Daily Shakespeare Thread

Discussion Questions:

Favorite Shakespeare girl? Why?
Favorite least discussed play? Why?
Opinions on Plato vs. Shakespeare?
Favorite opinion or quote of another author on Shakespeare?

Observations (more discussions?):

The only actual cheating I can think of is by Tamora in Titus, but other than that, even if cuckoldry is mentioned in literally every other play, Shakespeare shows us that it is all in the mind (most emphasized in Othello and Winter's Tale). Hell, you even have Benedick in Much Ado saying he will not marry because of cuckoldry, and his friend stating that if Benedick of all people get married, it'll show how wrong he is and how much people can change. Aaaaand, look what happens.

Taming of the Shrew is vastly underrated and to anyone who has read Art of Love or has had a girlfriend (like the Rosalind or Cleopatra effect), will see the brilliance behind Katherine, and especially the relationship.

Portia is very foine. The fact that Portia in Julius Ceasar is great too is no coincidence.

Aesthetically Ophelia is my favorite Shakespearean female but Cleopatra is god tier, Helena’s two soliloquies in AWEW are also very nuanced but that play kind of goes downhill after the second act, at least in my opinion. Might be because it’s coauthored? Not sure. It’s interesting that no other female in Shakespeare has two soliloquies in such proximity (except Lady Macbeth). I like Ophelia because she’s a good foil for Hamlet and she’s probably the character I will most strongly wish we saw more of on stage (also the scene where Hamlet and Laertes are fighting in her grave is one of the best in the canon—she’s like Lavinia in the sense that she’s essentially objectified by all the other characters. Ironically when she goes ‘insane’ she’s the most free in terms of being able to say what she wants to say. Favorite least discussed play is definitely Titus. So raw and bad and outrageous. Nothing else like it. Have only read Symposium so cant say much about Plato. Don’t think it’s my cup of tea desu. I like Ben Jonson’s quote about how Shakespeare never but should have cut a lot of his lines. I can’t help but think of a plastered Shakespeare sitting in a tavern gushing out whatever sounds right on the page because the play is due the next day and today kids have sit in a classroom and strangle a meaning out of that same text. It’s hilarious how much we don’t know about him and his process. Mysterious, if you will. Also I’m pretty sure Cressida technically cheats on Troilus, no? He’s at least cucked to hell when all the Greek generals “greet” her.
Favorite soliloquy? Favorite character? One you’d most want to play in a production?
I forget who said it and what exactly they said, but I read recently about the Shakespearean romances and how the later plays demonstrate Shakespeare’s total boredom with the genre and language as a whole. Shit gets so knotty and dense but you can tell it was nothing to him. Gets even more crazy when you realize plays were not considered a high literary form in his day by any means. Dude was writing scripts for drag races and drunken groundlings.

>anyone who has read Art of Love or has had a girlfriend, will see

I don’t pretend to be well read in Shakespeare, I probably have read half of his plays at most, but I really like Hermione In The Winter’s Tale.

My favorite plays are Othello, The Tempest, and Romeo & Juliet. But I recognize that Hamlet and Macbeth are probably the objective best.

Favorite lesser known play is Measure for Measure and the late problem plays because I feel they have a more biblical influence and combine different genres into one play.

> I read recently about the Shakespearean romances and how the later plays demonstrate Shakespeare’s total boredom with the genre and language as a whole. Shit gets so knotty and dense but you can tell it was nothing to him. Gets even more crazy when you realize plays were not considered a high literary form in his day by any means. Dude was writing scripts for drag races and drunken groundlings.

This makes me think of pic related from the Tempest, which is possibly his last play.

It’s Prospero speaking to Miranda and Ferdinand, but to me it reads so obviously as Shakespeare taking the end of the play (only one act with a single scene left after this) to speak indirectly to the audience.

>our revels now have ended
The entertainment is coming to a close, but maybe not just this play, it could be Shakespeare’s career as a playwright entirely.
>These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air
“I have used actors to create characters that are more real than real, but when the play ends, they vanish into thin air.”
>And like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea all which it inherit shall dissolve
Baseless fabric could mean the lack of respect for theatre as an art form, and theatre is the “fabric” of the stories Shakespeare has written. He believes that though his stories are art of the highest quality, they will be forgotten because they are formed by a baseless fabric that people do not respect or value. I also think this is interesting because from my memory, no towers or palaces appear in The Tempest. Ships yes, islands yes, don’t remember any temples or palaces, so I think this refers to the stories Shakespeare has created over the course of his career, which transported the audience to these exciting and wonderful settings. Shakespeare’s theatre was called the globe, so I can’t imagine he put that word in there and didn’t mean for it to be taken more than the literal way. Even the theatre, which at the time of the Tempest, must have been very well known, was something that Shakespeare knew would eventually crumble to dust.
>And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind
I’m unsure what connotations “pageant” had back then, but I’m guessing it’s another form of entertainment. It’s insubstsntial, and Shakespeare is still holding to the belief that the beautiful works of literature that he has created will be lost very soon.
>We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with sleep.
Unsure about this line.

Cont.
Basically I feel like it’s saying, “I make art with characters so personal (more human than any human) they feel like real people who disappear suddenly in a wisp of smoke when the play ends, like you physically lost someone, and because plays aren’t respected, no one will really truly appreciate this beyond it being like a drive in movie kind of entertainment, humans are tiny beings with lives so short and I have wasted too much time on playwriting, my work, though beautiful will “leave not a rack behind” so I’m out.

I see it as a speech to the audience for a couple reasons... first, he uses “actors” and “the great globe itself” referring to the theatre that this was likely being performed in, and also if you’ve read the Tempest you know Prospero’s magic abilities and power stem from his books, which he abandons at the end of the play. the books are what got him into trouble in the first place, how he got exiled, and he’s reached wizard status, powerful enough to control the weather and literally wreck a ship on the island, he has all this power and chooses to abandon it. Did Shakespeare decide he had max-leveled and was now bored?

user I would caution autobiographical interpretation, but there is something to be said about the clear connection Shakespeare draws between theater and magic—not just in this scene or play but in most of the canon. Prospero as the playwright does not necessarily suggest Prospero as shakespeare. That being said, the speech is the closest thing we get to Prospero’s artistic statement of intent/Philosophy. That Shakespeare coauthored two plays after this could indicate that he didn’t project himself too much onto Prospero (who makes a big deal about burning his book and burying his staff; abandoning the trade in a way Shakespeare clearly did not)
If there’s wisdom here that represents Shakespeare’s deeply and truly held intellectual beliefs, it’s not about theater, (though that is a part of it) or the transience of theater, but the transience of life general. All the world’s a stage, not just the wooden floorboards of the Globe. Remember that Prospero says these lines not long after being reminded that two drunken fools and his half-fish half-monster slave are on their way to cut his throat. Shakespeare himself was old and nearing the end when he wrote this, after all.

Here’s the second part I was talking about from Act 5 where Prospero gives up his books, the things that gave him power.

This is pretty fucking crazy and I won’t pretend to understand it all but it gets me excited because I see Prospero as Shakespeare saying, I’ve made the greatest shit in this earth, I’ve done it better than anyone else, and I’m giving it up. I’ll take my books (his plays, his writings) and bury them in the Sea, deeper than any sound, I’ll break my staff, I’ll drown my book.

For this reason I think Shakespeare really was saying I’m done with this, or he had become bored with playwriting.

Crazy to think what he might have done after that? I know he was wanting to move up in society what with creating a family crest and he wanted to use his intellect to work his way into a powerful and respected standing.

Also interesting that his late plays seem to be more biblically influenced or wrestling with issues involving God. King Lear, Measure for Measure. Maybe Shakespeare read the Bible and thought Ecclesiastes was right?

>of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

I hope you realize your reading of The Tempest is rather superficial and trivial.

>Shakespeare himself was old and nearing the end when he wrote this, after all.

Would he have actually felt this way? He wasn’t that old, 46 or 47. Surely he wouldn’t have expected to die so soon? I see the fact that the plays after the Tempest are collaboration as support for the idea that he was trying to distance himself from theatre. Maybe he did them because he needed money, or felt he hadn’t successfully transitioned into anything new?