Let’s Talk Shakespeare

My favorite is Antony & Cleopatra. Perfection.

Once upon a previous century I taught "Macbeth" and "Julius Caesar" (and on Broadway saw Patrick Stewart in the former and Denzel in the latter). I very much preferred the brilliance of "Macbeth," but maybe I'm biased as I, like Macduff, was "not of woman born."

But for the best movie rendition of any Shakespeare play, nothing, including any Olivier or Branagh, surpasses the beauty of Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet."

I have to say that Branaugh's Henry V is my favorite. I actually get weepy watching it.

[quote]It always helps to have a book where some of the more muddled language or antiquated allusions are deciphered right next to the corresponding line.

Do you have a recommendation for any versions of this?

I can't. It's me.

"Macbeth" is my absolute favorite, though as movies go, I'm also fond of Zeffirelli's "Taming of the Shrew". Never read "Julius Caesar" in school, though "As You Like It" was covered in both 8th and 9th grades, and my love affair with Shakespeare started when our English class was taken to see Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet". I fell in love with Mercutio and got Mom to buy me Shakespeare's complete works. I only came to the States two years before that so my English wasn't the best, but interestingly enough, my native Russian helped - in some ways it's more closely related to Shakespeare's language than American English is.

I loved Branagh’s star-studded Much Ado About Nothing (Emma Thompson! Denzel! Staunton! Keanu! Kate Beckinsale! Michael Keaton! That guy from House who isn’t Hugh Laurie!). It had a freshness which most Shakespeare productions don’t have for me. Branagh and Thompson really brought charisma go their roles and seemed entirely as intelligent, reluctant lovers, reciting the complex dialogue in a way ehich seemed entirely natural.

I’ve seen a few notable stage productions too, including Derek Jacobi as Macbeth when I was a teenager. Unfortunately, he seemed a bit too old for the role (not helped by the fact that Lady Macbeth was at least 2 decades younger than him. That whole production was really a bit half-baked, but I am still glad that I saw Jacobi in the role. He delivered the lines in a way which really brought out the beauty of the poetry. He is a superb, old-school classical actor, but I just wish i had seen him playing the part when he was younger.

When I was still at school, I saw Romeo and Juliet in a smaller experimental theatre. It might have been the first play I saw (except for pantomimes) and it remains one of the best theatre productions I have ever seen. The director clearly understood that Shakespeare was making popular theatre and he (the director) produced the play with full melodrama, but he also harnessed its reality as a story about hormonal young people all getting into trouble. The actor who played Tybalt (who went on to star as James I and IV with D/L fave Galitzine and Julian Moore in a drama a year or two ago) was really outrageously sexy as he had a ball playing a bad-boy!

My favourite Shakespeare play is Hamlet and I go to that whenever I can. I’ve seen it adapted, quite successfully to take place in the 1920s, which worked surprisingly well as a setting for court intrigue and an unstable monarchy. The best production I saw (several times) was about 20 years ago with a brilliant (and sadly currently not very prominent) young actor playing Hamlet. Watching it, I felt that I could well be watching the start of a really great acting career, whereas another rather pretty member of the cast was the one who went on to great fame: that was D/L fave Sam Heughan, who was playing Guildenstern.

It's usually better to see them rather than read them. So many scenes are between characters who are debating, lying or otherwise trying manipulate each other. There's no single way to play them, they're just endless opportunities for actors.

Brit here, I'm grateful we studied 'Hamlet' in the Sixth Form, so the great work is layered deep. Uncle Will is part of my life, and I've seen some wonderful performances on stage and screen. Michael Sheen as Hamlet at The Young Vic, played in the round, two feet from where I sat in the front row. Mark Rylance as Olivia in the all male 'Twelfth Night' at The Globe, unforgettable production, cast to die for, available on DVD. Brilliant TV version of the two Henry IV plays - Hiddleston, and Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff, not sure I could see the latter bettered. Even Shakespeare-adjacent can be riveting: 'The Motive and the Cue', excellent recent play about Gielgud directing Burton as Hamlet on Broadway. A lifetime of richness, always with more to discover.

We had to listen to Richard Burton's record on Hamlet. He was a very unmelancholy Dane. But, with that voice, how could he sound depressed.

My favorite is MacBeth. I even saw Polanski's film with a naked L Macbeth. He made the soliloquies as out loud thoughts in the actors/characters' head. It took away from their performance, but the it was good experiment nevertheless.

Lady Mac had a good body.

R7 the best NY stage Macbeth OVER THE LAST 30 years was John Douglas Thompson. Way better than Patrick Stewart, to name just one. He plays Peggy’s pharmacist father in The Gilded Age.

R10 in 9th grade Honors English (1976), Macbeth was our introduction to the Bard. Miss Burket, our teacher, ordered a new-fangled thing called VHS to watch— it was not meant to be the Polanski version but that was what we got. She just rolled with it…no one complained and no parents tried to get her fired. LOL.

My favorite Shakespeare play (though I'm honestly not familiar with all of them outside of the more familiar ones) is King Lear. Just the scale, the dysfunction of the whole thing & it's become a template for so many other works of art.

In college, I always liked reading his sonnets; it's been years ago, but I recall liking the subtle humor of in them (stuff like "you're rather ugly, but I love you anyway" kind of thing). It makes you wonder if in his time his readers realized that he was simultaneously praising his object while also taking jabs at them.

R4, the Bantam paperback editions or the Signet classic editions are both good for this.

In US public high schools, in the 1970s, Shakespeare was on the reading list for 9th and 10th grade. Golly gee, we read him at 14 and 15 years old, all on our ownsies! And watched plays and movies, too.

My Shakespeare professor in college said he preferred Mel Gibson’s Hamlet to Olivier’s. He felt Olivier played it too safe, too brooding whereas Gibson captured Hamlet’s brash, impulsive energy much better.

I like Gibson’s more than Branagh’s also though Branagh was nice and fit and blond. And Kate Winslet’s Ophelia is nowhere near as affecting and heartbreaking as Helena Bonham Carter.

Bonham-Carter as Ophelia.

I've said this on another thread, but anyone who likes Shakespeare should run to YouTube and watch (free) the old Canadian series Slings & Arrows. It's a comedy about tragedy. Set at a Shakespeare Theatre Festival in eastern Canada, its premise is that an actor who gave the Festival's most brilliant ever Hamlet, but had a breakdown on stage, is brought back 7 years later to direct the play after the untimely demise of the festival's Artistic Director. Who comes back as a ghost and haunts him while he's trying to direct Hamlet and convince people he is no longer mad. His Hamlet is a very young Luke Kirby and Ophelia is Rachel McAdams. In the second season he (and the ghost) stage Macbeth, and the third season is King Lear.

[quote]Canadian series Slings & Arrows.

The actor/Artistic Director is played by Paul Gross who was Brian in Tales of the City.

R13, what I love about the sonnets is how self-confident to self-congratulatory they are. The general gist of many of them is, "Well, you're going to die childless at this rate, but fortunately you've met ME. I will pop you into a couple of my poems and you'll be immortal. No probs, love Will." There are also several where he spends lines and lines playing on his own name. No doubt at all he knew how good he was; but you'd have to be stupid not to, and stupid he certainly wasn't.

That said, I adore "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun". You think he IS having a go at her, and then comes the twist.

R13, I love “King Lear” as well. I wrote my final paper in my Shakespeare class on the history of the play and how much Shakespeare changed the story- he was the one who added the tragic ending. I was up until 3am writing that damn paper but I got an A.

Here in Australia, Macbeth has been on the high school syllabus for decades. My guess is it's because it's one of the shortest plays. When I was a student in the 1970's we were herded to the cinema to see Polanski's film. I saw it again a few years ago and it's still really good.

Hamlet? The only good memory I have of a production was in London in 1989... Daniel Day-Lewis, very sexy in black leather jeans. To cap it off, Judy Dench was Gertrude! Only in London at their National Theatre!

[quote]Hamlet? The only good memory I have of a production was in London in 1989... Daniel Day-Lewis, very sexy in black leather jeans.

A good memory to cherish indeed, as it's a theatrical collector's performance of extreme rarity. Day-Lewis famously had a nervous breakdown during the ghost scene very early in the run, and never returned.

R16

Kevin’s Hamlet was intentionally done as a practice run for Braveheart. Just so you now….💫

Mel! Not Kevin…oops

OP, your approach to Shakespeare's works proves his relevance to audiences and readers of all kinds.

But it's one thing to not be fully up to what "Julius Caesar" and "Measure for Measure" are about (getting off at nun sexual abuse misses the point, but shows how Shakespeare knew how to appeal to both the scholars and the groundlings), and quite another to enjoy "Midsummer Night's Dream but not understand the complexity of it as artistic wizardry. My comments are not meant to disparage your enjoyment, but you set yourself up for response with your own criticism.

Maybe try reading under the surface for greater understanding - and pleasure. Consider the language as well as the plots.

R18 and R19, I'd dig spending a snowy weekend with you two re-watching Slings & Arrows, a marvelous series that ran just long enough and closed up shop. Paul Gross is wonderful, so it the rest of the cast (is it McKinney from Kids in the Hall who part of the show? As an evil, musical-loving administrator?). Oh and the opening credits of each season were a delight.

You reach a point where they're all good; but such lesser-known plays as [italic]Cymbeline, Troilus & Cressida, Winter's Tale, Timon of Athens[/italic], and [italic]Coriolanus[/italic] are all "especially special" to me. The new viewer comes to them without preconceptions, which is a good thing.

I wish a DVD of the Sonnets would be released--no, not showing someone sitting there reading them but rather an imaginative, often somewhat surreal, visual of the Sonnet's combined action and imagery (it would probably have to be an animated offering) invoked as we hear the words spoken.

The best DVD investment I ever made was to buy the full complement of the BBC Shakespeare presentations (1978-1985). The boxed collection of the full set is, I believe, only Region 2 DVDs, but I think some number of them are also on Region 1 DVDs. I most particularly enjoy their ingenious and impressive sequence of the [italic]Henry VI[/italic] plays (plus [italic]Richard III[/italic]). Many of the actors in these productions would become familiar names in due course, a few of them still active; some of the actors were already respected names.

Final note: Always watch them with subtitles on, otherwise the subtleties and word-play can be lost on the viewer.

Final note #2, to those who don't have much experience with Shakespeare: You don't watch the plays for the stories; you watch them for the insights about human nature etc. which the dialog springing from the stories provides, so you need to listen to and engage mentally with what's being said, not just look at three hours of people kissing and whacking at each other with swords.

My 10th grade Drama class went to see Othello with James Earl Jones and Chritopher Plummer. Plummer came out and spoke to us afterwards, and we were star struck.

This thread makes me want to rewatch BBC's The Hollow Crown.

Who played Othello?

Iago did, like a fool.

This little moment may actually be my favourite Shakespeare recital. It’s delivered so maturally in that beautiful voice. I wish someone would record Dame Judi reciting the sonnets and some of the more famous speeches.

[quote]My 10th grade Drama class went to see Othello with James Earl Jones and Chritopher Plummer. Plummer came out and spoke to us afterwards, and we were star struck.

Our 12th Grade English class saw that. Dianne Wiest was Desdemona. Kelsey Grammer was in the “chorus”. I didn’t like the set design because it was a bunch of curtains swirling around the stage.

I think Timon of Athens is my favorite because it is just so bitchy.

“Cymbeline” has a lot of similarities with Snow White.

“Titus Andronicus” is a bloody, violent mess although Julie Taylor made an interesting film of it.

It's not frequently performed anymore because it's sort of politically incorrect, but Taming of the Shrew is one of the funniest of the plays, hands down. Interesting that so many adaptataions have been made of it - Kiss me Kate, McLintock, Ten Things I Hate about you, and others. I would say that there are universalities in that feisty individuals are often strongly attracted to one another, and that's true in same-sex relationships as well.

Should have linked something ^ . How about Marc Singer, bare-chested - who'd a thunk it? He actually does a very good job, and lots of appealing crotch shots.

[quote]Taming of the Shrew is one of the funniest of the plays,

Back in the 90s, I saw the Royal Shakespeare Co do this show in London.

After intermission, they did a tableaux where panels would slide and the audience would see the different characters. The middle panel slid open and Petruchio was in the driver's seat of a Volkswagen Bug and Kate, in her white wedding dress, was behind the car pushing it. I laughed so hard at that. I believe in this production they used the Christopher Sly prologue and epilogue.

R26, I'm not OP but I take offence at your tone. Being talked to that way by people who pretend to Know is what puts most people off Shakespeare, and that puts my hackles up.

I read my first Shakespeare at school, have studied him at postgrad level and have seen well over 100 productions, so I hope you will deem me worthy of addressing you. A Midsummer Night's Dream IS probably the most accessible of Shakespeare's plays. I took OP to mean that it is not as psychologically complex as later plays, which is completely true. Its technical "wizardry" (I assume you mean the plays within plays, the interweaving of multiple plotlines and of magic with reality) enriches an audience's experience but they don't need to be conscious of how. OP's remark about Measure for Measure was considering an audience of high school aged boys, and to that end shows PR flair.

OP, do switch on NT at Home on streaming and watch the Bridge's Julius Caesar (with Ben Whishaw as Cassius). Caesar enters in a modern suit, with a red baseball cap and long red tie, to make a speech about how they don't really need to be a republic any more. You may find you can get into the spirit of the thing quite fast! That production also got the audience to "play" the Roman people, making a great virtue of theatre's unique capacity for interactivity.

No love for Ben Whishaw as Richard II? I was blown away.

Thank you, R40. I felt that R26 overdid their response as well. I may not be an expert on the Bard but I was an English major and took basic Shakespeare and an advanced Shakespeare course in college. And I think I can say I like his works just fine without a lecture.

R38, thank you for that clip from Taming with Marc Singer and Fredi Olster. Who knew that Singer was that kind of an actor? He's marvelous and that body and the physical comedy... yea, the cock and balls are also enticing.

Now why didn't he have a much larger career on stage?

He preferred to master a different beast.

My parents were culture vultures and we got taken to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario the way other kids got taken to Cedar Point. I also took a Shakespeare course in high school taught by an absolutely brilliant instructor, which gave me the fundamentals of understanding Shakespearean English, so I could enjoy his plays the same as other theater (which I've spent my life loving.)

I went through a phase a few years ago when I went back and watched a ton of Shakespeare films and TV productions, including most of the BBC complete Shakespeare cycle from the 1980s. I especially loved their high camp stagings of the Wars of the Roses plays with Ron Cook as Richard III. Best Richard evar. He reminded me of Keith Moon and that may have been intentional. Every time I'm watching some British TV show and Ron Cook shows up I'm like "It's RON COOK!"

Too many memorable performances to mention but a few highlights from live performances that I’ve seen include John Douglas Thompson in Macbeth and Othello (he is hands down the best American Shakespearean actor of this generation IMHO), Ian McKellen in Richard III (at the Kennedy Center in the 90s), Mark Rylance in Twelfth Night, Branagh in a spectacular Macbeth at The Armory in NYC, Ann Hathaway and Audra McDonald, both wonderful as Viola and Olivia in Twelfth Night, Tom Hiddleston as Coriolanus, Richard Thomas as a spectacular Richard II, a really fun Comedy of Errors with Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Hamish Linklater, Stacy Keach as Richard III, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Iago in Othello (it was four hour production that the press panned but I loved him in it though not many did.) The Bridge in London did an absolutely delightful Midsummer a few years ago that is available on streaming with a fun twist (highly recommend!)

Hamlet is my favorite play and I’ve seen almost every major production of the past three decades including Tom Hulce, Andrew Scott, Simon Russell Beale, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Stuhlbarg, Ralph Finnes, as well as a very awful and misguided one with Paul Giamatti. For movies, I don’t think anything can top the Branagh Henry V.

I will say that in recent years, at least in America, Shakespeare has gone awry with many directors who have no idea how to direct Shakespeare. Shakespeare in the Park in NYC had two productions that I think are the worst I’ve ever seen - an awful Hamlet (with an actor who was not quite ready for prime time) and an even worse Richard III (with Danai Gurira.) On Broadway there was an appalling King Lear with Glenda Jackson. Most recently, I was aghast at how horrible the Denzel Washington Othello was. Even Jake Gyllenhall, who is usually good on stage was terrible.

[quote]Shakespeare in the Park in NYC had two productions that I think are the worst I’ve ever seen

I hate to sound like a Trumpian, but DEI has killed Shakespeare in the Park. Their last several productions have been awful. They continually try to modernize and make accessible and in so doing destroy what’s great about Shakespeare. The constant need to find a radical new director’s vision is ruining all theater.

I have to say, Mel Gibson was an excellent Hamlet. In fact, that movie was very well done. And I am not a Gibson fan. My sister saw Denzel in Julius Caesar and said he wasn't that good. I fell in love with Shakespeare in high school when Sister Basil, in her booming voice insisted we read it aloud. It was the best English class I ever had. We all took turns and she would coach us and explain the language. Her passion and her exuberance were contagious. I saw Richard III in high school, and Midsummer Night's Dream. Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, and Richard III are my favorites. I would have killed to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Iago. I bet he was incredible. Who was his Othello? Does anyone know? Years ago we saw a sweet movie, Ten Things I Hate About You. It was Taming of the Shrew in a modern American high school. Heath Ledger and Julia Styles. I loved it.

When I was in 8th grade, we had to visit my oldest brother’s fancy Jesuit prep school-he played Bottom in MSND. The female parts were cast by hot chicks from all the famous girls’ schools.

I was hooked…still one of my favorite productions 😎

For about 5 years my eccentric great aunt lived in Stratford, Ontario. Great place for Shakespeare addicts. GB Shaw addicts too.

I love the 1968 “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by Peter Hall. It stars Judi Dench, Diana Rigg, Helen Mirren, Clive Swift, and Ian Holm as Puck. I swear that Oberon and Puck were going to make out at one point.

Diana Rigg runs around in a yellow minidress and go-go boots. I’ve never been able to find a good version on home video.

Judi’s titties on display!

Richard III, with Ian McKellen & Annette Bening, set in 1930s Britain, has McKellen as a fascist leader seeking to steal the throne. One of my favorite adaptations.

I also had a nun in my English class my senior year. She wasn’t as dynamic as Sister Basil at R48 . One thing she did do that I appreciated was to read us the Porter’s speech from “Macbeth” out loud. The play was in our textbook but the Porter’s speech was left out for being too risque. Sister Judy said she didn’t believe in censorship and that if they were going to teach the play, they should include the entire play.

Teaching Shakespeare is not easy. Too many teachers will have the students read out loud but there’s no impact or discussion of what we’re reading.

The four great tragedies are “Macbeth”, “Hamlet”, “Othello”, and “King Lear”. A lot of people assume “Romeo and Juliet” is one of the four but truthfully, they were really stupid, impulsive kids who got married the day after they met.

This thread has encouraged me to buy some of the Signet books. What do you make of Timothée's Henry in The KIng? I thought he was very good.

Basil was constantly interrupting the readings to explain and question and engage. It was a lot of fun, R54. We'd read a passage and then she'd dtop us and say, "Now wait. What did he mean when he said...." It was better than watch TV.

How now. Calpurnia?

—

I am as constant as the North Star.

Etc.

I’m still FB friends with Ms. Brooks, who taught Julius Caesar in AP English—1978.

R46, I also saw that Ralph Fiennes "Hamlet"! That was when he began his affair with Francesca Annis, who played (Dr. Freud! Calling Dr. Freud!) Hamlet's mother Gertrude! 🤫

I'm glad now that I didn't pay $1,000 to see that "Othello"!😕

R37, What, Taylor & Burton are chopped liver?! 😄

Not to mention the brilliant "Moonlighting" rendition!

In iambic pentameter!

I think we did Julius Caesar in grade 10 and MacBeth in grade 11.

In most Calif public schools the Scottish play was 9th and JC was 10th. Hamlet was for 11th or 12th grade.

My senior year the AP exam was geared toward Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2…kind of a drag.

For me, it was “Romeo and Juliet” in 9th, “Julius Caesar” in 10th (the first two years were just a survey of stories and novels from all over), junior year was American Lit so pass and back to English lit senior year with “Macbeth”.

Yeah we did some North American Lit in there somewhere along with the Shakespeare. Death of a Salesman, The Glass Menagerie...

Probably my all-time favorite Shakespeare production was 1993, ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL directed by Richard Jones at the Delacorte Theater.

Sparknotes has a NoFear Shakespeare series, which has the original text on one side, and a modern English translation on the other. I’m sure this is mostly used by students who don’t want to bother reading the original play. Personally, I really like it, because it allows me to get the sense of the text and then I can more easily enjoy the poetry of the original.

The Porter scene.

Now I need to rewatch Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood” tonight. That movie so successfully interpolates the story of “Macbeth” into Medieval Japan that you’d think the stories origins were Japanese.

I haven’t seen Kurosawa’s “Ran” which is his Japanese “King Lear”.