Shakespeare

Shakespeare

Reading the play.
Watching a performace.

Which one first?

Why?

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Reading the play because it's hard to understand what's being said in real time

>thinking that he will be capable to watch all plays live
He wrote more than 20 plays, user, and some are too obscure for the comtemporary playgoer in this time of Drumpf

As a counter to this, it's also easier to understand through the actors' actions and delivery.

I'd recommend seeing it, reading it, seeing it again, and reading it again.

You can pirate a lot of the Royal Shakespeare company's recordings. Also, I'm asking which is preferable, not which I should do in every case.

I think I agree. The production of Twelfth Night which I saw was entirely understandable; many of the jokes even held up

> Implying everyone is an American
Meanwhile in the actual cultural world, millions still go to see Shakespeare annually.

Strong case can be made for either. I would say to do the two as close together as possible. Watching first certainly has benefits, such as allowing you to properly visualize the action as you go back and read it, but you don’t want to get tied to one interpretation since Shakespeare has been staged in a millions ways, so if you watch first I’d try to see a couple before you read.

Audiobook by multiple people. Or at least a woman for women and a man for men.

My Lego reenactments on YouTube

I would say watch a film version with a copy in your lap. Kind of like listening to a new rap album with rap genius up on your phone.

Reading is the best option by far. I only watch the play to perceive how bad it was in comparison with how I imagined it to be. Besides, in the XVI-XVII there were no women acting in the plays, now all female characters are being played by women

>now all female characters are being played by women
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless the writing itself points toward its own crossdressing. The Royal Shakespeare company actually put on a performance of Twelfth Night with an all-male cast

youtube.com/watch?v=RDPT2e26SgY

wat

gg trying to understand what the fuck you're reading when it's written in relatively archaic elizabethan english unless you already know such things. it is way easier to understand it when you have people acting it out on a stage, using inflection, sets for context, etc.

t. couldn't understand reading shakespeare when I was a kid but then saw it live and realized reading it first is like reading a screenplay for a movie in a language you only half assed sorta studied at uni

Read the dramas first.
Watch the comedies first, at least until you get a grasp of what the delivery should sound like.

>gg trying to understand what the fuck you're reading when it's written in relatively archaic elizabethan english
Reading Shakespeare is seriously not that hard, and it only gets easier with practice. The challenge of deciphering it is literally what makes it great. Relying on a particular production's interpretation is honestly the lazy way out. You're a pleb btw.

1) I was talking about when I was a teenager OR somebody who would ask the question in the OP because they were asking for information, not opinions and
2) you contradict yourself by saying >hurr it's not hard it's just up to interpretation

Being up to interpretation is what makes it relatively difficult versus something easy that anybody can immediately slurp down like a capeshit movie as you are implying.

17th century drama writers didn't publish their works. We lost a few of Molière's plays because that fucker threw away his scripts when he was done. Maybe Shakespeare was an exception though, but the concept of reading a play must have been alien to him.

slurp down my spicy jism

>I can easily understand Early Modern English and I immediately knew what the speakers were saying the first time I picked up a Shakespeare play. If the local news was spoken in EME, I would be perfectly at home with this and have zero trouble with the vocabulary or even the fucking train of thought in a story about a woman who abandoned her kids and robbed a corner store.

Is the Bard the biggest pseud litmus test ever? EME is not easily picked up even by native speakers. In fact, stage actors and directors have plenty of difficulty with this, using reference for literally every line and differing their productions so much that you have to wonder if they're even performing the same shit. Shakespeare is the biggest Emperor Has No Clothes scenario I've ever seen in my life holy shit. I'm not saying he's bad, but nigga if you "understood" Shakespeare as a 20 year old, you didn't read Shakespeare.

Watching, because that's the point of plays.

Damn, user, you didn't just beat that straw man up, you kicked the bastard into the gutter and set him on fire. Brutal.

I've got another straw man for ya, to preempt what I think your response will be

>dude shakespeare is just poetry bro, like, you don't have to take it so literally just enjoy your own interpretation

This is bullshit because enjoying poetry requires a knowledge of the language in the first place. Shakespeare is full of puns, archaic references, turns of phrase, and semantic shifts. If you don't know these things, you don't know what he's talking about, and the vast majority of people on earth, like 99%+, do not know EME well enough to know shit like "doubt" meant "suspect" when Shakespeare used it.

EME literally isn't that hard, retard. Do you really think because someone understood something faster than you did they must be liars/psueds somehow?

Oh really.

>Last autumn, Sir Nicholas Hytner stuck his head above the parapet. “I cannot be alone in finding that almost invariably in performance there are passages that fly straight over my head,” he confessed. “In fact, I'll admit that I hardly ever go to a performance of one of Shakespeare's plays without experiencing blind panic during the first five minutes. I sit there thinking: I'm the director of the National Theatre, and I have no idea what these people are talking about.”

I guess you know better than a dude who got knighted for his services to drama.

I'm from the UK where a lot of the idiomatic language is recognised and we still have trouble with comprehension, especially on a first reading. You must be an genious, user

Reading and performing are obviously different. EME's not an ancient cryptogram that requires years of meticulous study. I read Macbeth with footnotes three times and from that point on I didn't need them.
I didn't think the 'first time reading' thing was serious on that user's part. If you honestly can't get a clear meaning of the dialogue after a few rereads though you're a brainlet.

>I didn't think the 'first time reading' thing was serious on that user's part. If you honestly can't get a clear meaning of the dialogue after a few rereads though you're a brainlet.

Or maybe you think you understand Shakespeare better than you think you do and a lot of it is going over your head. Parsing a sentence from the Bible isn't the same as understanding the Bible or even that sentence.

>Or maybe you think you understand Shakespeare better than you think you do

kek that typo. well fuck you I aint gotta explain shit, I was being p o e t i c

What do you mean, my 'response'? I already made my point- you're attacking a straw man, because nobody actually claims to 100% understand all Shakespeare at first glance/listen. Your comment was therefore pointless.

All I'm talking about is comprehension. Deeper meanings is a different matter and studying it more applies to any literary work, not just something with EME.

>the vast majority of people on earth, like 99%+, do not know EME well enough to know shit like "doubt" meant "suspect" when Shakespeare used it

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

OH GOD YOU'RE RIGHT IT'S SO INCOMPREHENSIBLE

I’ve performed dozens of Shakespeare’s plays, even the obscure ones still get performed.

>t. actorfag

the virgin good faith argument
the chad cherrypick

Just one cherry is sufficient to prove user's claim that
>"doubt" meant "suspect" when Shakespeare used it

(the third use would indeed be replaced in modem English with 'suspect', but the first, second and fourth are the same as the modern 'doubt')

Not him, but 'doubt' means 'suspect' pretty much now too.

cherrypick by definition proves nothing, the overall point stands. also, sure, it didn't have the same meaning every time, but most people will also not know that

Read the script
The you will enjoy the play much more

I've seen quite a bit in Canada.
Can confirm.

> his colleagues Heminges and Condell advised in their preface to the First Folio - "Read him therefore, and again and again, and if then you do not like him, surely you are in manifest danger not to understand him."

buy a copy of the complete works, put it in a food processor (cutting apart as necessary to fit), pour in a third of a bottle of apple juice, throw in a couple bananas, strawberries and a splash of milk. blend on high for 45 seconds to discover the true pediatrician way to enjoy billy the bard.

>actors and directors don’t understand Shakespeare

Maybe in high school, but there are plenty of professionals who only direct or perform in Shakespeare plays. No self respecting stage actor doesn’t understand Shakespeare, other than the occasional archaic word.

seattle shakespeare company is doing timon of athens
pretty pumped desu
moneymoneymoneymoney
>Great Timon, noble, worthy, royal Timon!
>Ah, when the means are gone that buy this praise,
>The breath is gone whereof this praise is made:
>Feast-won, fast-lost; one cloud of winter showers,
>These flies are couch'd.

>tfw I live near the Globe but I have no-one to go with

Go by yourself, silly. IIRC groundling tickets are £5, which is ridiculously, absurdly cheap.

I'd second the below. I'm willing to bet a lot of people go alone.

Hmm, maybe I'll consider it. I've been to music shows alone. None of my friends are remotely interested in literature so this might be my only option. Then again, Shakespeare was popular entertainment in his day, so I could always try that angle.