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.

//romeo&juliet/

~ duane ~ 3 Comments

I don’t typically post every review or press release about every new interpretation I see, just the ones that catch my eye.  Like this one, which sums up much of what we talk about here:

You need to do it old school enough to serve the language and story, but not so old school that it flashes back to mandatory high school reading lists. It’s about splitting time between classic and cool, between poise and unpredictability.

That gets my attention right off the bat, infinitely more than people who talk about having to bring the language up to date.  Lose that, you lose the Shakespeare.  Keep that, and everything else I think is up to your own interpretation. Then again…

Some characters have been cut, or merged with others; Juliet is now raised by a single mother, for example.

Hmmm.  That’s quite the statement to make with your production.  The helplessness of Juliet’s situation is pretty crucial to her “I have no choice but to kill myself” logic.  How exactly do you get across “Marry the guy I tell you to marry or GTFO” from a single mom??? http://www.24sevencities.com/features/arts/theater/how-juliet-met-romeo.html

Shakespeare Geek’s Top 10 Shakespeare Plays

~ duane ~ 10 Comments

Over the years I’ve seen many Shakespeare lists.  Instead of linking to yet another one I thought it would be fun to combine several and come up with my own, the Shakespeare Geek Top 10.  This is not my opinion, this is the mathematical analysis (according to my own algorithm :)) from a variety of places, some here and some elsewhere, that people have voted on a general “top 10” for Shakespeare’s plays.

How you define “best” is up to you and I fully expect that people use different scales all the time.  That’s why I’m looking at it statistically – if most people pick Dream as the best play, then does it really matter why they think they picked it?

Ready?

#10. The Tempest.   Maybe it’s the fascination with “Shakespeare’s last play”, maybe the fairy tale, happy ending nature of the story (I know it’s the latter that gets my vote), but I’m happy to see one of my favorites just make the top 10.
#9. Julius Caesar.  I appreciate that this is one of the great tragedies that most of us will read in high school, but I was surprised at the showing it made.  I don’t understand.  If the Twilight lady announced that she was filming a new version of Julius Caesar I’d bet you can hear the crickets chirp.

#8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  I know there are folks out there who will put Dream up against Hamlet as one of the best, and I have to concur.  I’ve ranted at times that I get sick of seeing it, but really, as I called it the other week after seeing a production, it’s “pretty near perfect on the page.”

#7. Richard III.  I’m not familiar enough with this one to have cast a vote on it.  Tell me why you love it?  Just the evilness of the title character, or something more?

#6. Henry V.  Do we all love it because of the Crispin’s Day speech and the Muse of Fire, or is there more to it?

#5. Romeo and Juliet.  Now we get into some of the more obvious ones, will there be any surprises in the top 5? Does Romeo and Juliet deserve a spot this high or is it just because we’re all so familiar with this high school favorite?

#4. Othello.  I’ve seen many people speak of Othello as one of the great underrated tragedies, and I have to agree.  When you really take the time to dig into it, it’s far better than the more shallow analysis might suggest.

#3. Macbeth. Glad to see the Scottish play fare so well, it’s one of my top choices.

…and the big question *still* not answered:

#1 King Lear and Hamlet
We have a statistical tie for the #1 spot with Hamlet and King Lear both getting the exact same score!  (That just means I need more data, hint hint hint.)

Disclaimer : Only 7 of my top 10 made the final list, so I’m not skewing the results to my own personal choices.

I can’t say there are many surprises.  If I pulled it out to a top 15 we’d start to see some of the popular comedies, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night … but at some point I run out of numbers to make a meaningful argument, too.

Disagree?  Make your own top 10 and post it in the comments!  I’d love to keep my statistics up to date and have a true and accurate top 10 list, as defined by the audience of Shakespeare geeks as a whole and not just one person’s personal opinion.  I may have even added you already, if you’ve made a list. Who knows? 🙂

Just Like Romeo and Juliet (If Romeo Choked Juliet Out After The Grammys)

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

http://www.popsugar.com/4608018 Another good one I missed as Chris Brown, who I know only as the singer who beat up his singer girlfriend Rhianna, compares his relationship to Romeo and Juliet. On second thought, maybe he’s right.  Go ahead and kill yourself, Mr. Brown, and then we’ll compare. Even better, when told that this is what he’d be remembered for, he apparently (I have better things to do than watch the video, I’m just reading the summaries) brings up Michael Jackson.  I think maybe “O.J.” is what you meant to say there.

Flings & Eros : Karamazov Does Romeo and Juliet!

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

http://www.merrimackrep.org/home/default.aspx Ok, Google is awesome.  I’m checking some GMail and I see a reference to “Merrimack Rep” pass by in one of the ads. I happen to live near Merrimack College, so I think that it is a local reference. I google “Merrimack Rep”. Turns out that it’s a theatre in Lowell, MA. Guess who is playing?  The Karamazov Brothers, one of the best juggling/vaudeville acts going today. Guess what they’re performing?  Something called Flings & Eros. Guess what it’s about?  Romeo and Juliet!   Looks exciting.  Best part is I think that a friend of mine has season tickets.  If that’s the case it’d be a golden opportunity to see this one, without trying to explain to the wife how I’m dragging her to yet more Shakespeare :).

Revisiting the Classics : How Old Is Romeo?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

We last talked about this question back in November 2006, and it continues to be the most popular item on the site (at least for Google hits, if not comments).  I tend to blog and forget, and I don’t always take time to remember that people stumbling across the blog now don’t always cruise through the archives or use my cool new search box over there… Anyway, how old is Romeo?  It’s a harder question than you might think.  We know that Juliet is 13, it says so right in the story.  But if you’ve found yourself thinking “That must make Romeo 13 as well…” not so fast. Some highlights from the original conversation, which I encourage people to check out…

I have always read Romeo as being on the upper end of 15, or early 16. (Some of the arguments I’ve heard putting him toward 18 always seemed inexplicably "off.") This way, he’s just young enough to be so wanton and so reckless with his sentiments (c.f., the Rosalind fiasco), but not quite old enough to have had enough experiences to jade him accordingly.

The Juliet in the original novel – Romeo and Guilietta – is eighteen.

Modern (i.e. post German Romantic) make him younger than he originally was. a 21 year old would have been right – but suggestions of molestation to modern audiences wipe out the possibilities.   I think it’s awfully creepy that Juliet was like 13.  My little sister is very mature for her age but it makes my heart sick to think of her in a similar situation of Juliet.

General opinion seems to have him in his late teens, possibly as old as 21.  Whether or not that’s creepy, or normal for the time, is the subject of much discussion. 🙂