Category: Shakespeare Plays

William Shakespeare is widely regarded as one of the most influential playwrights in history, and his plays have been performed and studied for centuries. From the timeless tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to the hilarious antics of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s plays continue to captivate audiences around the world. Whether you’re a fan of tragedy, comedy, or romance, there’s a Shakespeare play for everyone. So why not revisit these timeless classics and discover the magic of Shakespeare for yourself?

Browse the entire text of Shakespeare’s plays right here on Shakespeare Geek.

Choose Your Own Hamlet

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

Looks like somebody’s been reading this blog?  Last month I wrote about “Choose Your Own Shakespeare” novelizations, and on November 21 we got To Be Or Not To Be : The Adventure which is exactly that.

I don’t know how I feel when I see a project like this net $150k on Kickstarter.  Really?  It drives me a little nuts.  I’ve spoken to publishers about doing Shakespeare work and basically been told “Until you have 50k readers or a piece in the NY Times, your book isn’t going to sell.”  Somehow this project pulls in 4k backers and makes it happen?

Just jealous, I guess. 🙂  I do like and support the fact that he’s publishing through the non-profit service Breadpig, and donating all the proceeds to cancer research.  I have to back that.  Good man.

King Lear, for Kids

~ duane ~ 1 Comment
The Royal Shakespeare Company has got a 75 minute version of King Lear, aimed at 8 year olds.

I think you all know how I feel about that.  I have, on the fly, retold the tale of King Lear to my 5year old son – at his request.  I will never forget this moment:

Well, her father the king was not happy with this answer at all. He got so mad that he said she would not have any share of the kingdom, and he banished her. 

…at this point a choked little voice asks me, “But did he still love her?” And I am caught so by surprise that I don’t quite know what to do with myself. My little guy has been hanging on every word, and he’s an emphathetic little bugger. 

“Oh, he absolutely still loved her,” I told him, “He was just really really mad because he thought she was saying that she didn’t love him. He didn’t understand her answer. Are you sad?” 

He nods, unable to get any words out. 

I squeeze him a bit tighter and remind him that this story has a happy ending, remember? “We’re going to find out that she loved him most of all.”

The fact that I know that that’s only half true?  That she did love him most of all, but that the story doesn’t have a happy ending?  I’m lucky I didn’t get choked up like he did trying to pretend like it all works out.

I have always believed that you can expose children to elements of Shakespeare, literally, from birth.  Go ahead and name their stuffed animals Romeo and Juliet, or Beatrice and Benedick.  Throw around random quotes when you can.  Bring up plot points.  It will be a long long time before they “get” Shakespeare in an academic sense.  It’ll also be a long long time before they understand physics and gravity and parabolic arcs, but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn how to catch a ball.

Good Guy Friar Laurence

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

Once again Reddit’s bringing the interesting conversation, this time on an old Romeo and Juliet question:

Do you think that Friar Laurence is a criminal or a hero?

Somewhere along the line, someone (was it you, David Blixt?) told me that Friar Laurence is a really bad guy who used two stupid lovestruck kids as pawns in his scheme to be the hero who ends the feud. When I go look in the text, however, all I really find is that one line of his where he tells Romeo “For this alliance may so happy prove, To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.”

Where do you stand on Friar Laurence?  Is he to be completely forgiven?  A character who tried to do the right thing, for all the right reasons, and it just didn’t work out?  Or does he share in the blame for bringing it all down upon their heads? After all, what would have happened had he not married Romeo and Juliet?  Romeo had already shown that he was pretty fickle in the love department.  Nobody was dead at this point, nobody banished.  Would they both have just gotten over it?  Romeo’s impulsiveness could have been cut off at the pass real quick if Friar Laurence hadn’t enabled it.

What’s the Funniest Tragedy?

~ duane ~ 10 Comments

We’ve often discussed the fact that Romeo and Juliet, right up until Mercutio’s death, is a romantic comedy that suddenly goes very very badly.  Even the darkest plays have at least a couple of jokes thrown in (or do they?)  So let’s talk about that.  Among all the plays that are not supposed to be comedy, which one do you think is the funniest?

There’s multiple ways to look at this:

* Laughs where Shakespeare put them, and expected them.
* Laughs where a modern director found an opportunity to get a laugh.
* Laughs where the audience laughed, and probably wasn’t supposed to.

So let me rephrase it this way – which play do you think provides enough potential for the audience to walk away thinking, “Wow, I never expected to laugh that hard!”

I’ve seen a fair share of laughs in Othello, and Macbeth.  I didn’t laugh at Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus, but when I saw a production in Boston Common the lead character was so over the top snarky in his attitude toward everybody that I couldn’t help myself (although I also wanted to punch him).  I’ll be very surprised if King Lear makes this list.  Somebody remind me if there’s any funny bits in that one at all?

Did Hamlet Lie?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Over on the Shakespeare section of Reddit, a question came up that I’d never seen before:

Is Hamlet really telling the truth about what happened on the ship?

The submitter’s argument is basically that the story is too unbelievable.  Why would the pirate take Hamlet prisoner, and then taxi him back home?  Why would Rosencrantz and Guildenstern just sit back and let that happen, having been charged to get Hamlet to England?

The general consensus is that no, Hamlet’s not lying, and there’s enough evidence to prove that (both in the text and historically).

It’s fun to grab at a random angle like this every now and then, and re-examine bits of the play you might previously have been skimming over.  During the conversation I wondered, “Once they lost Hamlet, why did R&G bother continuing on to England, anyway?”  But then I remembered, their mission was to deliver that letter (which ended up being their execution order). They never knew that Hamlet was the primary reason for their trip.  It does make you wonder what they were thinking when they watched a pirate ship sail away with the prince, though.  “Oooooo!  Claudius is gonna be *pissed*!”

Don’t miss the later posts in the thread that focus on Shakespeare’s use of exposition, and just how big a deal it would be to have a character lie while doing that.  I personally like digging through the text, but that’s mostly because at any given time I can find and search texts, whereas the historical stuff?  I never know if there’s some book I’ve missed that completely negates everything I think I’ve just learned.