We ended up with something of a quality theme this week, so I’ve got one more to round it out.   Could you watch Hamlet 30 times?  Or any play?  I expect you probably could.  Because it’s different every time, and we’re all fascinated by what each new production will bring to the table. Say that a really awesome cable network is running a different version of Midsummer, every night for a week (or more).  If you’re like me, you try to catch them all (assuming, of course, that you haven’t seen them all already to the point where you’re bored.  Humor me.)  Now what if they’re showing the exact same version every day for a week?  How many times do you watch? Thought exercises like this are tricky in the days of “buy the DVD”, but hopefully you get my point.  Shakespeare’s words are frozen in time, but performance is not.  Thus we have an infinite variety to go enjoy.  But what if you took a single performance and froze it in time? How would it stand up? This is not a Shakespeare specific question, of course.  You may have The Godfather, or Lord of the Rings, on DVD sitting in your collection right now. And we’ll all agree those are very good movies.  But when’s the last time you watched them?  What made you stop?  When did you decide you’d had enough?

I love thee, I love but thee
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold
And the stars grow old.

This quote is perhaps my favorite “not by Shakespeare” of them all.  And by that, I mean I very much wish it was Shakespeare because I love the quote.  I texted it to my wife once and left her speechless.  Then, being the geek I am, I had to explain that it’s not Shakespeare, lest she think it was.

The quote comes from Bayard Taylor’s Bedouin Song, some 200 years after Shakespeare:

ROM the Desert I come to thee

On a stallion shod with fire;

And the winds are left behind

In the speed of my desire.

Under thy window I stand,

And the midnight hears my cry:

I love thee, I love but thee,

With a love that shall not die

Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment Book Unfold!

UPDATED! After I posted this, Professor Stanley Wells (of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) made the comment that perhaps a particular quote may have been at least in part inspired by Shakespeare.  Can you guess which play and which quote?

How about Hamlet? In Act 2, Scene 2 Hamlet writes a love letter to Ophelia, expressing the depth of his love. He suggests that while one might doubt fundamental truths like the nature of stars or celestial movement, his love remains absolute and unquestionable. The quote symbolizes unwavering devotion and the intensity of Hamlet’s emotions during a period of personal turmoil and political intrigue.

“Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love …”

Today, the quote remains poetically profound, resonating with those seeking to express profound, unconditional love.

Explore more posts in the Not by Shakespeare category.

Which play do you wish you knew more about?   That doesn’t necessarily mean least staged, or least popular.  You may not care in the least about Timon of Athens, for instance.  I mean for you, personally, which play do you wish you knew more about? For me, at least at the top of the list, is Richard III.  I just have very little experience with it.  I’ve read it once upon a time, like I read all the others.  But I’ve never seen a production, live or on film, and I think that if I went about plugging the many gaps in my Shakespeare experience, that’s probably the biggest one.

So I get a call last week from a big movie studio.  They’ve got a new DVD release coming up next week and wanted to know if I’d like a review copy. I said that I would not be able to do the review (for reasons I will unveil later), but since I love you people so much I immediately asked for, and got,  giveaway copies. The only catch is I can’t tell you what it is until next week. So … watch this space!

Continuing our discussion on the nature of quality, what do you think about the idea of quality over time? Specifically is Shakespeare “better” now, 400 years after the fact, than when he first wrote it? We know what would happen if a person from today jumped into a time machine and went back to watch an original.  He’d come into it with all sorts of preconceptions about the inherent genius of the work.  But what about the other way?  What if someone only familiar with Shakespeare’s original jumped in a time machine, and basically skipped those centuries we’ve had to build him up in our minds?  Then what? How much of the quality lies in the source material itself, and how much do we bring to it?  Is it at all possible to guess at a ratio? Which direction does it swing?