Do you like Shakespeare? (2 Viewers)

[Zack Lee]

Was that rhetorical?
Scotland PA is an incredible adaptation of the Scottish play

Is there another form of?

I don’t run in these circles but sometimes somebody might leanrt me something. Probably needs to be something other than Scottish though. Sounds dreary already.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

Any of the Kenneth Branagh adaptations if you want something that stays as true to the source as possible.

Romeo + Juliet is an excellent musical adaptation with a young Leonardo DiCaprio.

There's a WW2 adaptation of Richard III with Ian McKellen as Richard III and Robert Downey Jr. Without a doubt the best adaptation of the line, "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

Titus with Anthony Hopkins as Titus Andronicus is also very, very good. The opening scene gives me chills.

There's a decent modern adaptation of Hamlet with Ethan Hawke as Hamlet.

I'm definitely forgetting a bunch but those are all solid movie adaptations.

*dips quill*
Since there aren’t really any settings in Shakespeare’s plays, it’s not really an adaptation if a play is ‘re-set’ in a more modern setting Shakespeare text with Shakespeare characters is just a production
An adaptation (of Shakespeare) needs to have some recontextualization
West Side Story is an adaptation
Romeo + Juliet is a production
(R+J is a deconstruction)

 

[Zardnok]

Not a fan of Shakespeare. I did a tour of England back in the 80s and was trying to take a picture of his house. I kept backing up to get it all in the frame and tripped over backwards on a giant boulder in the middle of the path. No clue why anyone thought the middle of the path was a great spot to put this giant boulder, but it busted my head open and soured me on Shakespeare ever since.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

Not a fan of Shakespeare. I did a tour of England back in the 80s and was trying to take a picture of his house. I kept backing up to get it all in the frame and tripped over backwards on a giant boulder in the middle of the path. No clue why anyone thought the middle of the path was a great spot to put this giant boulder, but it busted my head open and soured me on Shakespeare ever since.

I’m not familiar with which play you’re spoofing

 

[longtime lurker]

He’s ok, still prefer him unplugged.

 

[Zardnok]

I’m not familiar with which play you’re spoofing

No play. Real life. I literally busted my head open at Shakespeare's house.

 

[Mojomajik9]

What a great thread! Love the OP and had that same Eureka moment with Shakespeare myself while reading Anthony's tribute to the dead Caesar.
Elizabethan English is certainly a tough one but we should never forget the man's incredible influence on modern story-telling:

Romeo and Juliet = West Side Story
King Lear = Kurosawa's magnificent samurai epic 'Ran'
Hamlet = The Lion King
The Tempest = Forbidden Planet

• The magnificent tormented characters: Richard III, Lady Macbeth, Falstaff, Hamlet...
• The incredible speeches: Hamlet's Soliloquy, Henry V's rousing battlefield addresses.
• The unforgettable one-liners: Oh what light from yonder window breaks; the lady doth protest too much; We happy few, we band of brothers....

Discovering the real meaning of the words makes it come alive even more:
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead....
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

The breach was the crack in the wall of a castle and those rushing through it faced near certain death as they would face a reign of arrows, boiling oil, fierce front-line defenders....but the first through the breach also got honours, titles, the pick of the spoils....high stakes, high risks. The imagery of blood-spattered battle-hardened vets armed with swords straining in the slips like salivating greyhounds ready at any moment to spring to life and chase their prey to its death is incredible.
And then God for Harry, England and St George....for your king, your country and for God. (Of course no mention of the Welsh archers who won most of Tudor England's battles but I digress)

Shakespeare has dominated literature, film, and even our interpretation of history for centuries. he may be occasionally unfathomable but he is indeed a master of the story-telling art.

Kurosawa also directed Throne of Blood which is my favorite take on Macbeth. But yes to echo what others have said the plays are meant to be watched and not read.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

No play. Real life. I literally busted my head open at Shakespeare's house.

Yeah I was making a bad joke bc that story could have been in one of his comedies

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

Kurosawa also directed Throne of Blood which is my favorite take on Macbeth. But yes to echo what others have said the plays are meant to be watched and not read.

Good call
Great movie

Also Ran = Lear

 

[Geldo]

Kurosawa also directed Throne of Blood which is my favorite take on Macbeth. But yes to echo what others have said the plays are meant to be watched and not read.

Good call. I forgot all about that one.
Kurosawa films are incredible. Anyone who hasn’t enjoyed the drama of such classics as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Ikiru, Ran, is missing out.

 

[Saintman2884]

I don't like reading it but I do like when the plays are performed or when the stories are made into movies. And, honestly, that's how they were meant to be enjoyed. They were written to be performed, not to be read. If you can read them and enjoy them, more power to you. But, I think the stories are only fully realized when they are performed.

Which again, begs the larger, pertinent question: if they were originally meant to be seen, heard and be performed, why have centuries of school children in Western countries been forced or assigned cumbersome, boring, tedious wry, dry sometimes sanctimonious late 16th century/early 17th century torrid English playwrighting.

Why make generations of school children or HS/college students read something that wasnt initially.meant to be enjoyed or understood by individuals reading it themselves, but watching it in communal-style plays? Ancient Greek/Roman mythology or Plato/Socrates best philosophical works were essentially lectured to or exp!ain or performed in plays, mystery-occult like processions, or cults like Pythagorus. Homer and Hessiad's best works sometimes were the basis for plays revolving around Greek/Roman mythology. Virgil's Aenid essentially is ancient Roman cultural.and political propoganda for how the Greek destruction, looting and burning of Troy led to one Trojan man escaping with a group of followers, wives and children, soldiers, go on a journey throughout the Mediterranean, North Africa, and then finally settle in on founding Rome, a civilization that would eventually overrun and dominate Greece.

Don Quixote may be somewhat cumbersome to read in parts similar to Shakespeare, but at least it has interesting, amusing subject matter especially given the fact that the novel's narrator is actually insane, or goes insane over the course of his long life throughout the content.

The Stand, without the religious overtones, probably would be the most realistic post-apocalytpic type world that seems the most believable. That or the Book of Eli. Reading and writing as well as mass literacy likely given high priority in such a rapidly de-evolving, radically decentralized world. It would sort of be equivalent to the deteriorating and ultimate collapse of high politics, culture, entertainment, societies occured in western Europe after the fall of the western Roman Empire at the end of 5th century C.E. It took Europe centuries, arguably up until the Renaissance, and foreign invasions, Viking conquests and incursions, arrival of a new religion, Islam, wars, mass pandemics, several outbreaks of Black Death "bubonic plague" as well as a mild ice age that lasted for close to 500 years, before it enjoyed or saw the same industrialized, cultural or intellectual promise the world saw with in ancient Roman antiquity.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

Which again, begs the larger, pertinent question: if they were originally meant to be seen, heard and be performed, why have centuries of school children in Western countries been forced or assigned cumbersome, boring, tedious wry, dry sometimes sanctimonious late 16th century/early 17th century torrid English playwrighting.

Why make generations of school children or HS/college students read something that wasnt initially.meant to be enjoyed or understood by individuals reading it themselves, but watching it in communal-style plays? Ancient Greek/Roman mythology or Plato/Socrates best philosophical works were essentially lectured to or exp!ain or performed in plays, mystery-occult like processions, or cults like Pythagorus. Homer and Hessiad's best works sometimes were the basis for plays revolving around Greek/Roman mythology. Virgil's Aenid essentially is ancient Roman cultural.and political propoganda for how the Greek destruction, looting and burning of Troy led to one Trojan man escaping with a group of followers, wives and children, soldiers, go on a journey throughout the Mediterranean, North Africa, and then finally settle in on founding Rome, a civilization that would eventually overrun and dominate Greece.

Don Quixote may be somewhat cumbersome to read in parts similar to Shakespeare, but at least it has interesting, amusing subject matter especially given the fact that the novel's narrator is actually insane, or goes insane over the course of his long life throughout the content.

The Stand, without the religious overtones, probably would be the most realistic post-apocalytpic type world that seems the most believable. That or the Book of Eli. Reading and writing as well as mass literacy likely given high priority in such a rapidly de-evolving, radically decentralized world. It would sort of be equivalent to the deteriorating and ultimate collapse of high politics, culture, entertainment, societies occured in western Europe after the fall of the western Roman Empire at the end of 5th century C.E. It took Europe centuries, arguably up until the Renaissance, and foreign invasions, Viking conquests and incursions, arrival of a new religion, Islam, wars, mass pandemics, several outbreaks of Black Death "bubonic plague" as well as a mild ice age that lasted for close to 500 years, before it enjoyed or saw the same industrialized, cultural or intellectual promise the world saw with in ancient Roman antiquity.

Laziness and Anglo imperialism
But also the moments of profound insight

 

[Saintman2884]

Good call. I forgot all about that one.
Kurosawa films are incredible. Anyone who hasn’t enjoyed the drama of such classics as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Ikiru, Ran, is missing out.

To truly understand the larger, societal themes Kurosawa discusses in his movies like Seven Samurai, you have to sort of know a little bit about that particular period(the 16th century, "Warring States Period") in Japanese history to see how the protagonists, setting, innocent villagers' predicament can be better explained. The Warring States Period was a very violent, chaotic, extremely turbulent time politically for Japan. Socio-political lines were dysfunctional, regional politics was in a disarray, with a breakdown in law and order, there was a blurring of social and cultural norms, customs, the Wild West on steroids except the extreme violence, chaos, fear and uncertainty lasted for nearly a century and the specific reasons why the conflict broke out in the first place became kind of a moot point..

The Warring States period in Japanese history lasted so long they kind of lost the plot, so to speak as to why the conflicts started and what they later morphed into what their intended purposes were.

Rashamon is more of a Japanese example of Hitchcockean tense melodrama about different versions of the same, actual event told by various people involved. Clever, Behavioral psychological test case scenario captured on film. Who's lying or who's telling more of the actual truth?

 

[Saintman2884]

Big fan here. Everybody talks about the comedies and the big three tragedies. But the Histories are my favorite. As said above, you need really good actors to do them right. Richard III and Henry IV part I are particularly good. If you are ever in Atlanta (for a Saints game) try the Shakespeare Tavern, it is fairly close to their Mercedes Dome. You can eat and drink during the performance and the food/drink is far better than that in their Dome.

Ahh, Richard III, the English king or monarch that Shakespeare cast illegitimacy on as to whether his reign was ordained and kind of accused him of murdering those two princes in the Tower that many historians aren't completely sure or convinced he ordered their deaths. Hamlet's uncle in Shakespeare play was actually inspired by Richard III and for centuries, Richard III was regarded as a English king who was written out of history the same way Jane Grey was a Queen written out of English royal records, historically.