- See a live stage performance of all of Shakespeare’s plays exactly once in your life, and then never again.
or
- Only ever see one Shakespeare play (your choice) for the rest of your life, but you get to see as many versions and interpretations as you want?
In other words, is the ultimate value in Shakespeare’s work represented by the variety across everything he wrote, or the infinite variation to be found in each work?
I think I’d take endless versions of a single play. I’ll learn something new from a Hamlet or a King Lear every time I see it, but I’m fairly confident that I could live my life never seeing Timon of Athens or Pericles. But could I ever pick one play? I can’t even pick one play to make the example!
I confess this is a bit of a trick question, because the only real way you can decide what play you’d want to see forever is if you’ve seen all the plays at least once in the first place 🙂
I would rather see one play as many times as I wanted in as many variations as possible. I think the words and the language play would be beautiful to hear with all kinds of different actors, skilled or not so skilled, but the beauty of live theater makes up for it!
I would rather finish directing the cannon. I’d be done by now, but I keep going back to the hits.
I wouldn’t want to choose as I don’t like all of this plays.
But I never thought that watching one play more often could be great. I learned this while watching Shakespeare plays as I prepare/d for seeing the English versions at stage … It’s cool to see how different the focus can be. Not only different actors and different directors, but also the time. In the 1970s (I saw some DVDs) Shakespeare was all about being serious about it. Nowadays the focus of most productions is in the fun scenes, the comedy of the situation, even in tragedies. I love this and so I am glad that I started to watch Shakespeare in this century as I am not entirely sure if I had contunued watching it when starting with the more severe last century Shakespeare plays.
Well, this was not exactly an answer to your question… I guess watch one more often it would be. Luckily I don’t really have to choose.