How do i get into shakespeare?

Go to high school

>90% of modern film and stage productions are horrible
I really enjoy most of Branagh except Midsummer Nights Dream, that modernist version of Richard III, Polanski's Macbeth, Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo and Juliet, Richard III with Laurence Olivier, and Julius Caeser with Marlon Brando. Mebbe Pleb, but its way more fun than reading for literary allegory in a 400 level class.

Btw, was the new Macbeth good?

youtube.com/watch?v=th7euZ30wDE

There are two idiotic memes here about Shakespeare:

1) Plays should not be read, they were meant to be seen. Do you read scripts too?????????

Read the plays, then watch or go see an adaptation. People who say thay plays shouldn't be read don't know shit about drama. Anyone who actually knows what he is talking about will tell you that they are different experiences but complement each other. A play's text can show aspects of that work that don't come out on the stage, and the contrary is also true. So read them and watch them.

2) Don't watch modern adaptations because le sjw boogeyman and actors are dumb amirite xDD

That is an exaggeration. Sure, there are adaptations that change aspects of the play and fail, but that's because they were bad to begin with, not because they explored different ways to perform the text.

For example, what would be the implications of a black Iago? Of a female Prospero? Of Hamlet being a woman? Or when you change the setting of Measure for Measure from Vienna to, say, America in the 60s? Does that change our understanding of the play or not? And if it does, how so? If it doesn't, why not?

It's just a way to explore the possibilities of the poems and of the plays. It might fail or it might succeed, but dismissing them because of some ideological prejudice is stupid. There are classic adaptations that fail too.

For your initial question, I'd suggest you start with Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, and The Merchant of Venice. All of them are excellent plays that show what Shakespeare is about. They are rather easy to follow and include a play from each of his early "genres" (if you consider Histories to be genres). You can also try The Comedy of Errors since it's super short, it's one of the earliest plays, and it's hilarious. Midsummer's Night Dream and Julius Caesar are also excellent entry points.

Just go read the man, read some secondary bibliography (I recommend Goddard's The Meaning of Shakespeare), and go with an open mind. One of the best things about Shakespeare is that there is never just one way of reading his work. You create your own reading, and enjoy doing so.

Muthfucka, you Shake yo Speare, till yo Speare falls off;

and you become a whiny lil bitch, purging hella pathos, n shit.

Then, you realize you need your royal sceptre between your legs, and you rebuild it, 'till you wrap it around your palace, at least 666 times.

After this is done, you will at least be a considered for eligibility of the first paperwork of trillions upon trillions (found inside "her" black hole) to be a potential lacky to Sir, Avon.

------
Or, you know, you could read Willy's writ out loud, and try to find the best way to act out each scene.

Yo, this is killer sweet. What is this?

The new Macbeth was fucking good. A+ cinematography.

Would you recommend it?

I'm not a native speaker of english, but I can read most stuff that catch my interest with no problems.
I recently bought a hugeass book with the complete works of the spear shaker, and although I enjoy the poetic form of the plays, the vocabulary is really tough to follow. I should have bought an edition with notes, fml

Does anyone have any recommendations for secondary material when reading shakespeare?

I'm looking for something to help me understand stuff like the themes, historical context, and literary devices used.

Would the Oxford companion be good, or is there any kind of online resource?

Y'all don't understand shakespeare unless you've acted in one of his plays THATS RIGHT I SAID IT.

Goddard's The Meaning of Shakespeare
The Blackwell Companions
The Cambridge Introductions
The Cambridge Companions
Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy
Bloom's The Invention of the Human (focuses on character but it's still a good read)
Bloom's Modern Critical Views on Shakespeare
Oxford Handbook on Shakespeare
Oxford Shakespeare Topics

All of those can be found on Libgen and similar sites.

And be sure to get a nice annotated edition. I recommend Arden because they are the ones that I use, because they are the most scholarly and because the books themselves are really well made (good paper, ink, spine, etc), though some people don't like the amount of notes (I don't understand why, but to each his own). Other good annotated editions are Oxford and Cambridge.

Read Ovid! You will miss many of the central allegories if you don't read Ovid. Also Virgil, Dante, the Bible.

Get away from the five high school dramas: Hamlet, Macbeth, R&J, KL, Othello.

Read Richard III, JC, A&C, MoV and ilk.

>not reading the 4 great tragedies

lmao fucking plebs

This user definitely hasn't read what he recommends and is just clinging to academic authorities. Why bother reading all the Shakespeare scholarship if you're new to it? + plus a meme pic. Ignore this dimwit.

The best book to read alongside Shakespeare in my opinion is this, with a good long introductory essay and sections on every individual work; the essays are enlightening on the whole and don't lose themselves in academic obscurity like much Shakespeare criticism, since she isn't afraid to say something about it which isn't totally new. The book is a very good case study for each play and forms a well rounded work.

by academic obscurity I mean clinging to details by the way, as academia is as everyone knows always itching for the next 'critical' fact or detail or point to make to advance careers and advertise papers etc.

Don't assume things about other people, it makes you look like a pretentious idiot.

I've read all of what I've recommended. Some not in their entirety because they are massive, but I don't go recommending things I don't know about. Now the question is, have you read them to say that they are bad recommendations? Perhaps not, because you wouldn't be saying shit like "academic obscurity" or the like. I recommended him all those books because: 1) they are free on libgen, and 2) he asked for secondary sources for themes, historical context, etc.

Your recommendation is also good, but I prefer Goddard's approach to the plays. His The Meaning of Shakespeare is very similar to Garber's book, so you can probably read both and have a comparison to form your own opinion. The rest of the books I recommended are more academic, so for a beginner they might not be that helpful, I concede that, but there's no harm in looking though them.

That's not what academic obscurity means.

Just get an edition with a good introduction and notes

Being rude to people is a precondition for posting on Veeky Forums, it lets your own stance be known.

noun
the state of being unknown, inconspicuous, or unimportant.

The problem is nobody wants to read through historical context to read Shakespeare, he's been re-purposed so many times that his significance now goes far beyond Elizabethan England. We have romantic Shakespeare in Germany for instance.

I feel that academic nitpicking could only confuse and dazzle someone new to the plays and kill his own aesthetic intuition.

>nobody wants to read through historical context to read Shakespeare, he's been re-purposed so many times that his significance now goes far beyond Elizabethan England

Not necessarily. Though I agree with your second point, historical context is actually quite important for an understanding of Shakespeare, simply because he wrote using the Elizabethean context for an Elizabethean audience. Evidently, it has exceeded that intention, but interesting readings can come from knowing the historical context. For example, understanding the impact the Reformation had on the English people can shed light on why religion and religious identity is so pervasive in Shakespearean drama.

You even mentioned Shakespeare's reinterpretations in Romantic Germany. Isn't that putting Shakespeare in a specific historical context, even if it's not Elizabethean England?

>I feel that academic nitpicking could only confuse and dazzle someone new to the plays and kill his own aesthetic intuition.

I agree, and yet some of the resoursces I recommended are actually aimed at beginners or are introductory in nature (i.e. Goddard, Bloom, Cmabridge Introductions). The rest I admit are aimed at a more academic audience, but as I said, there's no harm in having them around, and even read them if you are interested in a certain topic. They are not written in an obscurantist manner either, so with some background you can also learn from them.

In any case, any person who wants introductory secondary materials for Shakespeare can't go wrong with Garber and Goddard, perhaps Bloom too. I'd also say Hazlitt and Van Doren, though I don't like the style of the latter and Hazlitt might not that thorough, yet he is a classic of Shakespearean criticism and he is still quoted today.

>many directors like to put a dumb new spin on the plays ("Let's set it in the future and make everyone gay!").

Dude I recently would have said this was hyperbole, but I just saw a local (but big, nationally respected) university do a showing of Coriolanus set in the Jim Crow era American south, and Coriolanus had gay makeout and implied sex scenes with Tullus. What the fuck. They announced a trigger warning that "Coriolanus is a play dealing with racism, misogyny, and homophobia." No it fucking isn't.

pics or it didn't happen

Seriously though, isn't that an American thing, and quite recent too?

Just start with a play on Youtube. Plenty of good performances from the Globe there Start with any your taste or mood might dictate.

You're so boring, try not to be so thorough and earnest.

Try not to think that people here write to amuse you. If you can't say anything else to defend your position, you would do better not to write.

And as Hazlitt would say, "An overstrained enthusiasm is more pardonable with respect to Shakespeare than the want of it."

I know of a college that did a transgender Hamlet.

The new Macbeth is really good and really beautiful - but I find the pacing off...

I would argue only Branagh's Hamlet is good; I am not a fan of his other work.

Joss Weaton's Much Ado About Nothing is superb.

Richard III (1995) is fantastic.

Titus Andronicus by Julie Taymor is also a great pick.

>Joss Weaton
cuck

He be knowing the scent of sweet-n-spicy perfume arousing his sourly-bitter Cologne, and switching, and matching odours, 'till they become odourless.

Fellow senators, use the high culture of your nuts down to the low culture of your crown,

then your muse will come back to you;

but you'll dismiss her, because you had to become everybody in the language you birds shared, to make up for the flippity-flop autism you had.

----
Nice tits btw; YOU'LL scan more patrician notes, and FORGET errythang.

>I am not a fan of his other work.

He didn't direct it, but his Iago in Parker's Othello is great, even if I don't agree with the interpretation of Iago's supposed homosexuality.