Shakespeare Appreciation Thread

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Well, some fucker's got to culture this place up.  We need a Big Willie thread, stat.

 

Here's Philomena Cunk to explain all about it (for the next 5 days).

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07bgqdt/cunk-on-shakespeare

 

 

[Mook]

[magicrat]

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Richard II - as a king he's a twat and a ponce; once deposed he becomes a halfway decent human.  There's a moral there, somewhere.

 

[Trumo]

His missus has looked after herself pretty well given her age. She was in The Dark Knight Rises not so long ago.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

[AngryOfTuebrook]

[Stu Monty]

Hamlet's pretty decent like. 

 

Some good soliloquy action and that. 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

"I could be bounded in a nutshell and consider myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

[setreal]

2B or not 2B.

 

U wot m8?

[Paulie Dangerously]

Did a lot Shakespeare in school as I did GCSE and A-Level Theatre Studies & English Lit.  Some of his work is a slog but a lot of it is timeless and still has relevance today.

 

The Tempest is really good and still relevant with the nature V nurture debate, as is Othello with it's still identifiable racial tones.

 

Macbeth is probably my favourite and I remember seeing a brilliant performance of at at Theatre Clwyd with a really innovative set and great acting from a small cast.

 

Me and the missus went to see King Lear in the Playhouse last year and jibbed it off to go and get pissed at the first interval though, SLOG.  

[Jenson]

Went to see Macbeth as part of our English Lit GCSE many years ago. Lady Macbeth got her tits out and all us 15 year old boys went home very happy

[Paul]

Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet is brilliant as is the play itself. My favourites are that, Julius Caesar, Henry IV Part 1 and The Tempest.

[Trumo]

I think it might have been in year 8 or year 9 at school, all the forms in my year were split into different groups, each of which studied a different Shakespeare play. My group got Julius Caesar which was pretty bloody good. It's clear just how much influence Shakespeare has had on so many modern stories. For GCSE English Lit, everybody got Macbeth. Very verbose but again hugely influential in a lot of popular fiction today. One of the exercises I definitely remember was that each of us had to write our own take on Macbeth's Act 1 Scene 1 with the witches. We could do it as a stage play or screen adaptation and had to write the script as well as detail all the props etc. I chose to do mine like a film (I think I was the only one because everybody else was talking about staging and so on) and it was like a far less polished version of the sort of treatment familiar to anyone who has seen the likes of LOTR or GOT.

[VladimirIlyich]

I find Shakespeare tedious.

I did the Tempest as part of an adult GCSE course and found it pretty boring even though I got an A in the subject.

I recognise that its part of English history but hate being told its quintissentially what being English is about.

Maybe the fact that my ancestors were picking spuds in Ireland at the time that I resent it all a bit.

[Jairzinho]

I find Shakespeare tedious.

I did the Tempest as part of an adult GCSE course and found it pretty boring even though I got an A in the subject.

I recognise that its part of English history but hate being told its quintissentially what being English is about.

Maybe the fact that my ancestors were picking spuds in Ireland at the time that I resent it all a bit.

 

We did the Tempest in year 7 and it essentially ensured that most students learned to detest Shakespeare. We actually did the Merchant of Venice the following year, which was really good.

[setreal]

Tromeo and Juliet is great.

[razor]

Went to see Macbeth as part of our English Lit GCSE many years ago. Lady Macbeth got her tits out and all us 15 year old boys went home very happy

 

You wouldn't remember the production would you?

 

I went to see it at the Manchester Exchange in 1988.

 

Frances Barber and David Threlfall (Frank Gallagher) were the leads.  It was absolutely brilliant.  But on the coach home the less couth members of our party just went on about Barber getting them out.

[Paulie Dangerously]

Tromeo and Juliet is great.

 

repped for a Troma film reference

[Paul]

Generally speaking, a good teacher can make the phone book interesting, never mind Shakespeare. Blame shit teachers, not the bard.

[Jairzinho]

I think it's possible to blame both the teacher and the selection.

[Paulie Dangerously]

Generally speaking, a good teacher can make the phone book interesting, never mind Shakespeare. Blame shit teachers, not the bard.

 

True that.

 

I had a good english teacher who use to do the voices and everything but looking back when we did the Color Purple he might've come across as a teeny bit racist. 

[razor]

This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say "To-morrow is Saint Crispian."
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

 

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility,
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect:
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a gallèd rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height!

 

 

There are some brilliant bits in these.

 

The trouble with Shakespeare is he takes 10 lines to say 1.  But I love some of the imagery in those monologues.

[Paul]

When I learnt what blank verse was and that Shakespeare wrote entire plays in it, it blew my mind. Then I really understood why he's routinely referred to as a genius.

[ZonkoVille77]

Whence is that knocking?
How is't with me, when every noise appalls me?
What hands are here? Hah! They pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

 

Fucking loved Macbeth in school. Murdering scottish cunt.