Category: Shakespeare Plays

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?

Browse the entire text of Shakespeare’s plays right here on Shakespeare Geek.

Sigh No More, Students ( A Geeklet Story )

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

I hear my oldest coming down the steps. “I wonder if she needs help with calculus or physics?” I ask my wife.

She rounds the corner. “Ok, so, we’re playing trivia in virtual classroom and the category was Shakespeare.” Oh fun. “Which character has been in three plays?”

“I’m going to assume Falstaff.”

“Right. Yes, well, we got it wrong. We guessed Antony.”

“That’d be Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, only two.”

“Exactly, I knew that wasn’t it. But anyway, he’s, like, a big character, isn’t he?”

My kids know thee well, old man.

“He was never the title character, but it’s been argued by more than one person that he’s Shakespeare’s greatest creation. Books have been written on just him. I literally have a book upstairs right now that’s nothing but an actor’s diary of when he played Falstaff.”

“I thought so. Our teacher told us that he’s a huge Shakespeare fan, and how he’s read all of the Henry’s because, you know, he prefers the lesser known plays, and that he didn’t remember this character, he must not have been that important.”

I fire up my computer. “Hold on a second.” I google “Harold Bloom Falstaff”:

Then there’s Harold Bloom, who, in the opening pages of his short, charming new book Falstaff: Give Me Life,[1] writes that he has “come to believe that if we are to represent Shakespeare by only one play, it ought to be the complete Henry IV, to which I would add Mistress Quickly’s description of the death of Falstaff in act 2, scene 3 of Henry V.”

For Bloom, what puts Henry IV on top is not the starring role, Prince Hal, but the supporting character Sir John Falstaff. “I think of this as the Falstaffiad,” writes Bloom, “rather than the Henriad, as scholars tend to call it.” For Bloom, who has been teaching at Yale since 1955 and who is considered by many to be the most distinguished living literary critic (he’s 87), Falstaff is not just “the glory of the Henry IV plays” but (his italics) “the grandest personality in all of Shakespeare.” 

You can’t bluff your Shakespeare knowledge in front of my kids.

Sex Education : Romeo & Juliet

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

I’ve never seen the Netflix show Sex Education. Have no desire to. The most I know about it is that the trailer used to uncomfortably autoplay whenever the kids were around, and eventually my son got so intrigued by it that he got grounded for binge watching it when he wasn’t allowed to.

But then I heard that Season 2 ends with some sort of Romeo and Juliet thing (and, honestly, doesn’t every high school drama eventually involve some sort of Romeo and Juliet thing?) and I thought, I’ll probably have to end up watching that.

Luckily I don’t! The whole Romeo and Juliet thing is available on YouTube. Ready?

It’s pretty awful and I’m glad I didn’t put up with two seasons of a show I wasn’t interested in just to get to this.

It’s like a weird a Darren Nichols (Slings & Arrows) production staged by middle school students who learned what sex is from watching ABC Shondaland dramas. Everybody’s just kind of bumping and grinding on each other like that’s how babies are made.

People say text things, but there’s hardly any Shakespeare content. Benvolio talks to Romeo’s parents. Romeo and Juliet meet. I think Mercutio got some lines? He’s the one that talks about idle brains, right?

I like to be open minded, though. Somebody who has watched the whole show tell me, would it have been better if I had any sort of context for the characters? Romeo is reluctant to be there. The show does get interrupted and there is a “hold my hand” moment that must have been some sort of big deal. And then a dude comes in and shuts down the whole show. From my Shakespeare only seat those things were all negatives, but maybe for someone who saw this as “Sex Education with Shakespeare” rather than the other way around, those things were a highlight to some lengthy story arc?

Guest Post : Shakespeare’s Travels

~ duane ~ Leave a comment
Scotland – the famous setting for Macbeth

Should you ever decide to embark on a tour of the locations of Shakespeare’s plays you’d find yourself with a long itinerary. The bard’s quill pen roamed the world, from Egypt and Syria to Scotland – this blog has even provided a handy map. Some places, such as England and Italy, were, of course, frequently visited by his imagination. Others, such as Austria (Measure for Measure) and Cyprus (Othello) he only visited once.

Shakespeare shaped these foreign lands to suit his stories. Greece (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Timon of Athens, The Two Noble Kinsmen, etc.), Wales (Cymbeline, Richard II, Henry IV P1) and Turkey (The Comedy of Errors, Troilus & Cressida, etc.) were made the settings for comedy, tragedy, romance, and history. The world truly was his stage to dress – in fact, most of his plays are set abroad, the Globe Theatre, therefore, becoming an actual microcosm of our globe.

Some locations are famously linked with his plays. Who, after all, would not know that Hamlet is set in Denmark? Other links are, perhaps, a little more obscure. Lebanon featuring in Pericles, for example, or the former Yugoslavia (specifically, the area known as Illyria) in Twelfth Night.

Dubrovnik, once the centre of the Republic of Ragusa in the ancient region of Illyria

Are visitors to Spain’s Basque Country aware that they’re following in the footsteps of the characters in Love’s Labour’s Lost? The location of the French court in All’s Well That Ends Well is a little unclear, but it isn’t hard to imagine Helena and Bertram amidst the grand buildings of Carcassonne. I’m also a fan of the vague Mediterranean setting of The Tempest, which allows me to imagine Prospero roaming Malta, or Menorca, or perhaps Sardinia.

The Great Pyramid of Giza, famous even in Shakespeare’s day

How did Shakespeare know about these far-flung places? As the No Sweat Shakespeare blog once mentioned, even travel between Stratford-Upon-Avon and London was no mean feat. Shakespeare, therefore, didn’t have direct experience of these locations – it was 40 years after Shakespeare’s death when The Grand Tour made foreign travel popular amongst the English elite. Instead he took inspiration from historical texts and other stories (including Italian novellas) – Egypt, for example, has always been well-known to the western world and descriptions of its ancient sites would not have been hard to come by.

“The world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open” – the world isn’t currently our oyster to open, but with Shakespeare’s stages on shores near and distant, perhaps we can, for now, take a little peek and plan for the day when we follow the footsteps of his far-flung characters.

Olly loves to travel and has visited over 80 countries and all 7 continents. He also likes to explore the world through the medium of literature and enjoys matching famous locations with the places he’s been to. Olly runs travel planning blog APlanToGo.com, on which you can download free, highly detailed itineraries for destinations across the globe.

It’s A Puzzle (A Shakespeare Dreams Story)

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Every once in a while I dream in Shakespeare. That ever happen to anybody else? I always think it’s very cool.

This time there was a production of Hamlet. I can’t tell if I was in it, or directing it, or watching it. But the stage was littered with giant jigsaw puzzle pieces (it helps, of course, that in these quarantine times our house like so many others is busy doing puzzles). As he soliloquized he would pick up a piece, contemplate it, and then find where in the giant puzzle – because the stage itself was a giant puzzle – it fit.

I didn’t get to see the end but upon waking I thought that a great ending would be him reaching the end of the play without finishing the puzzle. But then the scene closes with Fortinbras, or maybe Horatio, picking up a puzzle piece and contemplating it.

Never Miss An Opportunity (A Geeklet Story)

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So my daughter has a friend over the other night, who happens to be involved in local theatre. Over dinner conversation, I ask, “Which play is next?”

“Musical?” she replies. I can’t tell if that’s the name of a play, or if she’s asking me to clarify which musical they’re doing next or just any play. “Oh but I guess we’re doing Shakespeare too.” This friend knows she’s in a Shakespeare house, for context.

“Which one?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“Give me the smallest clue,” I try.

“Something underground about Henry IV?”

“Well, there are two plays called Henry IV.”

“That’s probably it, then! I bet it’s one of those.”

Never one to miss a teaching opportunity I proceed to explain Henry IV in my no doubt highly inaccurate but hopefully compelling way: “So at the start of the play you’ve got the old king, Henry IV. And he’s got this son, Hal. And Hal’s being groomed to take over when his father dies, and become Henry V. Like William and Harry, from the Royal Family? Same idea. Oldest son has to live his life a certain way because he’s going to be king someday. Well, Hal has no interest in being king. Hal just wants to party with his friends.”

“They partied back in Shakespeare’s day?”

“Oh my yes. So Hal’s got this best friend, Falstaff. Falstaff’s much older than Hal, and he ends up being more like a father figure. They do everything together, they party, they get drunk, they wake up late, they get into fights. But all the while Falstaff knows that one day, one day this kid is going to be king. And that’s going to be a big day, that’s going to be everything they ever wanted.

And then one day it happens. Falstaff’s sleeping late as usual when his friends wake him up and say, “It’s happened! The king is dead! Hal is the new king!” And Falstaff goes running through town to find him and celebrate that the day has finally come. And you get this big huge scene when Falstaff comes into the coronation and bursts through the crowd shouting “My boy! My king!”

I pause and see if I’ve still got her attention. I very much do.

“And Hal turns to him and says, “I know thee not, old man.” And banishes him.”

Her jaw dropped.

Who says Shakespeare is boring? I will teach you Shakespeare in my kitchen while I clear the table. Do I get some details wrong? Probably. Does my captive audience learn anything about themes and symbolism? Nope. But are they interested now? Definitely.