What is your favourite and least favourite Shakespeare play and why? i'll start...

What is your favourite and least favourite Shakespeare play and why? i'll start. My favourite play is Othello because I think it captures what a tragedy is and should be perfectly. It also has Iago, who I think is one of the most evil characters in literature. My least favourite play was A Midsummer Night's Dream because it bored the living shit out of me and in general I just think it's kinda crappy.

Favorite is Coriolanus because it portrays an extremely classical, ancient protagonist, but uses him to explore modernist politics and philosophy.

Least favorite is a The Winter's Tale, because it's incongruous. Having the first half a complete tragedy and the second half a total comedy, is jarring. If it were one or the other it probably would have been a great play, but as it is, it's a train wreck.

That's respectable

Favorite: Romeo and Juliet
Least favorite: Hamlel

Reasoning?

>Loli sex
>Literally a Lion King rip off

Favorite: The Tempest
Least favorite: The Taming of the Roastie

Midsummer Night's Dream.

It's hard to describe why. It reminded me of those quiet summer afternoons, when I was 10 and having no friends at all I used to forget myself into some fantasy world, sometimes a story, sometimes a cartoon or an anime that was on tv. I am obviously not talking of any similarities in plot, but the feeling I had those times, and that still get sometimes I get nostalgic, was very much revived when I read the play. The experience of reading it gave me at my old age this book gave me fantasy world so rich and magical which I thought wasn't possible to experience after childhood.

The Winter's Tale is a romance, neither tragedy nor comedy. There is nothing inevitable in the death of Mamilius, nor the supposed death of Hermione. Leontes is the agent of his own undoing, and it is his fantasy that irrupts into and consumes the reality of his family, friends, and court; but he is not consumed, and is revitalized by his penitence.

Romeo and Juliet has the structure you attribute to Winter's Tale, with comedy culminating in the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt, after which everything falls apart. Do you consider R+J a train wreck?

You post is a jarring half comedy and half tragedy. It's a train wreck. It's my least favorite post in a while.

Isn't life an incongruous mix of comedy and tragedy? How is this a legitimate criticism?

Macbeth is my fave but full disclosure ive only read 4

Fave Lear
Old man getting his eyes gouged out, so fucking edgy. Then the good daughter gets hanged hahahahahaha! Best play ever.
Least fave probably Midsummer Nights Dream. Fags going into the woods and acting gay. A pool of HIV,

Been planning on reading Merry Wives of Windsor sometime, how is it?

Favorite: Macbeth
Cause it's about regicide with mad undertones of ghostly and wicked forces at play.

Least: Midsummer Night's Dream
The most boring play. Kinda funny, but ive read it three times now and its awfully dull. Nothing bad happens to any character. Everyone lives happily more or less.

favorite: Hamlet
anti-favorite: midsummer nights dream because it's boring shit and isn't even entertaining as a """"comedy""""

glad to hear we mostly all agree that Midsummer Night's Dream is shite

Romeo and Juliet starts with comedy and ends with tragedy, that's a lot more workable. You can go the reverse if the tragedy is not of very grave proportions (or only appears to be grave). The tragedy of Winter's Tale is very grave, and in its context the comedy is not funny, it just feels forced and stupid.

Because WT is extremely ludicrous in the Deus Ex Machina. The play starts with vicious gravity, then turns goofy and far-fetched silliness, and leaves us with an ending that is inappropriately comedic, because after the gravity of the first half, you can't really feel like laughing. The comedy falls flat.

i'd say that the actual written out play is p shitty, but I've seen a few performances of the play and they've generally been very good. Wouldn't read it again, but would definitely see it again.

>Nothing bad happens to any character. Everyone lives happily more or less.
And that is boring? Yikes.
Midsummer Night's Dream is fantastic. Get an inner life lads.

Papa Bloom thinks it sucks, if that means anything to you. He's outraged that a fraudulent Falstaff appears in it, lacking the cosmic wit of the Henry IV plays.

All y'all hating on AMND really makes me question my usage of this board. Not that I didn't already.

Wow. I agree.
Timon of Athens Othello and Coriolanus are my runners up. I'm also fond of the Henry Tetraology muh hollow crown n all that shit.

Fav: King Lear because it's so bleak and ruinous, and was a crucial influence on Moby Dick

Worst: Two Gentlemen of Verona because what even happens in it?

I'll always have a soft spot for AMND because it's the only Shakespeare play I got to perform in high school. I got my first girlfriend because of that play.

*The Shaming of the Roastie

Quite easily Hamlet. I had a shit English teacher who quite literally hated men. Because of her (and other things) I had massive depression for that year in high school. She was forced by the curriculum to teach it, and while she always ragged on the men in the play I found that I could relate to Hamlet a lot. His struggle, his depression, his friends betrayal, and eventually his decesion "to be". I also was utterly crushed when by the ending.

Least favourite is easily Romeo and Juliet simply because our English teacher (not the same as above) made us watch 5 separate remakes/interpretations/plays of it. I was utterly sick of it by the end. Although know that I know it was more of a comedy I think I may have to reconsider.

Favourite: Richard II because of his final speech, also for Bolingbroke.

Least favourite: R&J. I don't really need to explain this one, do I?

Again, it's neither comedy nor tragedy. It has comedic and tragic elements interwoven, but neither predominates. The first three acts can be, and I've seen them played, as high irony. Leontes' rants are quite funny, when you let them be. ('No barricado for a belly' etc). The fourth act is farce, given the events of the first half, and the fifth act is one of reconciliation and redemption. There is irony, but it is gentle, and the only really comedic bit is the scene with the gentlemen of the court recounting the reunion of Perdita, Leontes, Polixenes, and Florizel.

No, they aren't funny, because they are actually extremely destructive. If it were just "black comedy", that would be one thing, but it's not, it tries to be light and merry at the end.

You're a shallow reader.

I'd rather read too shallowly into something than too deeply.

>made us watch 5 separate remakes/interpretations/plays of it
Did you watch the one from the 60s with the loli tits?

What an idiotic thing to say.

>all this hate on MSND

shwa? Its wonderful

Unsure about favorite/least favorite but King John is really underrated

"Midsummer" is one word.

Favorite: Midsummer night's dream. I love the wordplay.

Least fave: Dang I don't know. Merchant of Venice maybe.

Fuck I just got my wisdom teeth out and nearly tore a stitch

Kek

favorite: the Tempest, because of how quickly the events take place in-story, it's his best-written romance, Prospero is an interesting character with the fact that he's a sorcerer making him stand out from other protagonists in Shakespeare's works

least favorite: Titus Andronicus, because it's a second-rate Tarantino flick set in ancient Rome