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Shakespeare
I was appauled to find that this thread didn't already exist.
My favorites are Hamlet and Macbeth. Runners up are Comedy of Errors and King Lear. I never cared much for Romeo and Juliet or Julius Caesar.
My favorites are Hamlet and Macbeth. Runners up are Comedy of Errors and King Lear. I never cared much for Romeo and Juliet or Julius Caesar.
Comments
"Men at some time are masters of their fates; the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."
On a side note, has anyone seen Hamlet II, and is it worth seeking out?
@Jason: Hamlet 2 is fucking hilarious, but only if you are unoffended by rape jokes.
-Seen A Comedy of Errors at the Shakespeare Theatre (a reproduction of The Globe) in Chicago
-Freshman english class tainted Julius Caesar for me; nevertheless, I love it, and still have most of Antony's speech memorized.
-Macbeth was excellent, and the Roman Polanski film we watched after reading it last year was so bad it was good.
-The Sonnets are perfection (I agree with Erwin about sonnet 130)
Still have to read The Tempest and Hamlet; they're on my "to read" list.
Also, Othello, Richard III, Henry V, Julius Caesar.
I find Romeo and Juliet to have better applicability as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on young love, rather than the "forbidden romance" angle.
Since then I found that seeing Shakespeare played out instead of just read to be quite enjoyable since his works were originally created for the stage in the first place. This is not to say that reading them isn't worthwhile, far from it, but there are times that seeing good actors playing their respective roles can make scenes and lines more meaningful than just reading text alone.
(It's on my list of books to read)
EDIT: A quick search on Netflix brought up a collection of BBC-produced Shakespeare renditions on instant watch, including Taming of the Shrew with John Cleese! They average around 3 1/2 stars on the scale, so looks like I'm gonna watch Hamlet tonight.
I've paid to see a lot of these presented as plays. However, you can see many of these for free if your town has a Shakespeare in the Park program.
The BBC has a good set of productions of most of these plays. If you want to see them as movies, The Zefirelli Hamlet with Mel Gibson was good though heavily edited. Make sure you see Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles took Henry IV, I and II and made one movie), the Branagh Henry V, the Olivier Henry V, the Olivier Richard III, the Anthony Hopkins Titus Andronicus, the Diana Rigg Midsummer Night's Dream, the James Cagney Midsummer Night's Dream, the Branagh Hamlet, the Branagh Much Ado about Nothing, the Olivier Hamlet, and the Orson Welles Macbeth and Othello.
Has anyone watched My Own Private Idaho? It's loosely based on Henry IV part I, starring Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix. I know that doesn't sound like a glowing recommendation, but I thought it was worth watching, if only to watch Keanu recite Shakespeare.
I digress.
For reading, I prefer his comedies to his tragedies and his tragedies to his histories. As far as being involved in productions or seeing Shakespeare, I prefer his histories and tragedies to his comedies. The Scottish Play and Hamlet are some of his finest works, but my personal preference out of his more popular plays lies with Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, Merchant of Venice, Henry VI, and Richard III. Midsummer Nights Dream is a great lark and a great bedtime story (yes, even with the sexy bits as they are usually a bit over a kid's head - and if they aren't it is just sex). Romeo and Juliet is okay (which on the scale of Shakespeare's works is still amazing), some great language and characters, but I have never loved it as others have.
As to the dispute over the authorship of Shakespeare's works, I am a zealot of the work, not the man. I do not care if Marlowe, de Vere, Herbert, Bacon, Stanley, Manners, or a toadstool wrote them or in what combination. The various theories are neat, but it change the text.
A neat study for anyone interested is to look for and read the oldest versions of the plays as is possible as stage managers, directors, and even actors may have changed bits here and there according to many scholars. Also, I highly recommend that people look into some of Shakespeare's contemporaries. There was some excellent work produced during that time period and some works that were created based on or in counter to Shakespeare's works (i.e. The Woman's Prize, of the Tamer Tamed - as a feminist named Kate, I HAD to bring this up). Why? I can see not enjoying it, but HATING it? Any reason(s)?
As to film adaptations, if Kenneth Branagh is involved, they are usually quite good. I highly recommend all of his adaptations, including Much Ado About Nothing (despite Keanu Reeve's performance - which is painful).
It is strange to me that people don't just go and see it in the theatre and that they complain about Hamlet running 5 hours long. How many hours do we sit in front of computer screens or televisions, I seriously think that even a mediocre production of Hamlet would be stimulating enough to keep someone interested.
Speaking of, I had the pleasure of seeing Samuel West’s Hamlet in the Royal Shakespeare Company production at London’s Barbican several years ago. It was incredibly well done (not only by the cast, but the set and lighting were magnificent choices - very bare set and a great use of on stage lighting to highlight Hamlet's emotional/psychological state without being intrusive).