William Shakespeare is widely regarded as one of the most influential playwrights in history, and his plays have been performed and studied for centuries. From the timeless tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to the hilarious antics of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s plays continue to captivate audiences around the world. Whether you’re a fan of tragedy, comedy, or romance, there’s a Shakespeare play for everyone. So why not revisit these timeless classics and discover the magic of Shakespeare for yourself?
I knew about the Nazis and Merchant of Venice. But I never knew about Stalin and Hamlet.
Apparently Stalin “disapproved” of Hamlet, he didn’t ban it. Which I’m gathering, though I’m not a student of this particular time in history, that Stalin was the kind of dude who, if you did something he disapproved of, you lived to regret it … but not very long.
The rest of the linked article, be warned, is about cancel culture – a very hot, very divisive topic these days. The Stalin story makes the point – you don’t have to enact a law to cancel something. Sometimes, just the right word from the right person can do the trick.
(*) How’s TS Eliot get dragged into this? The poet wrote an essay entitled, “Hamlet and his Problems“, where we get the infamous quote referring to the English language’s greatest play as “certainly an artistic failure.” Unlike Stalin, however, Eliot apparently did not have cancel powers – few people would say that they stopped producing Hamlet because TS Eliot said so.
I joke about the Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet (2000) because, honestly, I never finished it. Maybe I was going through a cynical phase at the time, but I remember listening to his rendition of “To be or not to be” in … was it a laundromat? And thinking, he’s just rambling through this, this isn’t any kind of delivery, I’m not enjoying this. I think Bill Murray was his Polonius, and honestly I don’t even remember anything about his performance. I heard it was actually good.
I guess it was a video store.
But I’m coming back around, and think I should give him another chance. The man’s clearly a fan of our favorite subject. He’s got a new novel out, A Bright Ray of Darkness, about an actor whose marriage fails just as he’s starting out a run in Henry IV on Broadway. Hawke himself was Hotspur in a Broadway Henry IV, and his marriage (to Uma Thurman) also failed, so this seems a bit autobiographical.
I love reading about people playing Shakespeare. That this one seems to hold a mirror up to nature so clearly makes me want to read it that much more. And maybe I’ll tune in to Hawke’s Hamlet again while I’m at it.
The play never mentions a balcony, I’m just saying.
Although I once took a train through Verona, I’ve never gotten to see Juliet’s balcony for real. Given that it’s an entirely fictional tourist location, I’m not in any hurry.
But apparently three million people a year are, and it’s a real problem. The local government has been trying everything under the sun to control the crowds, including security guards, tickets and turnstiles. The area under the balcony, where the famous statue resides, is only about 400 square meters, but a thousand people at a time will cram into it for a chance to take their selfies and get to second base with the bronze thirteen year old.
The real problem, though, seems to be the museum. The shop proprietors are against any plan to limit the amount of traffic into the space – because only a small percentage of them ever buy anything. Three million people come to see it, less than three hundred thousand check out the museum.
She’s too young for you, bro.
So the next time you’re on Capulet turf, do everybody a favor and swing by the gift shop, why don’t you. Maybe pick up some post cards or a refrigerator magnet. Keep everybody happy. 🙂
One of the earliest posts I ever made on Shakespeare Geek was about an ad for a videogame that featured the Henry V “Band of Brothers” speech. The idea of spotting Shakespeare references in the wild, and sharing them, has always been a central theme for the site.
Just because I’ve gotten too old to understand the references doesn’t mean I plan on stopping any time soon. I get that “Jordans” are a type of basketball sneaker, I’m not that old. I just have no idea who this Zion Williamson character is. But not only does he have his own line of Jordans, he’s introducing them with Shakespeare.
I guess this guy is on the Pelicans? Here’s how much I know about basketball, I didn’t know that was a team. I’m deep in Celtics country. Which reminds me, apparently our new star is named Romeo. That’s surely got to come up again!
It’s been a while since I got to tell a geeklet story! My son kind of got ripped off for his last year of middle school, where they’d normally have done some Shakespeare in the second half of the year. The start of the pandemic basically threw everything into chaos and that never happened.
But here we are a year later and he let me know this week that they’re studying Shakespeare in his class. The teacher, who had his two older sisters before him, knows our family and already mentioned our special context :). I said, “You realize you’re going to be expected to knock it out of the park, right?” and he kind of sighed and said, “Yeah, I suppose.” He’s not one for showing off how smart he is. He did also say, “I know we’ve got those pictures of when we went to England and saw Shakespeare’s marriage bond, but I didn’t know if I’m allowed to show those.”
What the..? I told him, “Of course you can show those! If you remember, I actually told you guys that while we were taking the pictures, that any kid can come back from vacation with pictures of Aruba or Disney World, but you’re guaranteed to be the only kid coming back with pictures of Shakespeare’s marriage bond.” Of course, the moment has already passed now, they’re done with the “Shakespeare’s bio” stuff and he’ll never get the chance to share that picture, dang it. I would have killed to hear that he told the Anne Whateley story.
Cut to the next day when I ask him about school and he said they’re into reciting stuff out loud. I said, “Which one are you reciting?” and he told me, “Something about a mutiny.” That took me longer than I should admit. Mutiny? I went to ships immediately – Twelfth Night? Tempest? Hamlet? But I knew there was no mutiny in any of those. Then it hit me, duh, the obvious answer. “From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. That’s the prologue to Romeo and Juliet.”
“I figured you’d know,” he said. “Anyway, we were all taking turns reciting, and we got to a section where the teacher said that nobody ever gets this part right on the first try. And it was that mutiny part. It was my turn, so I read it fine, first try, and then her head pops up because she was reading something at her desk and only half-listening to us, and she saw it was me and she said, ‘I should have known you’d get it on the first try.”
“What did you say to that?” I asked.
“I told her, ‘We read this stuff as bedtime stories when I was little.'” That’s my boy!
I look forward to a whole new set of geeklet stories coming soon!
