I'm starting Shakespeare. Any tips on guides, reading his writing style efficiently, or anything else that would help?
Per another user's suggestions, I'm beginning with Hamlet, King Lear, Henry IV Part 1, Twelfth Night, Anthony & Cleopatra, and A Midsummer Night's Dream
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You should watch a recording of him being performed, turn on subtitles if necessary. I think a big mistake first readers of Shakespeare have is they mistakenly believe they don't understand his sentences when really what they're missing is their intentionality. To whom if anyone the character is referring to when saying something.
So should I watch the Hamlet movie with Mel Gibson before reading Hamlet?
Also, should I be reading analyses of scenes before reading and watching the actual scene?
have no fear shakespeare
>Also, should I be reading analyses of scenes before reading and watching the actual scene?
Absolutely not
Begin with Macbeth, dude.
Also, the Globe on Screen productions are very nice.
Kenneth Branagh is the GOAT Hamlet
How is Romeo & Juliet not on your list? It has some of his best phrases. Is Veeky Forums being edgy again? Macbeth is also mandatory. I mean come on. I agree you should start with Hamlet though. Get an edition with plenty of notes, but not necessarily a translation to modern English.
incredibly correct opinion right here.
do you need a guide to breathe?
if you want to read shakespeare, read shakespeare instead of posting about it
the Folgers editions are the best for starting out. They have notes on every page to clarify the words being used and some of the allusions.
Also, they all have a few good essays on the work in the back.
>guides
Goddard.
A vaudeville production. Suitable for popcorn audiences but ultimately a farce. Avoids the preposterousness of the Olivier school at least
Mel Gibson walking through those catacombs was too heavy handed. Also his hair is stupid.
Read them out loud if you want to really taste the poetry in them. Best when accompanied with a bottle of wine.
shakespeare wrote to be read aloud. the theatre is the pleasantest, speediest and safest way. or you can listen to some old gielgud/barrymore/richardson audio recordings on youtube.
no, shakespeare ought to be enjoyed and not analysed or anything like that.
romeo & juliet really is one of his poorer plays. and don't buy any of those annotated ones either they're made for the classroom.
Naturally, I've not yet seen a film adaption of Hamlet I could consider near adequate. And thats without even wanting to acknowledge these "contemporary setting" versions
shakespeare wrote the plays for the popcorn audiences. and what's wrong with olivier?
Have you seen the Russian version by Kozintsev?
>shakespeare wrote the plays for the popcorn audiences.
He also wrote for royalty. The problem is when its only considering one.
>and what's wrong with olivier?
Way too hamstrung and selfaware of its own importance. The monologues were atrocious and over-produced. He wanted so bad for this to be his highest moment it ended up being embarrassingly misguided. The play was about Olivier not Hamlet and I say this as a great fan of his Richard III which had none of these problems.
Shakespeare is not meant to be black and white. He was a writer of fantastic array of tones humor and emotions and Olivier sucked all that out for mere pretension.
>Best when accompanied with a bottle of wine
this made me really angry
he wrote for the groundlings, for the unscholarly globe patrons who walked in from the cockfight on the street. only those folks whose blood courses hot through their veins can understand these tingling lines
>he wrote for the groundlings
And he also literally put on private shows for royalty. If he wasn't appreciated by the elite he had a serious risk of being shut down
>He wanted so bad for this to be his highest moment it ended up being embarrassingly misguided
but that's rubbish, he himself admitted his films were made only for the cash. he never made a single good film, but he was a great actor - you can't blame him for english theatre tradition.
>Shakespeare is not meant to be black and white
but edward gordon craig did it in black and white before cinema existed to much acclaim. orson welles made what i'd say are the greatest shakespearean adaptions of our time in black and white. there are 1000 ways to do any play by shakespeare.
he didn't write them for royalty. he performed at their request occasionally.
>If he wasn't appreciated by the elite he had a serious risk of being shut down
it wasn't like that at all in elizabeth's day
shakespeare didn't even like the elite of his time. with the exception of the crown which he held above everything, he was disappointed by the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie he made clowns in all his plays. and don't forget he was the son of a butcher
>there are 1000 ways to do any play by shakespeare.
And 999 of them are simply inferior. Craig's works were a very fascinating take on stage design but in the end were just yet another neo-symbolist novelty
acting troupe's were dependent upon the patronage of the nobility, not just for material resources, but for their endorsement, which provided protection against state censorship, from the clergy, and the secret police, as well as relatively free movement among the counties and shires, a major source of income during the frequent shutterings of london
so yes, they were existentially dependent upon 'the elite', it was exactly like that in 'elizabeth's day'.
inferior to what? how he put it on in the globe? because there were a lot of restrictions with that too.
Inferior to what it could be. And of course I don't fetishize the globe, I'm sure I'd have hated what I seen there
but that's patronage, it's nothing to do with the work, otherwise shakespeare would be a court jester. and anyone who knows anything about the elizabethan era will tell you they were a carefree bunch. remember elizabeth i surrounded herself with pirates. the state censorship and clergy came afterwards with the cromwellians when they shut down all the theatres in london. shakespeare worked for a profit; plays are entertainment.
but you know we can't be hypothetical in this case. and i'm not saying the globe was bad - more than likely it was brilliant what with burbage and shakespeare must have been a great actor.
He's nowhere near as hard to read as you probably think he is. You'll see for yourself once you get going with him. Try to get some annotated editions for some of the more obscure phrases or puns and jokes that rely on the common pronunciations of the time.
I recommend this. It's a beautiful book and you can get a used for 15 or 20 dollars.
amazon.com
please stop talking about things you have no idea about
every single play to be performed had to be presented to the office of the master of revels for review
there was intense religious conflict during this period, with executions of catholic 'heresiarchs' being very common
shakespeare's own father was fined and persecuted for his failures to appear at church
the theaters in london were shut down periodically due to plague, not censorship
no performances, no revenue, hence the need to go on the road
there was no such thing as freedom of movement during this time. troupe's could not go wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted, they needed special dispensations from the leadership of wherever they planned to stop. the only way to get this was with a noble endorsement.
Should I read beforing watching?
If you want to know what's going on, yes. You can go back and reread sections of text but if you do that with a movie it becomes annoying. You can also look at secondary sources if you run into a difficult section.