I want to thank everybody for participating in the “What Shakespeare Did You Read In High School?” thread, I got a great deal of detailed responses. Because of the informal nature of the question and the variety of the answers (does “performed it” count as read it? does “read selections from” count? What about home schooling?) I can’t really make statistical judgement on the results. But here’s some interesting bullet points:

• Romeo and Juliet is still a favorite, with the large majority of responders saying that they either read or teach it, normally as the first play (i.e. 9th grade, or even earlier)
• Second place, somewhat surprisingly, appears to go to Macbeth. I don’t really know why that is, but Macbeth gets nearly as much recognition as Romeo and Juliet.
• Hamlet and Julius Caesar split the difference for the next two great tragedies, with Othello pulling up in the #5 spot.
• There was some love for Lear, Titus and Antony & Cleopatra, but those don’t even registered compared to the “Big Five”.
• Many people said that senior was split between several plays. I’m not really sure how you devote an entire year to R&J but only half a year to Hamlet, but I suppose we’ll chalk it up to most of that freshman time being spent learning about Shakespeare as a topic in general.
• Among the comedies, Midsummer wins handily (though still read/taught only about 1/3rd as frequently as the great tragedies).
• Behind Midsummer comes, in order, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Shrew.
• Props to the one school that’s apparently still teaching Merchant of Venice as required reading!

Discuss. I think that Julius Caesar is so popular because of the tie-ins to the student of ancient Roman history, also going on at roughly that grade level. Hamlet seems obvious to me as an example of just how great Shakespeare can be (I think that teaching Lear to teenagers is a bit of a disservice, actually, as they haven’t got nearly the life experience to understand it. Familiarize them with it, sure, but I wouldn’t expect most (note, I say most, not all) of them to actually “get” it). I truly don’t get the Macbeth thing, though. It’s got a history tie-in, sure, but I don’t recall that being the major point of discussion. I would have thought that Othello would come next.

No more Shakespeare for Christopher Plummer, says Christopher Plummer.
Why?

“I’ve already played all the great Shakespearean roles that fit my age except for Falstaff and I don’t want to wear all that f— padding,” insisted the Montreal-born actor who turns 81 on Dec. 13.

While it’s sad to see the great actors step aside, you can’t argue with the reality of it. The man’s Romeo days are past. And it looks like he’s had his share of Lear and Prospero. Maybe he doesn’t want to spend his days doing Lord Capulet. (The article does point out that Plummer is still very active, and will be moving on to some O’Neill, Shaw, Ibsen and the Greeks.)
Interesting – he’s doing The Tempest on stage right now, and I see a “tv movie” credit for The Tempest in IMDB. Will this be a a filmed version of his performance, much like McKellen/Stewart/Tennant before him? That would be highly cool.
I think modern audiences would agree that his greatest Shakespearean role was that of General Chang in Star Trek VI : The Undiscovered Country. 🙂
On a more serious note, which Harry Potter character do you think he should have played?

Do not miss the latest episode of Stephen Colbert’s show where he interviews director Julie Taymor almost entirely about The Tempest. I was a little upset when I saw the TV Guide and she was billed strictly as the director of that ridiculous Spiderman musical, but as far as I can tell Colbert did not mention Spiderman at all.

Highlights:

“That’s how I like my Shakespeare – on fire.”

“So it seems like a cross between Lost, and Harry Potter.”

“That’s what I say, modernize the language! Don’t say thou, say you! Don’t say orisons, say prayers. Don’t say zounds, say holy sh_t!”

I was excited for the Kill Shakespeare guys (maker of the comic book where all of Shakespeare’s greatest characters go on a quest to find their creator) because Taymor mentioned them on the show. But then she proceeds to say that it’s a modern translation and give it a literal thumbs down (and I do mean that, she physically made the thumbs down gesture on national television). That had to hurt a bit. But then, who knows? Maybe the audience that they’re going for is precisely the group that would say “Oh, thank god, it’s not in the original Shakespeare language.”

Interesting twist : Taymor does say that a major part of the story changes when Prospera is a mom and not a dad. With a dad, the entrance of Ferdinand is all about “You’re not good enough to take my little girl away.” But with a mom, she says, it’s a completely different relationship and all about how mom knows exactly what her daughter is feeling. Should be interesting to see how that plays out on film.

Right before the show, a tv-commercial played for The Tempest. Seriously, I was shaking as I watched it. I called in the kids and replayed it 3 times. I can not remember the last time I got to witness a mainstream Shakespeare event like this. Heck, the last (and only!) time I saw a Shakespeare movie in the theatre it was Mel Gibson’s Hamlet back in 1990 – and we had to argue with the manager that night because he said there weren’t enough people in the theatre to show it.

I don’t need it to be a good movie. I’m more than thrilled enough to hear people talking about it, and to imagine a parade of people who start with “Let’s go to the movies” as their first plan, and “What should we see?” as the second. Those people, even if they don’t choose to go, will at least have the opportunity to see it listed and say “Well there’s a showing of The Tempest at 7:15, I heard it’s like Lost meets Harry Potter. And it’s got that drunk guy who married Katy Perry in it.”

When the latest Harry Potter movie opened and there were people lined up around the block to see the midnight show, I joked that I should have gone up and down the line telling them that they were a week early, Julie Taymor’s The Tempest by William Shakespeare didn’t open for another month.

I wonder, though, what a generation of Harry Potter fans would think if they realized that nearly every major actor in the Harry Potter movies is also a well-known Shakespearean?

There are so many, I don’t even know where to start.

Professor McGonagall / Maggie Smith – Played Desdemona (from Othello), Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing), Portia (Merchant of Venice), and the Duchess of York (Richard III) before Harry Potter ever came along. And, on top of that? Not only did she play the *voice* of Rosaline in a production of Romeo and Juliet (normally Rosaline does not appear in the play), she’s part of the voice talent for Gnomeo and Juliet as well!

I’m just getting started!

Madame Pomfrey / Gemma Jones had her own turn at Portia in Merchant of Venice.

Professor Trelawney / Emma Thompson – Once married to Shakespeare workaholic Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson can be seen in her husband’s Much Ado About Nothing and Henry V .

Professor Snape / Alan Rickman – Famous for that voice of his, one of Rickman’s first film roles was Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet. Always the bad guy, it seems.

Sirius Black / Gary Oldman – Dear Sirius gets a special mention on this list for playing half the lead in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which if you’re not familiar is something of a “behind the scenes” retelling of Hamlet, and a pretty amazing piece of movie making.

Bellatrix Lestrange / Helena Bonham Carter We also have the woman who killed Sirius. Ms. Carter was Ophelia to Mel Gibson’s Hamlet, and Olivia in Twelfth Night (thank you, commenter, for reminding me of this major character!)

Professor Gilderoy Lockhart / Kenneth Branagh – You may not even remember Branagh’s role, since he appeared only in the Chamber of Secrets movie. But his presence in the Shakespeare world is undeniable: Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Love’s Labour’s Lost. His 4-hour full-text Hamlet has assured that generations to come will study his contributions to the field.

Voldemort / Ralph Fiennes – He who must not be named is currently wrapping up production on Coriolanus, one of the most rarely filmed Shakespeare plays.

What about Dumbledore? Unfortunately the Harry Potter franchise was not graced with the presence of Sir Ian McKellen, who was busy playing a different wizard. Although he did show up long enough to make Harry Potter nervous. No, Dumbledore was actually played by two different actors – Richard Harris, until his death in 2002, and Michael Gambon in the following movies. Although a long time member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Harris did not perform Shakespeare in any movies that I can locate (though he did play in a television series called “Caesar”, this had nothing to do with the Shakespeare play). Michael Gambon as well was a regular at the RSC, playing King Lear, Othello, and Mark Anthony.

So the next time somebody wants to engage you in conversation about how awesome the acting is in the latest Harry Potter movie, don’t roll your eyes. Instead, ask if they want to rent a movie that Sirius Black made with that dude Pumpkin from Pulp Fiction. Or see if they want to go wait in line with you for Voldemort’s next movie.

UPDATED: I know that we can’t ever make this list complete, and I didn’t try to get every single person, but we can’t forget Barty Crouch / David Tennant.  I mean come on, the man is Hamlet!

UPDATED AGAIN : Added Helena Bonham Carter after being reminded in the comments. I can’t do this for every single update, but I am particularly interested in any actors that have performed Shakespeare on film where you might actually have a chance to see it. If Harry Potter fans do show up and do want to see their favorite characters in Shakespeare roles, I’d like to be able to point them to movie titles they could potentially seek out.