Did Shakespeare ever write anything bad? I realize it’s strictly an opinion question, but one I think is interesting. Several times recently I’ve run into people with this idea of reading everything Shakespeare wrote. Having done it once upon a time, it never really dawned on me that this is not a common thing. But, having done it, I still find myself gravitating toward the more well known plays. Give me Macbeth over Timon of Athens any day, King Lear over Pericles Prince of Tyre.

How about you? Have you already read them all? Do you plan to? Do you think that some are just not nearly good enough to even worry about? Or has Shakespeare attained such godlike status that, even if you don’t like it or understand it, you’ll still find yourself digging for the beauty that must be there and is just temporarily eluding you?

There’s something to be said for reading them all, just for the experience. You may, after all, find some particular gem in The Two Noble Kinsmen that personally works for you. More power to you. I encourage you to give it a shot, and I’ll at least attempt to discuss them with you if you want. I freely admit that even thought I’ve read them all I’m not intimately familiar with most.

I expect that you are reading them for pleasure, not for profit. I’m worried for people walking into the complete works thinking “They are all as good as Hamlet, and if I don’t ‘get’ one, it must be my fault.” Not necessarily true, and don’t let yourself be turned off or confused by Shakespeare by thinking that.

Darnit, Tivo tells me that I don’t get the Sundance channel and thus can’t watch Slings and Arrows over the next few weeks. Check out this blurb from the article:

“Slings & Arrows” takes us backstage at the New Burbage Shakespeare Festival, a fictional setting that will ring hysterically true for anyone who’s spent time in the world of not-for-profit theater. Torn between mercenary corporate sponsors, who want to erect a ”Shakespeare Village” with themed hotels and costumed fudge vendors, and precious artistes who think ”Hamlet” is a dead text that can be revived with pyrotechnics and grunge, the festival is full of familiar but freshly imagined eccentrics. They’re types, but they’re so sharply written that they become real even as they remain laughable.

I can’t believe I’m going to miss that. I have to check more carefully, I thought I had Sundance. Maybe I’m confusing it with the IFC.

So the week’s movie gossip is that Marilyn Monroe wanted to do Shakespeare. Tapes to her psychiatrist reveal that Laurence Olivier had told her to get acting lessons with Strassberg, and that she planned to take him up on his offer of help.

The more interesting question is what sort of role do you think she would have / could have played? This apparently happened “shortly before her death” in 1962, so figure she was what, 36? She’s probably not doing Juliet. But she’s Marilyn Monroe, for pete’s sake, she needs a romantic role. Cleopatra? Could she pull off the shrewish Kate? Liz Taylor didn’t do hers until 67 – Marilyn could have defined the role ;).

Patrick Stewart’s the sort of guy that, when he does Shakespeare, you want to go check it out. (When he does “A Christmas Carol” you want to check it out, too). Anyway, he’s got a new project — Merchant of Venice, ala Las Vegas. He’s already got Ian McKellen signed up. Apparently he’s not getting rave reviews so far, though, as people feel that he’s “trying too hard”, and “hitting it with a sledgehammer.”

What the article doesn’t say is whether this is a movie he’s filming or an actual production someplace. I’d be surprised to see a movie, after Al Pacino just did his Merchant this year.

There’s a line in Hamlet during the bedroom confrontation that I go right to whenever Hamlet comes up. Something in it just hooked me once upon a time and it’s been a personal favorite ever since. It’s when Hamlet says to Gertrude, “You have my father much offended.”

In my head, that line summarizes the entire play. A major part of Hamlet’s anquish lies in his feelings toward his mother. He wants to confront her, but hasn’t (yet). He wants to tell her the truth about what he knows, but he can’t. And yet here he does both. I don’t see it as a throwaway line in their little banter (“Come come, you answer with an idle tongue….go,go, you question with a wicked one…”) It’s more cathartic than that. I can just picture him screaming it at her – “YOU have MY FATHER much offended!” Is he talking about her o’erhasty marriage, or the fact that she married the murderer? Both, probably. There’s agony in the poor kid at this point, absolute torment. His mother is sharing a bed with the guy that killed his father. He’s trying desperately to ask her “What the $%^&* are you doing?? Don’t you see how sick this all is?”

My question is, am I completely off in hanging so much on that one line? When it’s performed, is it usually done as a throwaway just so they can get through the banter? I suppose “You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife, and would it were not so you are my mother” is the “better” line in the sense that it climaxes the little back and forth and begins to make things happen. But I like the line I cited. It just captures the essence better to me, because only three characters are mentioned in it — Hamlet and his mom and dad. It brings the play completely back to them makes the play accessible to any parent or child. The “You are the queen…” line makes the situation too complicated.

Lord, I’m talking too much. ok, I’ll stop.