Let me add my voice to the clammor that familiarity with Shakespeare is one of the hallmarks of literacy. One suggestion I have for anyone unfamiliar with the works of the Bard is to see the play onstage first (or on video if the theatre is out of reach geographically or monetarily), then read it, remembering what you saw and putting the action with the words. If you can get the overall idea of who is whom and what is going on generally, the language will become less of a problem. For me it usually takes about five minutes to settle into hearing iambic pentameters and the Elizabethan English. And remember too, the plays are plays - meant to be performed, not read silently and alone from the cold dead page. So see them and appreciate them as you would any other dramatic work, and then if it strikes your fancy, read it through on your own afterwards.
Of course, the sonnets are poetry (don’t say duh) both on the page and on the lips - read them aloud if you like. They ring with life when spoken. I’m partial to “let me not to the marriage of true minds” and “my lover’s eyes are nothing like the sun”, but there’s hardly a bad one in the lot. Just try it and you’ll see.
My favorite line is from the Scottish Play, Act 1, Scene 1: A drum! A drum! MacBeth doth come!
(Nothing profound about it, it just strikes me funny.)
The quality of play annotations varies widely. This is going to be a controversial, for example because ACT uses the Arden annotations, but generally some are much better than the others:
The best: Oxford, French’s, Variorum (out-of-print, but some available free online through Gutenburg Project).
Ok, but sometimes providing totally off-base definitions, uninsightful background, etc.: Cambridge, Arden, Pelican.
I’ve liked shakespeare since we did it in my 8th grade english/reading classes. The other classes didn’t do it (we were the “gifted” kids) and when we said we were actually acting out Hamlet, the other classes looked at us weird.
I agree acting out Shakespeare’s plays are the best way to teach it. Our class had a grand total of 11 people and we switched off the roles. I learned a lot during that part of the class. I won’t say anything else about my english/reading classes that year.
As for is it still taught in highschool. In mine, yes. We’ve read R&J and Julius Ceasar in freshman and sophmore years. Nothing in Junior year since that was “American Lit” aka let’s read mostly overused novels. (House on Mango Street, Catcher in the Rye, various Mark Twain stuff-who I do like) Not sure what we read in Brit Lit next year beyond Beowulf, but I think we read the scottish play.
And I can still recite a few lines from Hamlet. And doing swordfights is fun with yardsticks or markers in a very tiny classroom.
Now, after reading Dante’s Inferno, I think I’ll go pick up some Shakespeare.
Have you seen the Cliffs Notes versions of Shakespeare’s plays? They have an interesting three-column format: annotations to the left, text in the middle, and word definitions on the right. Do you think they’re worthwhile?
Good question. I looked through one of the Cliff Notes, and although I’m not opposed to what they’re attempting, they haven’t been outstandingly successful with Shakespeare. On the postive side, they’re easy to read, on the negative side, they’re not usually completely correct. And since annotations in general are easy to read, might as well go for the best, say Oxford.
If you’re looking for extremely easy to read (and why not?) try the versions of Shakespeare completely rewritten in modern language. Those will at least alert you to the plot outline, then you can more easily plow through a good annotated version.
I read some of it. Does that count? And I read Edward III, which has to win me some points on the certifiable scale! And yes, I am pretentious. I’ve come to accept that about myself.
BTW – Tudor historian? Do you teach, or what?
Indeed. I once played Hamlet in an acting workshop, and I managed to crack everyone up by whirling on Horatio and Marcellus exclaiming “By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me!” while wielding a pencil…
Which is why I find it so grotesquely fascinating. Harold Bloom thinks it was Shakespeare getting the influence of Marlowe out of his system, but since the only Marlowe plays I’ve read are Doctor Faustus and Edward II I can’t comment, at least not very well. (Apparently Aaron the Moor resembles the title character of The Jew of Malta.)
I had a weird experience reading the play – I went into it with the popular image of the king who was really a poet (thanks to my high school Shakespeare teacher) and when I actually read it I found him a more distant protagonist than I’d expected. But that’s a good thing, since it led me to a thesis topic… (And anyway I’ve grown rather attached to Richard as a result of that thesis. ;))
Given today’s date, it is appropriate to note that the St. Crispin’s Day speech was recited in more than one landing craft as it approached the Normandy beaches 57 years ago.
Don’t be countin’ on it. The Oxford English Dictionary revisions have taken a large number of first quotes away from good ole Shakepeare. Their online dictionary has the latest. Their Web site has interesting info on recent changes.
Julius Ceasar - The first one, IIRC. Decent, if fairly mundane crime-and-punishment cautionary tale. Really flowery language, even compared to the others.
Romeo and Juliet - Frankly, Romeo struck me as a hell of a lot better warrior than he ever was a lover. Compelling story, especially with the family feud elements, even if…you know…most of the characters weren’t paragons of logic. (I’ve always had the notion that if the lovers just lay low and played along with the silly feud, eventually the biggest loonies would kill each other or lose interest, and they’d be free to live their lives. But that’s just me.)
Macbeth - My favorite. Powerful drama, even without the (somewhat ham-handed, IMHO) religious elements. A stark look into the nature of evil and the truly horrific depths to which a person can sink.
The Taming of the Shrew - Feh, never cared for this one. Yeah, there’s an annoying woman and this hotshot has to turn her into a docile etc. etc…yawn.
Hamlet - It was fun seeing everyone wrestle tooth and nail with all the “moral” issues, while blithely ignoring some pretty glaring injustices (say, a brother succeeding a king or no one really doing a damn thing about Ophelia’s mental duress). Can you say art imitating life?
So yeah, there’s some good stuff here; I’m not about to claim that Shakespeare is all incomprehensible junk. However, I vehemently disagree that knowing any of this is essential for anything. C’mon, it’s theater. You know, what they had in the 16th century instead of movies?
Like a few other posters have mentioned, I enjoy a seeing a performance more than reading Shakespeare. I’ve seen Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Taming of the Shrew, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth and As You Like It. I agree being familiar with Shakespeare is an important component of a solid education and cultural literacy. However, I don’t think I’d go as far as to say someone was illiterate because they had not studied Shakespeare.
Well, I suppose they have to teach it in school. Too bad they seem to start most students with Julius Caesar, because in my opinion, that’s a definite snoozer! (A friend of mine —a Shakespearean scholar, as a matter of fact— once told me that they do Julius Caesar in secondary schools because it’s one of the few Shakespearean plays without bawdy references. I dunno if that’s true or not, but that’s what he always said.)
Personally, I don’t care for Shakespeare. What was forced on me in high school was boring with an uppercase “B”. And I frequently felt like I needed some kind of universal translator to decipher that wacky Elizabethan English. The stories might have been good, but it was always too much doggoned work to read …and there was so much other stuff that I liked so much better.
Didn’t take any English courses in college, thank God, so I avoided any further contact with Shakespeare once I was out of high school.
To see it performed left me cold too.
Way too long, seemed to move far too slowly, and simply not interesting, at least to me.
And look; I’ve seen the RSC perform, and all I could think about was: were we going to party with them after the show?
The scariest, most-spine-chillingiest moment I’ve ever had (TV, movie, or theatre) was at a performance of Richard III at Stratford - a completely bare stage, one diffused spotlight, and a single actor - the murderer who had just killed the princes, and had a three minute soliloquy on what it was like to kill two defenceless little boys. In those three minutes, I truly felt I was listening to a psychopathic murderer.
That, more than anything else, is my argument for Shakespeare - the language and the knowledge of character, in the hands of a good actor, speaks across the centuries. It could have been set in Rwanda/Bosnia/Oklahoma City, and had the same impact.
Turning to comments of others:
Katisha
Katisha, the Beloved and I are off tomorrow to see all three Henrys - Pt. 1, Pt. 2, and Henry 5. Glad to hear you liked it - it sounds like it’s getting good reviews. I believe that they’re going to complete the cycle next year with the Henry VI trilogy and Richard III. See you there!
goboy
once you get past that it’s just a barrel of laughs! :rolleyes:
(Titus and Timon are the two I never plan on seeing.) Or’n’ry Oscar
Why thank you! I work so hard at it, and it’s good to have that labour recognized!
Here’s my list of plays seen and read:
Romeo and Juliet - stage (local production)
Hamlet - film (Olivier) and stage (Stratford - the Mountie from Due South))
Macbeth - stage (student production)
Othello - film (Olivier)
King Lear - film (Peter Brooks, director)
Much Ado About Nothing - film (Thompson and Branagh) and stage (local production)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream - stage (Stratford and local)
Twelfth Night - TV (Helen Hunt)) and stage (local)
As You Like It - stage (Stratford)
The Merchant of Venice - stage (Stratford)
The Tempest - TV and stage (local production)
Henry IV Part I - stage (Yale student production)
Henry V - film (Branagh)
Richard III - film (Olivier) and stage (Stratford)
Richard II - film
The Winter’s Tale - stage (New Haven and Folger)
Taming of the Shrew - film (John Cleese)
Comedy of Errors - stage (Young Vic)
Two Gentlemen of Verona - stage (Stratford)
And the ones I’ve read but not seen (I stopped reading plays I’ve not see a while ago, because I want to go to the play cold):
Julius Caesar
Measure for Measure
King John
Henry IV Part II
Troilus and Cressida
Pericles
The Sonnets
Rape of Lucrece
Romeo & Juliet was the first play I read: at age 10, in a Classics Illustrated comic book. I was puzzled, intrigued and a bit scared by it, all at once.
Was it the '97 Stratford production? I saw that one!
I’m looking forward to that (though it probably won’t be quite as good as the RSC’s production of same, which is the best thing I’ve ever seen onstage). Have a great time in Stratford! (BTW, the guy who plays Hotspur is fantastic… :D)
Actually, Henry IV part 1 didn’t get a very good review from the Detroit Free Press, but I never agree with their theater critic anyway.
Lousy lack of editing – I forgot to mention that I also saw Hamlet in Stratford last year, and was very impressed by Paul Gross’ performance. (My sister thinks he was better than Branagh, but I don’t know that I’d go that far. I love Branagh. :D)
I can repeat the statements of some folks here, in that when I was in high school I didn’t understand how good Shakespeare can be. It was taught in a BORING pedantic fashion, and it WAS the “usual three”(Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet) The year we had R&J was the year the Hussey/Whiting movie came outand we weren’t allowed to go as a class, because of the “gasp” nude scene.
Then I was house sitting for my grandmother and I ran across a BBC production of “Measure for Measure” and nearly fell on the floor laughing. I honestly didn’t know Shakespeare had the bawdy parts, or could be so funny. Maybe we could get more high schoolers started on the Bard if we gave them some of that!
And if we want to teach that Shakespeare has themes that are relevant in today’s world, or even the same situations, have them read the Duke of Burgundy’s speech to the King of France and Henry V, when he demands to know why they can’t make peace, and how it hurts kids and culture to always be at war.
I present, for the edification of this thread’s readers, Sonnet 135.
Kinda weird, huh?
Now read it again, but this time, keep in mind that “will” doesn’t just mean desire or intent, and it’s more than just a pun on Shakespeare’s first name. It’s also a slang term for genitalia, both male and female (the male version is still with us, hundreds of years later, in the word “willy”). Read it again with this knowledge, and it isn’t just bawdy, it’s dirty as hell.
Yes, it should be taught and the students should definitely see it performed.
Okay, I’m biased; I teach English. Not the plays, though. I do teach a few of S’s sonnets when I have Creative Writing.
I’m working on memorizing Sonnet 29 (“When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,/I all alone beweep my outcast state…”); I think we’ve all had times when we’ve felt like this speaker.
One of the reasons I fell in love with Shakespeare was that my first real encounter with him was studying Romeo and Juliet in tenth-grade English, and I had a teacher who explained all the dirty jokes to us.
As far as raunchy sonnets go, try this one:
Love is too young to know what conscience is,
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body’s treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,
But rising at thy name doth point out thee,
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.
The play on “rise” and “fall” is rather unsubtle – “pride” could also be a sexually charged term in Shakespeare’s day, and “conscience” might be an obscene pun…
I cannot quite remember the name of the play, but it works on the basis of Hamlet being written as a comedy…
And it WORKS. Brilliant piece. It’s called… erk … “Good Night, Desdemona; Good Morning Juliet”.
I think.
In any case, I only think Shakespeare should be read by people who are interested in literature. Or history. Or human psychology. Or philosophy at all. Or theatre/film/acting. But that’s it, no one else.
Oh, and anyone interested in politics. Or writing. But no one else.
And anyone who’s into poetry. And… ah, never mind.
(And anyway I’ve grown rather attached to Richard as a result of that thesis. ;))