Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I saw the Scottish Play ... Remind me, which one was that again? :-)
It's the Scottish Play. Do you refer to it any other way?
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My ranking of every Shakespeare play
101–110 of 179 posts
Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play
#102I remember the teacher talking up Romeo and Juliet and being fairly unimpressed. But when I read King Lear, I was electrified- that scene with the king ranging around in the field while the fool says smart things is really good IMHO. I saw the Scottish Play put on by my high school theater and it was also great. Over time I've come to appreciate his fragments: "But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? Tis t…
> I saw the Scottish Play ... Remind me, which one was that again? :-)
Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play
#103Measure for Measure is one of my favourites and I'm glad they enjoyed it so much. But it's much darker than they imply. The Duke is not necessarily 'soft hearted', more manipulative; and the ending where he informs Isabella he will marry her is not usually played as a happy ending anymore. The play has the only Shakespearean comic scenes that are still remotely funny. Angelo's struggle with temptation is also fascina…
> The play has the only Shakespearean comic scenes that are still remotely funny.
This seems rather extreme. None of the other comedies make the grade? Not to mention comic scenes in the history plays (for example, pretty much any scene with Falstaff in Henry IV), and even in some of the tragedies (for example, Osric inviting Hamlet to duel with Laertes)?
Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play
#104I think your own personal ranking will depend entirely on the production.
For instance, I saw the Stratford (Ontario) production of Timon of Athens a couple of years ago and it’s now one of my favorites.
King Lear, by contrast (and on the same stage) was a drag for me.
Much Ado About Nothing, though… Chef’s Kiss!
Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play
#105I was 13 or 14 and one day with nothing to watch on TV I turned on my local PBS station.
Henry V (1989) was on.
I saw some sort of medieval show and thought “knights and castles… cool”. I knew of Shakespeare but really hadn’t given it much thought. I lived in a rural area, not much of that around and I didn’t feel connected to any of that stuff.
The movie really grabbed me, I didn’t understand every word but I didn’t have to. I watched it over and over again. Shakespeare, felt real, and I thought if that did maybe a lot of the arts would?
The world was much bigger for me after that.
Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play
#106I was 13 or 14 and one day with nothing to watch on TV I turned on my local PBS station. Henry V (1989) was on. I saw some sort of medieval show and thought “knights and castles… cool”. I knew of Shakespeare but really hadn’t given it much thought. I lived in a rural area, not much of that around and I didn’t feel connected to any of that stuff. The movie really grabbed me, I didn’t understand every word but I didn’t…
I feel the same way about the 1996 version of Romeo & Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_%2B_Juliet), which I guess you might call a modern reboot of the play. I thought it was fantastic, really made Shakespeare feel real to my teenage self. My high school English teacher at the time hated it though.
Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Tolstoy: ... "but having read one after the other, ..." Do not read Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote plays, not books. Shakespeare should be watched, either on stage or on screen. Reading a Shakespeare play is like deciding to listen to the Beatles by downloading MIDI files and playing them through software. Maybe you get the broad strokes of the song, and maybe you even like it, but you're not listening to the Beatle…
You got Tolstoy pretty good there!
I kind of agree with GP, but man did this make me laugh
Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play
#108I ‘studied’ Much Ado About Nothing in school (as the author wished for) but it was lost on me. Probably the issue is not normally the specific choice of play. But there are lots of things that are hard about Shakespeare in school, even ignoring the unfamiliar language. (A friend from another country said they studied some Shakespeare which had been translated into his language so didn’t sound so unfamiliar, but I can…
I too "studied" Much Ado About Nothing in high school. It was basically an extended exercise in joke dissection as outside of some of Dogberry's lines no one in the class had the slightest clue what was supposed to be funny about it, and it went about as well as dissecting jokes usually does.
Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play
#109As a kid having to read Shakespeare what was lost on me, because of the language, was the language. Will worked hard to turn a phrase. "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." "The very substance of the amb…
As a kid I hated reading Shakespeare because he's a playwright: His scripts are supposed to be seen, not read.
Taking certain lines out of context make for great memes, as you just demonstrated, but as a whole I simply didn't enjoy reading them and I promptly forgot it all after my schooling years.
Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play
#110I've read about half of them, seen more than a bunch live and in film, enough to annoy the kids. Some versions I like: * David Tenant's Much Ado about Nothing. Kenneth Branagh's is good too, and easier to find. * Branagh's Henry V. * I actually like Mel Gibson's Hamlet. * Almost any Midsummer's Night Dream. It's just a fun play, even kids can enjoy it. * The Coen Bros' Macbeth on AppleTV * Rosencrantx and Guildenster…
I'm sure it's considered problematic now for various reasons (maybe it always was), but Polanski's Macbeth still holds up for me. Jon Finch (Macbeth) and Terence Bayler (Macduff) were great.