#shakespeare thoughts

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I HATE: i think Taming of the Shrew is one of the hardest for contemporary audiences to connect with. it defintely can and has been done, but i feel like you have to work hard to make the themes relevant or make it not seem extremely sexist (or come full circle and be feminist, etc, etc) and i’m just not a huge fan.

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I THINK IS OVERRATED: i actually saw the national theatre tour macbeth fairly recently and loved it, but also i’ve seen sooo many bad versions of macbeth. like just because it’s a “popular shakespeare play” doesn’t mean it’s easy to do well? so yeah, macbeth.

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I THINK IS UNDERRATED: i’m gonna give a dumb answer for this, but romeo and juliet, NOT because it’s underrated or underperformed by any means, but because the actual themes of the play are So lost in every single adaptation i’ve seen that they’re basically ignored. it’s not a play about romance at all!! it’s about generational conflict and family and all these really relevant things and it’s just been turned into a heteronormative love story when that’s one of the least important things about it. so like the R&J i actually want to see is doesn’t exist yet and therefore it is underrated lol

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I LOVE: hamlet, a midsummer night’s dream (this play is so fucking hilarious i don’t care if it’s really generic, “ninny’s tomb”??? PEAK HUMOUR), as you like it, henry iv pt. 1, much ado about nothing, titus andronicus

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I CHERISH: Hamlet

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I COULD SEE AGAIN AND AGAIN: as you like it. also, weirdly, titus? i LOVE titus when it’s done well it’s fantastic

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I STILL WANT TO DO: in terms of acting, absolutely none of them i’m good with the performance of the self i do every day. BUT i have so many ideas for adaptations. one of my favourites is Macbeth in a Tennessee Williams setting. so like deep american south, everything is hot and sweaty and sticky and everyone is full of thinly veiled anger and no one trusts each other. ahh i just think it would work so well someone please put this on for me so i can experience it, thanks. (also it is my dream to write a rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead-esque play about mercutio’s unrequited love for romeo and it would follow mercutio around the events of romeo and juliet in all his gay nihilistic glory and would be five acts, each named after a different woman romeo was in love with and the last two would be “rosalind” and “juliet” and it would be called “Queen Mab” and pls no one steal this idea it is my unatainable artistic goal LOL)

SHAKESPEARE PLAY THAT MADE ME FALL IN LOVE WITH SHAKESPEARE: hamlet - it made me want to study shakespeare when i first read it and now i have a masters in renaissance literature and am going to do a phd so like THANKS HAMLET, MY BOY, MY DUDE u ruined my life

SHAKESPEARE PLAY THAT CHANGED MY LIFE: again, probably hamlet. legit the hamlet horatio relationship has just feuled my academic life so far? it’s such an underrated (and such an important) example of male friendship and bystanders to tragedy and all the shit i love

GUILTY PLEASURE: when i was doing my masters my friends and i would get together, get really drunk, and read a shakespeare play out loud. it was a peak artistic creative environment, like everyone was just there, being a nerd, connecting and being creative together and it kind of reminded us why we were killing ourselves academically, because at the end of the day we truly loved the things we were studying.

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I SHOULD HAVE SEEN BY NOW BUT I HAVE NOT: i’ve never seen the tempest and i’d love to, but i feel like it doesn’t get put on that often.

I HAVE A WORLD OF THOUGHTS ABOUT CLAUDIO, THANK YOU FOR ASKING. 

Let me preface by confirming that I love this play, I live for Beatrice and Benedick, and I will always be down to watch this play no matter how recently or how many times I have seen it. I love it. I adore it. 

I just really hate Claudio. 

To be fair to me, you’re not really supposed to have an unambiguous relationship with his character. But all the modern productions I have seen that think they’ve come to grips with the Problem of Claudio have, in my opinion, gotten nowhere NEAR to grappling with the real issue. Because they all frame him as being FACTUALLY wrong instead of MORALLY wrong. The point seems obvious to me: Claudio would STILL have been wrong if she HAD spent the night sleeping with what’s-his-name. If she had slept with every man in town, he would still have been wrong. But most productions/adaptations can’t actually wrap their brains around that so they gloss over what Beatrice actually says in her A MA ZING scene with Benedick, they ignore that Shakespeare TOLD US that Claudio has this larger issue that remains unaddressed, that this is a play that ends with “PAAARTTAAAA--oh shit, the asshole’s back---NVMD PAAAARTAAAAAY” instead of solving anything. 

I would really love to see a production that makes the tantrum Claudio throws in the first half of the play, the one about assuming Don Pedro has sneakily “stolen” Hero from him, as a scary rage moment. Too many productions take their cues in that scene from Beatrice and Pedro’s flippancy about Claudio’s anger. But don’t we all know that’s the way of these things? (I mean, we know NOW, in this #metoo moment.) OF COURSE other privileged white people excuse his bad behavior. It doesn’t make it FUNNY. Claudio behaves incredibly badly then and I want to see someone tackle it the way Propeller tackled how very fucking dark Taming of the Shrew is. 

I think progress is being made with Beatrice’s scene-let in the middle of the big church showdown. Ever since Emma Thompson killed the hell out of that scene, I have seen it done in almost every production in that vein. I think it IS the emotional note Shakespeare wrote, however much people used to play for laughs that she wanted to eat his heart in the marketplace. NO. Emma Thompson showed us how incredibly strong and powerful she is. Doing it any other way is a travesty. 

What’s changing now is that people are beginning to think again about Benedick in the light of him being a man who LISTENS TO WOMEN. And he really does. I mean, he also wasn’t there in the moment when Don John “showed” Claudio and Don Pedro the, as Othello would put it, “ocular proof” of Hero transgressing...but still. Even Hero’s dirtbag dad turns on her. Benedick is the dude in the room who just wholeheartedly listens. And when Beatrice gives her speech, he’s not being swayed by being in love with her. He’s listening. And she’s RIGHT. 

So I like Benedick more these days when productions hit those notes better. 

But I still have not seen someone tackle Claudio as he actually is on the page. 

thank you! :)

13. An underrated/underrepresented character

Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet! I feel like Mercutio gets all the love because he’s dramatic and gay and all around a very very excellent boy, but Benvolio is like the poor mom friend who tries to deal with everyone’s drama and deserves more love (he’s the combeferre).

fun benvolio fact: romeo and juliet was a really well known story and brooke’s 1562 poem, “the tragical history of romeus and juliet,” is probably the source text that most renaissance authors would have been familiar with and benvolio isn’t in it! shakespeare specifically decided to include this obviously fictional character in his retelling of a historical narrative and that means he is (or at least shakespeare thought he was) cool and important!

14. An underperformed/underrated play

maybe the tempest? i’m sure there’s better answers for this one, but this is just what i can think of right now. it’s definitely not underrated but it is hard to do well and i’ve never seen it live and really want to!

18. The question you’d ask William Shakespeare if you were drinking in a pub

do u even vape bro?? (except maybe not hahaha)

ahh im so glad you asked this one!! literally the last few days i’ve been thinking about the line from hamlet: “we’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart” (particularly, the way david tennant says it in the 2012 rsc version, with such weight and sadness?)

it’s such a small moment but i love it so much as both a hamlet/horatio bonding line and also just an insight into hamlet’s personality and how he’s struggling. he goes from stupid bantering (or serious friendship, but it’s so dramatic that i always assume it’s intentionally silly), “i would not hear your enemy say so….i know you are no truant!” and then drops into seriousness? like, but really WHY are you here? this place sucks so much we’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart. it’s a hint of vulnerability left over from his first soliloquy? 

(wow, im so sorry that was so nerdy thank you for humouring me hahah)