriller nestling inside a comedy.
The jealousy scenes in Winter's Tale are nerve-rackingly horrible (in a good way). The hippie scenes in same are pretty awful though.
I used to know one of the sonnets off by heart. Cant even remember what number it was now.
All round greatness award to Lear, I think.
― Tom, Tuesday, 19 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Subsequent school trips, I was always hoping for maximum floor-wave action, but got none. I also saw Twelfth Night there (Judi Dench as the twin sister?): I was perhaps somewhat stirred by all the girls-as-boys cross- dressing (to be honest I can't remember, so perhaps not) but afterwards baffled my English teacher when he asked which character we liked best: the Sea Captain, I piped up. Why? I knew not how to answer, and just mumbled: actual ans = because (all hulking and dressed in dark grey leather and fabby black thigh-boots) he totally Had Pash on redhead Sebastian, which is why he promises to wait for him at the seaside. I didn't understand analytically why I so took to him: but def.intuited in blurry yet strong way the whatever of this bearish smitten Daddy so doting on his slender boyish- girlish charge (charge who was in fact IN charge: rowr). The sea captain I still remember. All the comedy stuff with Malvolio and Sir Toby Belch: gone, pretty much.
Saw Lear open-air at Ludlow in mid-teens. Fell in love with Cordelia of course (Hopey Glass for Jacobeans), considered Edmund the Bastard v.hard done by, and delighted that — when [who? Kent?] has eyes pulled out, the puller threw actual meaty blobs INTO THE AUDIENCE!! (No, maybe only onto the stage: but this was still First-Class Entertainment)
The part I actually always liked best on these school trips was chicken-in-a-basket, a type of food that now seems as medieval as salmagundy...
― mark s, Tuesday, 19 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Search: Hamlet; King Lear; Measure For Measure ('underrated', Tom? Not among Shakespeareans); Richard II; Henry IV (both, but especially Part I); Henry VI Part II (now THAT's underrated: intriguing comical representation of peasants' rebellion, c. 1450).
I'm not particularly keen on (The Rape Of) Lucrece, Othello, Macbeth, or even everyone else's fave Antony & Cleopatra. Henry V has moments but is quite bad as a whole. I can't stand Richard III, either.
Interesting: The Merchant Of Venice.
Search also: Stephen Dedalus on Shakespeare, though not for clarity or plausibility.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― anthony, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Ryan Omalley, Tuesday, 23 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― jel --, Tuesday, 23 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― the pinefox, Sunday, 20 April 2003 15:18 (twenty years ago) link
― jewelly (jewelly), Sunday, 20 April 2003 15:25 (twenty years ago) link
My favourites: I love loads of the sonnets, plus Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello.
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 20 April 2003 15:40 (twenty years ago) link
I'm working on a paper on how Falstaff gradually takes over the plays and how supposed hero Hal becomes gradually less sympathetic, so I'd like to hear any insights you might have into that.
Have you ever seen Orson Welles's film of both Henrys (plus some of the others), Chimes at Midnight?
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 21 April 2003 07:12 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred Nerk, Monday, 21 April 2003 07:30 (twenty years ago) link
― Matt (Matt), Monday, 21 April 2003 08:10 (twenty years ago) link
What is the nature of this paper you're working on?
I might have more thoughts later. (In fact - I already do.)
Reading HIV1+2 again is strongly reminding me of both Blair *and* Bush, in their different ways. Issues of politics, strategy, presentation (Blair), and of ways to secure the appearance of legitimacy when it has initially been doubted (Bush). Such 'presentism' sounds crass and insensitive. But in this case... it isn't.
― the pinefox, Monday, 21 April 2003 08:58 (twenty years ago) link
You might get along better with Graham Holderness on the histories, if you don't already know his work.
For all their qualities, the Henry plays are dispiriting.
― the pinefox, Monday, 21 April 2003 11:03 (twenty years ago) link
The Bush/Hal parallels are eerily obvious:
"Be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the former days."
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 21 April 2003 11:21 (twenty years ago) link
Or perhaps I mean: how can we reconcile Shakespeare's 'support for war' in HV with those lines at the end of HIV2?
They really are the Smoking Gun; or perhaps the Discharg'd Pistol.
Other major issues:
1) does HIV as a whole seem to legitimate the Henries as Kings? If it wants to do so, why insist so often on their illegitimacy, as usurpers? (Empson said that usurpation was the secret theme of the Henriad.)
2) How facile is it that HIV tells HV: "I was never seen as legitimate, cos I was a usurper; but you'll inherit from me, so you'll be seen as legitimate"? (This is what gets me thinking of Bush: not the father-son succession, but the way Bush will find later ratifications of his initially bogus legitimacy.)
3) How about the trickery and treachery of the royal forces in HIV2, Act IV? Unbelievable! The King's party is Machiavellian through and through.
4) Note the utter callousness, with a strong class edge, of Hal in HIV1. Not so much the famous soliloquy in which he dissociates himself from Falstaff et al (bad enough), but the dreadful scene in which he 'humiliates' the Drawer Francis ('Anon, anon!'), then has the cheek to mock Francis's lack of verbal range! It is insupportable to read of this character being endorsed as 'mirror of English kings', 'ideal form of the monarch' (see the astoundingly bad finale to Maynard Mack's intro to Signet HIV1).
― the pinefox, Monday, 21 April 2003 11:35 (twenty years ago) link
Although Henry V is commonly portrayed as a hero-king (see Olivier's film) I don't think many people in any audience feel that way by the end of HIV Part 2.
What do you make of the epilogue to that play? It seems baffling to me: I can't think of another play Shakespeare felt the need to apologize to the audience for. It also seems odd that he promises to bring Falstaff back in the next play, and doesn't (not that he could have had any place in it, without ruining the patriotic bombast).
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 21 April 2003 12:06 (twenty years ago) link
Very strange. Empson again (Kenyon Review, Spring 1953): Falstaff's 'food for powder' speech says to HIV: "that is all you Norman lords want, in your squabbles between cousins over your loot, which you make an excuse to murder the English people".
― the pinefox, Monday, 21 April 2003 15:25 (twenty years ago) link
C.L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (1959) on folk tradition and carnival (and cf also Bakhtin, Rabelais And His World)
Robert Ornstein, A Kingdom For A Stage (1972), on history and Shakespeare's aesthetic play with it in the histories
Derek Cohen, Shakespearean Motives (1988), on rituals of violence
Graham Holderness, Shakespeare's History (1985), on politics of Shakespeare's epic drama
― the pinefox, Monday, 21 April 2003 20:46 (twenty years ago) link
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 18:42 (twenty years ago) link
question for debate: who was the Hal/Henry V of Orwell's day?
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 21:33 (twenty years ago) link
― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 21:34 (twenty years ago) link
― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 21:43 (twenty years ago) link
― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 21:55 (twenty years ago) link
― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 21:56 (twenty years ago) link
one day I will change this.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 21:57 (twenty years ago) link
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 21:58 (twenty years ago) link
― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 21:59 (twenty years ago) link
did Edward Bond do Early Morning, the one about Queen Victoria having an affair with Florence Nightingale, and her heir being half of a pair of siamese twins?
― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 22:11 (twenty years ago) link
― Dada, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 22:25 (twenty years ago) link
Surely, in its way, Angels In America fits this criterion.
― Chris P (Chris P), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 23:04 (twenty years ago) link
just watching this again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xHlngY6Bgk
as a result of reading this http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/03/ian-mckellen-10-best-shakespeare-roles-on-film?CMP=fb_gu
proper chills.
― piscesx, Sunday, 3 April 2016 17:29 (seven years ago) link
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/misquotesfaq.html
― Psmith, Pharmacist (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 11 February 2018 20:54 (six years ago) link
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08b2cgm
Released On: 21 Apr 2020
Khalid Abdalla, Matthew Needham and Cassie Layton star in Shakespeare's tragedy. This version is staged in an imagined near future, in which a power-hungry Turkish president attempts an attack on Cyprus. The western forces rush to Cyprus' defence, under the command of the fearless General Othello. But can an Arab-born, Christian convert ever be truly accepted by the people he serves?
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 21 April 2020 11:09 (three years ago) link
Shakespeare our contemporary. pic.twitter.com/fxFi5WijMy— Stephen Unwin (@RoseUnwin) January 25, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 25 January 2023 09:58 (one year ago) link