Especially that bit with the dog… 
I’d have to say “Timon of Athens”. It’s a snore-fest.
I used to dislike “Errors” but then I saw a wonderful production of it in LA. It changed my perspective on it.
Samuel Pepys was of your opinion. He claimed that it was “the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life”.
I recently watched King John. What I said at the end was, "What sort of hack introduces character 45 seconds before the play ends?’. Add to the fact that to me at least, there was no clear cut villian in the play. King John is a great big jerk, (IMHO) but he is the ENGLISH king and wants to kick the FRENCH king ass. So I know Will’s audience must have been pulling for John.
I also have problems with Macbeth. There is a string of characters introduced and then killed about 12 lines later. It’s like he was writing cameos for the girlfriends of his investors. “Sure I’ll write a part for her, no problem! I’ll even give her a dramatic death scene.” Although I do give it points for killing children on stage as I hate child actors.
This calls the character of Siward’s son to mind, but that part is easily cut. The MacDuffs are introduced to be killed, but there wouldn’t have been any other way to fit them in. That choice works for me.
To be fair, some of this may have to do with other people editing the play after Shakespeare’s time - it’s rather short for him, so it’s suspected that that happened. [One or two insipid scenes in which the Three Sisters communicate with Hecate were also added, but few people perform these today.] On the upside, it’s the shortest (I think)and most tightly constructed - and therefore most intense - of his tragedies.
The St. Louis Shakespeare Festival is staging Macbeth this year (I’m actually one of their guest lecturers – go me!) and they left the Hecate scenes in. Kind of interesting – I figure it’s rather neat to see them performed, since it so rarely happens…
Zebra, you’ll be interested to know that there are other plays about King John from the same period in which he was presented in a fairly heroic light – he’s depicted, sometimes, as sort of a proto-Protestant, for defying the Pope.
The Man With the Golden Gun – I mentioned Caesar in my first post! More so for my personal distaste for it than for its lack of quality, though. 
:smack: D’oh! I must have missed it, or read “Julius Caesar” as “not Julius Caesar” or something. Sorry bout that.
From an old Harvard Lampoon article, “Your Guide to Faking it at College” (no cite, it’s from around about 1980): “Be aware that there are three Shakespeare plays that no one has ever read: King John, Titus Andronicus, and The Winter’s Tale. Feel free to attribute random quotations to these.”
As for that passage from Coriolanus that Katisha liked so much –
Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, where against
My grained ash an hundred times hath broke
And scarr’d the moon with splinters: here I clip
The anvil of my sword, and do contest
As hotly and as nobly with thy love
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,
I loved the maid I married; never man
Sigh’d truer breath; but that I see thee here,
Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold. Why, thou Mars! I tell thee,
We have a power on foot; and I had purpose
Once more to hew thy target from thy brawn,
Or lose mine arm fort: thou hast beat me out
Twelve several times, and I have nightly since
Dreamt of encounters 'twixt thyself and me;
We have been down together in my sleep,
Unbuckling helms, fisting each other’s throat,
And waked half dead with nothing.
Ahem. Is it just me, or does this have homoerotic overtones? I mean, is this Will Shakespeare or Kit Marlowe? (I admit the use of the word “fisting” has connotations today that likely were absent in Shakespeare’s time, but still!)
Oh, and I enjoyed The Tempest when I saw it performed, but afterwards it occurred to me to ask: Where’s the conflict? Where’s the suspense? Prospero just pulls everybody’s strings with the greatest of ease until the play ends and he gets everything he wants.
Oh, it totally does. Marlowe didn’t have a monopoly on homoeroticism, you know (although his Edward II is more overt than anything in Shakespeare)! Of course, love and war are the kind of things you see equated in poetry all the time – sometimes, love is poetically described as war (there’s an Ovid poem on this subject, translated by Marlowe and adapted by Donne), and sometimes, as here, it works the other way round…
I personally vote for Twelth Night. I think the version I saw back in the 80s had Helen Mirren in it… but even so I still fell asleep…
TWICE!
Maybe it was just because it was on the TV… I have to admit Shakespeare is a WHOLE lot more enjoyable in real life.
I haven’t read them all, but I nominate The Winter’s Tale. Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? Is it a weird pastoral court fantasy with a deux ex machina ending?
The first act is tragic and depressing, then the second act is all lightness and mistaken identities and sex, with about thirty seconds thrown in to undo the tragedy of the first act. It makes me think that Will was playing that game where you cover up half the paper and finish the other person’s story.
I’ve seen Twelfth Night done twice. The first time was at the University of Dayton. It was quite well done and extremely ribald (with a Malvolio who bore an alarming resemblance to General Zod). They really played up all the suggestive and naughty bits.
Later I saw it done at Brigham Young University, where, needless to say, they did not play up the suggestive and naughty bits. The difference was just amazing. I could hardly believe it was the same play.
I’ve actually played in this one, so I’m one of four people in the Southern hemisphere who have read it.
It’s clearly a poor copy of the original. It’s surmised (as you all no doubt know) that some editions of WS’ plays were based on the recollections of an actor, or a stolen stage manager’s copy. In this case it must be recollections and an actor that drank, I think.
Redboss
KNEEL BEFORE MALVOLIO!
nah, just doesn’t sound right…
I’ve not seen/read all of Will’s stuff, but I did have to trudge through Titus Andronicus, and think it’s by far the worst of his work that I’ve come in contact with.
Maybe…just maybe…I’ll have to give the movie a try. I mean, it’s got Hopkins…couldn’t be that* bad…right?
Yeah, I’ve experienced this. Through some law of mathematics I don’t yet understand, the universe requires me to see a production A Midsummer Night’s Dream every other day. Well, it feels that way sometimes. 
Many productions overdo the sex stuff. But I recently saw one that was aimed at children - not only did they ignore the sexual humor, they ignored the wordplay and most of the cleverness that makes Shakespeare Shakespeare. It’s amazing that his work is so rife with possibilities for interpretation.
Of course, this particular production SUCKED BIG TIME. But still.
I don’t know, I could see it. Remember that scene where he’s imagining what it would be like to be married to Olivia, before he finds the forged letter? “I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard of control, and say KNEEL BEFORE MALVOLIO!”
Twelfth Night is in the same category as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet in that, though they’re all great plays, they are (to nick from another play, albeit with slightly altered wording)…
…but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard, not regarded; seen, but with such eyes
As, sick and blunted with community,
Afford no extraordinary gaze…
(Applause to you, btw, if you can spot the quote. ;))
That said, I always feel the need to defend R&J in particular, since I’m rather fond of it – it was my first Shakespeare play. 
caveman, I recommend the movie version of Titus – it’s terrific, though it’s very weird. Harry Lennix (Commander Locke from The Matrix Reloaded) is particularly good as Aaron…
Actually, Redboss, the common belief is that Shakespeare had never finished “Timon of Athens”, and that it only survives because one of the romances (“Cymboline”?) was temporarly unavailible during the publication of the First Folio.
Re: Is Titus Andronicus ever performed?
When I was in elementary school (lo those many years ago - 15), the Stratford Festival in Stratford, On, had done Titus the year before. I didn’t see it, but I was in an English enrichment program and some propmakers from Stratford came in to work with us and they showed us how they made the gory decapitated head. Ever since then it has been one of my favourites. Oh, the bloodthirstyness of youth!
Since then, I think Stratford did again it a couple of years ago.
Sorry to hijack the thread, but if Shakespear actually WROTE all of the plays attributed to him, how come we have so little documentation about his life?
For example, supposedly only about a dozen authenticated signatures of his are known toexist-this guy should have court records, letters by the dozen, contemporary accounts, etc.
Or, did his widow/kids just trash the old man’s files?
Quoth BrainGlutton:
Ah, but he does it so wonderfully. But then again, I’ve always been a sucker for the character of the wiley father turned matchmaker.
Of the ones I’ve seen (I don’t count ones I’ve merely read), I’d have to say that Romeo and Juliette is the worst. But then again, I’ve heard that it becomes much better, once you realize going in that it’s not a love story.
And I’ve never seen Caesar, just read it, but it’s certainly made a much bigger impression on modern culture than, say, Titus. If I say “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears”, or “Beware the Ides of March”, then everyone on the planet will at least recognize the quote, even if they don’t know where it’s from. I don’t think that that’s the case with Titus.
And ralph124c, we have an awful lot of documentation about his life. I defy you to find any commoner contemporary to Shakespeare about whom we know more. The thing is, that we have almost nothing about anyone from that time frame: Few records were kept, and fewer survived the ages.