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.

Alfa Romeo Giulietta

~ duane ~ 6 Comments

http://www.prestigeway.com.au/news/Uma_Thurman_to_star_in_Shakespeare_s_Romeo_and_Giulietta-1328 Took me a second to figure out what this was all about when I saw a headline that said “Uma Thurman to star in Romeo and Giulietta” (which is the fancy way of saying Juliet, for those not getting it).  New movie?  Foreign? Even weirder.  Seems that the car manufacturer Alfa Romeo is debuting a new model called the Giulietta! Uma Thurman is a major part of the new ad campaign, playing five different roles in the commercial.

The substance of the new Giulietta is further confirmed by the pay-off which counterbalances the Shakespeare quote: "Without heart we are only machines".

I’m sorry, where’d Shakespeare say that?

Calling Doctor Shakespeare! (Or maybe Dr. DeVere?)

~ duane ~ 7 Comments

Unfortunately the JAMA article linked in this Washington Post piece about Shakespeare’s medical knowledge is available only to AMA members, so I’m left linking a link of a link :(.

The article points to a piece from the “100 Years Ago” department that ponders how Shakespeare acquired his “extensive knowledge of medical matters.”  Deniers will, of course, tell you that this very sentence is prove that Stratford Will could not have written the plays because he was not a doctor, and we should be seeking out the medical professional who did write them.  (I heard that Oxford once successfully put a Band-Aid onto the pinky finger of his left hand, however.  So he’s still in the running.)

But Shakespeare did know his mental illnesses. The article notes that in his day, mentally ill people weren’t locked away in institutions. Shakespeare could train his powers of observation on people suffering all manner of mental disorders without going out of his way to encounter them.

It’s interesting to periodically step away and look at the words from this “100 years ago” perspective.  We’re so used to what Freud told us about Hamlet that we rarely stop to differentiate what Shakespeare couldn’t possibly have been trying to say (because the very concepts did not exist yet), from what he really was trying to say that we’re not seeing because we fail to look at what he gave us from his own terms.  Would Shakespeare have had a name for the behaviors that he gave to Ophelia? Was he describing what he’d personally seen in someone else?

Since Freud comes so much re: Hamlet, I’ve often wondered what other modern psycho/socio creations we have today that Shakespeare might have been showing us, in his own way.  Does Hamlet, for example, go through the “five stages or grief”? Do any of his characters suffer from textbook schizophrenia?  In my review of Tennant’s Hamlet earlier today I deliberately made reference to Asperger’s (and, on Twitter, ADHD) to see if anybody with more knowledge of those subjects would pick up on the thread.

You know what just occurred to me?  I don’t recall seeing a single peanut in any of Shakespeare’s works.  Perhaps Shakespeare was suggesting that Hamlet was allergic?  More importantly could he have found a rhyme for “epi pen” while still getting the meter to come out right?

[Credit to vtelizabeth on Twitter for the Tweet which pointed me in this direction.]

Review : David Tennant as Hamlet, Nerd of Denmark

~ duane ~ 20 Comments

Ok, here we go!  The easiest way to review Hamlet, I’ve found, is to break it into three distinct reviews : the direction, the rest of the cast, and Hamlet himself.  Otherwise it’s just too hard to separate what David Tennant did with what he was given to work with. Let me just first say that watching Shakespeare on “live” TV as if it were some sort of major event was just awesome.  It was this wonderful combination of nostalgia (remember the days before DVR where if you got up to go to the bathroom you missed stuff?) with modern technology – I sat on Twitter and did play-by-play throughout most of the show.  Could I have DVR’d it?  Sure, and I did, kind  of — I was running maybe 45 minutes behind everybody else.  But it was important to me to watch it as live as I could, as if we were watching the Academy Awards or something.  I wanted to share the experience with my geeks.  Great time, and I look forward to what PBS has in store for us next time..

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Free Shakespeare In Bits : Romeo and Juliet Edition !

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Shakespeare Geek, in conjunction with Shakespeare in Bits, is pleased to announce our new contest where we’re giving away *10* copies of their new interactive Romeo and Juliet software (the new standard in multimedia Shakespeare) for PC or Mac!

We reviewed the product a few weeks ago. Highlights:

  • The complete, unabridged, original text, with comprehensive study notes, analysis, plot summaries, and SIB’s unique in-line translation system.
  • Almost three hours of top-quality audio, brought to you courtesy of Naxos Audiobooks, with Kate Beckinsale as Juliet, Michael Sheen as Romeo, and Fiona Shaw as the Nurse.
  • Three hours of original, engaging animation, covering every word of the play.

Contest Rules

1) Become a fan of Shakespeare Geek on Facebook. (They’ve since changed to just calling this a “like” now.)

2) Become a fan of Shakespeare in Bits on Facebook.

3) On either wall (or both, if you like!) post something about Shakespeare. We’d like “What Shakespeare means to me” or “My best Shakespeare experience”, but quite frankly the content is up to you because of step #4 …

4) Share your story with your friends! Get your friends (and strangers, why not?) to “like” your post. So if you want to win, post something good 😉

5) At the end of the contest, we’ll choose the 10 top stories that have the most “likes” to each win a free copy of Romeo and Juliet from Shakespeare in Bits. Posts will be chosen from both walls, so if you post on both you’ll get two entries in the contest (though you can win only once).

6) In the event of a tie, remaining prizes will be given away by random drawing from all entries. So just posting something, even without campaigning to get it liked, gets you good odds of winning too.

7) Contest ends on midnight EST on April 22, so we can announce the winners on April 23 in honor of Shakespeare’s birthday.

8) Shakespeare Geek is based in the USA while Shakespeare in Bits is based in Ireland, so we are not restricting the contest to a particular geography. The prizes will take the form of registration keys to unlock the downloadable product, which is available for both PC and Mac.  (iPad and iPhone/iTouch versions on the way.)

UPDATE April 23, 2010 : This contest has ended.  Thanks for playing!

Any questions? Get posting!  (Teachers, this software is perfect for a classroom setting so motivate your students to support your entry!)

Does Memorizing Do More Harm Than Good?

~ duane ~ 11 Comments

I’m not talking about actors who memorize as part of their job, or geeks who memorize just by experiencing the same passages over and over again.  I’m talking about the legions of school-age children who stop by, having been tasked with memorizing the balcony scene or a sonnet or even a passage of their choice, just for the sake of memorizing it.

As I work my way through Playing Shakespeare I’m becoming a convert to the “there are clues in the text about how Shakespeare wanted you to play it” school.  Why is this word emphasized while this one is not? Why is there a comma here, or a line break? When do we breathe, and what does that mean? I wonder, outside of theatre school, does any teacher bother mentioning any of that to the students when assign the memorize assignment?  Or, to the hapless pupil, is it all just a stream of words on the page?

What I fear is that even after memorizing a passage, if you asked most students what it means they’d say “I have no idea.”  Maybe, hopefully, I’m wrong.  But I know that I listen to my children learn how to read and it’s very important to work on the comprehension part, because it is not just a given.  It is quite possible to read a stream of words and then come to the end with no understanding at all of what happened.  I can totally see that happening with Shakespeare.

So instead, what if we made students act it out? What if instead of reciting the balcony scene just to prove you can, what if your homework was to actually become Romeo and deliver the speech as he did? To pay attention to the stresses and pauses, maybe not as deeply as a professional actor might, but enough to get an idea for how you might play the character?  Maybe Romeo is still the overdramatic boy from the earlier scenes, tripping over himself to find the right phrase.  Maybe he’s impatient (read: horny) that he can’t just be with Juliet right now. Maybe angry, that he’s fallen in love with his enemy? I don’t expect the performances would be anything to write home about.  But I bet that if you gave those kids a quiz about what’s going on in that scene, the discussion would be far more interesting.

Thoughts?  Where my teachers at?  Am I projecting a memory from 20 years ago of how this stuff used to be taught, and nobody’s doing that anymore? Are we all about the performance now? Getting the words up and off the page?