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.

Tae Kwon Ado About Nothing

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

A few years back I wrote about Decorating Your Life with Shakespeare.  I’ve never been the kind of outgoing personality that will walk up to somebody and make conversation (or even introduce myself).  But if I’m a walking billboard for Shakespeare, and people want to start the conversation by asking me something?  Then they’ll have a hard time shutting me up.

Saturday I’m at my son’s martial arts class waiting.  It’s one of the more informal classes, a glorified practice session. The head instructor isn’t even there, but his right hand man is.  And his right hand man has time to interact with the parents.  For my part, I bring my laptop and do stuff.  See earlier note about socializing. 🙂

“You got new stickers,” the instructor says to me.

“What?”

“Your laptop.  I noticed you’ve got a new Shakespeare sticker on your laptop.” My laptop has a Chandos picture and the “Some achieve greatness…” quote, a gift from my kids last year. That’s my personal laptop.


I laugh.  “Nope,” I say, reaching into my backpack to pull out a second laptop, that also has Shakespeare stickers on it.  That’s my business laptop, and it has silhouette characters of Shakespeare and Hamlet .

The other parents move to see, so I turn around and show them off, one in each hand, feeling especially geeky.

“Speaking of which,” my son says, “How did your Shakespeare costume do at work?”  Spoiler alert – I dressed as the Chandos Portrait for my work’s Halloween party. But you have to wait for tomorrow’s post to see pictures 🙂

This leads to the instructor asking if I have pictures, which I do, and of course now all the parents are interested.  Long story short, instructor ends up putting RSC’s “Hamlet Abridged” on the television (where they normally just run a slide show of advertisements).  I get into a conversation with one of the parents, who happens to be a high school English teacher.  She tells me about how she shows her kids the Leonardo diCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet as well as Zeffirelli, but she has a special love for Gnomeo and Juliet.  I introduce her to Sealed with a Kiss, a movie that most people outside of this blog will have never heard of.  I hope she manages to find a copy!

We only just have time to get into the, “So, how did you get into Shakespeare?” conversation, which has no short answer :), but maybe next time.

 

You Only Get One Shot

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

For some reason on the ride in to work today I was thinking about Sir Derek Jacobi.  That’s not even a “the reason is not important,” that’s “No, seriously, I honestly can’t remember.”  I do remember thinking, if I had the chance to interview the man, what would I even say? I hate that fake, “I’m such a big fan I’ve seen all your movies you’ve changed my life” stuff. Other than a clip of his Hamlet I’m not sure how much else I could name.

But then walking to work, for a brief moment, I thought I saw Sir Patrick Stewart. Whether the former led to the latter, I have no idea.  It wasn’t him, but it could have been one of those, “I saw a celebrity at a distance and I had the chance to yell something at him…” moments.  All I could think to yell would have been, “Why did you have Claudius shrug opposite David Tennant’s Hamlet?”  It’s always bothered me.  And I have no idea how I’d yell italics, but I could give it a shot.

I thought that would make a fun game.  Pick one of the modern Shakespeare gods – Sir Ian, Sir Patrick, Dame Judi, etc… You get the random opportunity to shout a single question at them.  Which celebrity and what’s your question?

Don’t throw away your shot!

 

 

From This Is Us to King Lear

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Breaking!  This Is Us star Milo Ventimiglia has sold a “modern Latino King Lear” to FOX pictures.  It’s called Cordelia, and it…

…is a modern re-telling of the King Lear story set to the back drop of a strong Cuban family and the three sisters running the scene in Miami. Told through the eyes of the one daughter who truly loved her father, Cordelia delves into a world of secrets, lies and complex family bonds that are constantly tested but ultimately never broken.

I suppose it could be interesting?  Given the name it almost makes you wonder if somebody heard about the movie that’s coming out and said, “Somebody makes us one of those!”  Hey, that’s how we got Antz before A Bug’s Life, if you remember.  If the movie studios want to compete over Shakespeare adaptations as well as animated features, I’m totally ok with that.

Somebody should totally tap John Leguizamo to play Edmund.  Dude’s already got a Shakespeare resume that includes Romeo+Juliet and Cymbeline.

And I Loved Her That She Did Not Pity Them

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Bear with me for a moment.

I have a very vivid memory of studying Othello in high school, some thirty plus years ago, and getting to this pretty famous passage, where Othello explains how he won Desdemona’s heart:

My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:
She swore, in faith, twas strange, ’twas passing strange,
‘Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful:
She wish’d she had not heard it, yet she wish’d
That heaven had made her such a man: she thank’d me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story.
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
She loved me for the dangers I had pass’d,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used:
Here comes the lady; let her witness it.

The problem is that I remember reading, “that she did not pity them.”  I couldn’t tell you how or why, it would have been one of those things where teachers photocopy an excerpt out of a book into a few pages and staple them together to pass out to the class.  Additionally it would have been my first exposure to Othello, and I was maybe fifteen years old? So I wasn’t exactly looking to document the citation at the time.

Later during that same class (not literally within that hour – days or weeks later while still taking that same class with that same teacher) I remember seeing the passage again, seeing it as “did pity them”, and immediately seeing the discrepancy. But when I went back to locate the documentation for “did not pity them”, I never found it.

I never really gave it much thought over the years.  But now I’ve got access to a certain amount of resources I didn’t have then. I’ve got professional Shakespeare researchers who can do things like check to see if Shakespeare ever wrote it down that way, or if any editors chose to make that alteration.

So far we haven’t come up with any.  And yet — Googling for the phrase “and I loved her that she did not pity them” turns up some results.  Where’d those come from?  I can’t decide if I find it amusing or upsetting that most of the hits come from quizlets and essay sites.

One of the hits is from a 2015 novel called Vienna by William S. Kirby.  I’ve even gone so far as to write to the man, to see if he remembers why he thinks that’s the line.  I’ll have to update this post if I ever get a response.

I’m mostly documenting this here in case there’s other people out there that have a vague memory of this, as I do. Bardfilm suggested that “an ill-prepared edition” could have made it into use by the schools at some point.  If that’s the case, which certainly seems reasonable if we assume that my memory is not faulty. Maybe some day we’ll know for sure!

 

Why Some Scholars Hate Romeo and Juliet

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

or, What Play Can You Just Not Even?

Our pal Bardfilm is mad as hell, and he’s not gonna take it anymore!

He is so over Romeo and Juliet, that he’s decided no more productions for him. It has been plumbed to its depths, we have wrung all possible angles and meaning from it, it has been set in every possible time and space in the continuum. He’s seen enough, he can’t see any more.  In fact, he wants to eradicate it completely. Sort of.

Here’s his proposal. We keep the text, and we can read it whenever (if ever) we want. But if we elected some crazy dictator who’d been horribly bullied in high school for being a theatre geek and takes out his emotional issues by banning Romeo and Juliet from ever being produced again … Bardfilm’s totally ok with that.

Which of the works brings out similar resentment for you?  You’re in charge, you get to declare a complete moratorium on one Shakespeare play never to be performed again.

What’s it going to be? Shall it be Merchant of Venice, so people can stop arguing with you whether Shakespeare was anti-Semitic? Comedy of Errors, so directors can stop worrying where they’re supposed to find two sets of identical twins?  Maybe A Midsummer Night’s Dream so we can stop having kindergarten productions with five-year-old butterfly-looking fairies?

I’m totally going to take the easy road and pick Merry Wives of Windsor. I’ve literally never seen it, nor even read it (except during my brief “read them all” period in college).  But I also don’t know how much it “makes life better,” otherwise it probably would have hit my radar by now.  So, having never missed it, I figure I won’t miss it going forward.