Shakespeare

[sodascouts]

This came up in another topic, and as I love talking about Shakespeare, I figured I'd start a thread for him!

What are you favorite sonnets, your favorite plays?

My personal favorite sonnet is 130. Here's how it goes:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.

- I love how he looks beyond appearances and says that while the one he loves may not be perfect or a traditional beauty, his love for her is as powerful as those with the most beautiful girlfriends in the world.

My favorite comedy is Much Ado About Nothing. I love the sparring between the two leads, Beatrice and Benedick - and I love that unlike some plays, the female star is just as clever as the male star. The romantic in me also loves that they get together in the end - the thin line between love and hate, eh?

My favorite drama is Hamlet. I know it's the one everybody has to study in school and to some it may be old hat, but there's a reason why students have to study it again and again. It is BRILLIANT. Hamlet's speeches are riveting, and the plot is compelling yet still has moments of joy (unlike some of his other tragedies). I can't get enough of this play.

My favorite history play is Henry V. It is excellent. The Saint Crispin's Day speech makes me choke up every time. The odds are 5 to 1, yet the English still pummel the French because they are the ones with heart. If only it worked like that in the real world! We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...

So, what are other people's favorites? Feel free to chime in!

[Freypower]

Soda, I will chime in, but your education & teaching experience will put you at a great advantage when describing what you like. I can do a bit of academic analysis but not to the extent that you can. Also I will have to get out my Complete Works in order to contribute properly (it's downstairs).

You started with a sonnet and I have to say I have not studied them in depth, but I also like 130 and the one my mother recited at our wedding, 116, which of course is:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


Is it a cliche to have this said at your wedding? It wasn't for me, because it's true.

At the other extreme you have 129:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

He could do wide eyed romanticism & he could also do cold eyed cynicism.

My favourite play is Macbeth. The 'tomorrow & tomorrow' soliloquy is my favourite passage of literature. My second favourite play is King Lear & then Hamlet.

I would say my favourite comedy is Tweltfh Night because it is so bittersweet. Although I named my daughter Rosalind, to be honest I don't know As You Like It that well.

All the English history plays are great but I don't really have a favourite. Of the Roman history plays it has to be Antony & Cleopatra.

[Glennsallnighter]

I didn't study much Shakespeare in school but I do remember my favourite sonnet going something like (and please bear with me. I haven't seen this one since 1985. I have No idea what number it is). We had to stude about 8 sonnets for our Leaving Certificate. Nancys was included in the 8.



Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

ok, I googled it! It was easier, tho I did remember a fair bit. Even at 15 I loved the idea that a poem could survive while great monuments buildings and inventions might not. I had this image in my mind of a piece of parchment with words on it floating above a ruined city!

As regards plays, the only ones I have read and am in any way familiar with are the Merchant of venice and King Lear. Both were interesting but I probably would have understood the Merchant better!

Very interesting topic Soda! I'll be interested to hear what other Borderers have to say!

[Freypower]

That is Number 55 and it sums up how Shakespeare's work will survivie forever.

[Henley Honey]

I have to be honest. It was mandatory that I take a Shakespeare class in high school. It was at a snooty "Academy" for fine young ladies where I learned lots of stuff (bad, fun stuff) -- but not a lot about Shakespeare. Honestly? I don't get it! BA-HOR-RA-HING. Sorry ladies, I know that's blasphemous. It goes right over my pointy little head. Whoopsie!

[Freypower]

Well, I would give you some suggestions for where to start so that you wouldn't find it boring, but if you're not interested I guess it wouldn't make a difference. There's nothing worse than being 'forced' to study Shakespeare and developing a lifelong dislike for his work as a result. And sadly, I think that happens to many people.

I think the first play I studied was Midsummer Night's Dream and I still love the fairytale ambience of the language, plus it also has the comedy of the 'rude mechanicals' which makes it fairly accessible.

[UK TimFan]

I have to be honest. It was mandatory that I take a Shakespeare class in high school. It was at a snooty "Academy" for fine young ladies where I learned lots of stuff (bad, fun stuff) -- but not a lot about Shakespeare. Honestly? I don't get it! BA-HOR-RA-HING. Sorry ladies, I know that's blasphemous. It goes right over my pointy little head. Whoopsie!

Know what you mean, HH.
Shakespeare leaves me cold. I don't know why - perhaps it was just the obligatory 'you have to study Shakespeare' at school.

Though I have to agree about the difference that seeing a play performed, as opposed to just reading it, makes. Reluctantly, I was dragged with my classmates to see 'As you like it' at the theatre, and was astonished to find that it was quite funny with some laugh aloud moments.

Some years later, after reading the excellent reviews, I went to see Zeferelli's 'Romeo and Juliet' starring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. I was doing quite well until near the end when Romeo finds Juliet presumably dead and he says 'Here's to my love' and drinks the poison. I cried from then until I got home. As I was travelling by bus in central London, for once I was so pleased that the British reserve stopped people asking me if I was OK. Can you imagine their reaction if I'd replied 'I'm crying because Romeo died'?

Soda will probably cry 'a plague a'both your houses' for the the liberties Zeferelli took with the text (omitting quite large chunks at times, some of which people consider almost vital to the play), but the fact remains that so many people simply love this version, and more than one admits that it was this film which was the start of a love affair with Shakespeare in general.

Also worth a watch for non-Shakespeare fans is Zeferelli's 'The Taming of the Shrew' with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Have to add that much as I love the two films I've mentioned, that apart from the The Merchant of Venice which we did at school, I still haven't read any other Shakespeare; I'm a Robert Burns girl.

ETA: Though I used to hate Robert Burns' 'My love is like a red red rose' with a passion, and used to cover my ears every time it was played on the radio. Then I saw on TV a one-man play starring John Cairney (who bears an uncanny resemblance to portraits of R. Burns!) called 'There was a man' about the life of Robert Burns. The main props were a table, chair, bed, and a hatstand, and possibly pen and paper and food utensils (cup, plate) but it was absolutely engrossing, and several years later I had the good fortune to see John in the play in London.

[EaglesKiwi]

I know I'm going back a few days, but I wanted to comment on this:

...
You started with a sonnet and I have to say I have not studied them in depth, but I also like 130 and the one my mother recited at our wedding, 116, which of course is:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


Is it a cliche to have this said at your wedding? It wasn't for me, because it's true...

IMHO, Shakespeare is often quoted in little snippets which people then think are cliched. Certain of the sonnets are referred to over and over again, ditto lines from plays e.g. "To be or not to be, that is the question".

Taken out of contect and overdone they lose their original impact and/or beauty.

I watched an episode of Doctor Who where the Dr and Martha travel back to Shakespeare's time. At the very end of the episode Shakespeare is saying goodbye to Martha (after flirting with her all episode) and says something along the lines of writing a poem for her - then starts wtih "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

Okay, this is a very long-winded way of saying, "Wow, imagine being the person one of the sonnets was written for, and hearing it for the first time - not only is it so beautiful, but it's about you."

[Freypower]

I don't necessarily think use of Shakespearean lines out of context is cliched. I always get a laugh from 'it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance' from Hamlet even if the person using it has no idea it's from Shakespeare.

I think if there's one line that may be overused it is 'if music be the food of love, play on' from Twelfth Night.

[EaglesKiwi]

I don't necessarily think use of Shakespearean lines out of context is cliched. I always get a laugh from 'it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance' from Hamlet even if the person using it has no idea it's from Shakespeare.

I think if there's one line that may be overused it is 'if music be the food of love, play on' from Twelfth Night.

Yes - the line itself is good, but it MAY get a reaction from some people of "oh not that old line again".

Maybe you always get a laugh because you quote appropriately!