William Shakespeare

[learna]

[QUOTE=titania7;62256]

I have yet to see the film you speak of, Learna. It is sitting in a stack of DVDs that I've been intending to watch for several months now, however, and since The Master and Margarita is among my favorite books, I do hope to find the time to watch it soon.

I haven't actually seen a film on DVD in nearly a year. . .and it's been even longer than that since I've been to a movie theatre.

To film The Master and Margarita is a challenging task but Bortko keeping to the original did utlmost of his power. He played with colours amazingly: Moscow was portrayed in grey colour, Voland and his company were shown in bright ones and Jerusalem was in yellow and red tones. Bortko used wonderful music by Igor Korneluk and indeed brilliant actors and actresses took part in that film.
When I saw The Master and Margarita for the first time I did it with a critical eye but for the second time I injoyed it a lot. Titania, I hope you will like it and will not be sorry to break your viewer's blok .

I did know some actors/actresses who were superstitious, but I always thought it was silly, to be honest. I couldn't believe that some actors would hesitate to say the word "MacBeth" and would refer to the play itself as "The Scottish play." Silly nonsense it is, in my opinion! Of course, everyone is different and if it makes one feel better to hold on to superstitious ideas, then there's nothing wrong with doing so. I simply feel it gives one the illusion that circumstances depend upon supernatural/external forces and that can be dangerous. It's best to stay as focused in reality as one can, I think.

Titania-Alexis

Alexis, I agree that if a person is weak in spirit he/she trys to find explanation of bad luck in everything including superstitious.

[Mirabell]

I'm sure there are more detailed works out there.

here is a review of a very recent book on the question

The authorship controversy is a sorry story, with its core of undiluted snobbery, its self-generating conspiracy theories, its manipulated evidence, its reductive view of plays and poems as fiendishly difficult crossword puzzles. The call for an ?open debate? which echoes through Oxfordian websites is probably pointless; there is no common ground of terminology between ?Stratfordians? (as they are reluctantly forced to describe themselves) and anti-Stratfordians. As the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Gail Kern Paster, recently put it, ?To ask me about the authorship question . . . is like asking a paleontologist to debate a creationist?s account of the fossil record?. With this inquisitive and open-minded account of the controversy, James Shapiro has done a service to both camps, and indeed to that mysteriously talented glover?s son from the Midlands who is at the heart of it all.

Contested Will by James Shapiro reviewed by Charles Nicholl - TLS



and a review of the same book by Mantel

Shapiro is at his most combative when he engages with the autobiographical approach to Shakespeare studies. Here, William must be saved from his friends as well as his foes. Are the plays encoded episodes from his life? Do the sonnets reveal his soul? Self-revelation, Shapiro persuades us, was not an early modern mode. What Shakespeare demonstrates is the authority of the human imagination. He commands the transpersonal; that is why he is a genius. If the scant facts of his life disappoint, that's our problem. A genius is also a man who needs to eat. As Thomas Heywood put it: "Mellifluous Shake-speare, whose enchanting Quill / Commanded Mirth or Passion, was but Will."

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro | Book review | Books | The Guardian

[Hadia234]

Shakespeare as a playwright is distinguished in his every work with his amazing creative power. As for me, I would advantage "Hamlet". The main character of the work is rebellious. He wants to break the wall raised between men as "Pink Floyd" says. Though he seems to know from the very beginning that he is sacrificed. Despite his desperation he did not get used to the evil reigning around him. Hamlet knows that he cannot alter men but, anyway, his honest soul cannot be silent. He seems to display some closeness to Don Kihot a great as well hero of Cervantes.

[Hamlet]

http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html

British Library website, in partnership with institutions around the world provides digital facsimiles for quarto's of Shakespeare's plays.

GO TO "texts" /open up drop-down menu, double click over the text body and this will expand the page to full size, and turn over the pages by using the arrow naviagation keys at your leisure.

[Hamlet]

too talky and general.

[Liam]

Once again, if you're posting on a specific writer, please do a careful search beforehand to see if he/she has been covered already. Sometimes, it makes sense to add the latest news, *Shakespeare's Lost Play Re-Discovered*, to the general thread on the writer as opposed to opening a brand new thread, although that's acceptable also, but only in the News Discussion section.

The European/Asian/American/African forums are reserved solely for the discussion of SPECIFIC works: single novels, plays, poems, memoirs or such.

If you're thinking of doing a general thread on any given topic, i.e. Elizabethan Playwrights or British Novelists of the 1850s, please put these in the General Discussion Section with the appropriate flag(s), .

[Hamlet]

Ahh, I see Liam.

Finding my bearings.

I was thinking of an Elizabethan Playwrights thread, to be honest, to get some of the less well known writers onto the board!

[Liam]

No worries, and I apologize if I derailed your project, . OK, maybe you can start a new topic in the General Discussion forum on the Elizabethan Playwrights, and expand it to your heart's content? PM me if you need any technical help, but Stewart has made this board run as easily as it could/should be.

[Hamlet]

That's fine, I'll have a think, I may just add say, Christopher Marlowe, or similar, as a stand-alone, there's a new reprint of his poetry and it will be less ambitious.

[Hamlet]

Oh dear...can't say I'm a fan, though I have to say, the man is just too darn quotable! Perhaps if the public education system had the sense to lay off a bit and not shove his work down our throats...but I digress.

In general, I don't mind the tragedies (Hamlet, affectionately referred to as Omelette; Macbeth, playfully (?) referred to as MacBloodbath etc.) and some of the comedies (Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing).

On the "can't stand them" list--Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV, I and II, A Midsummer Night's Dream...etc.

Also read: Julius Ceaser, A Winter's Tale, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, King Lear...

I think he's overrated. And, let's not forget, there were no copyright laws...R&J was essentially an old Italian story...Thomas Kyd, if I'm not mistaken, wrote a version of Hamlet before Billy did and really, when you think about it, you shift the names of a few Italian venues and some names...unless it's Brit history..in which case you do the same with Brit venues/names etc) and it's all essentially the same kind of thing. But then...the Bible and ancient myths have been written and rewritten to death in Western lit...so what do I know?

Unconsidered.

Kyd wrote The Spanish Tragedy, and a lost play of Hamlet, the so-called Ur-Hamlet, King Lear was King Leir, and so on and so forth, but where others wrote dross, Shakespeare produced gold, the talent burns through, and onto most people's brains. Unfortuantely, it's often taught in such a way it puts many off for life, but that's the fault of teachers, and not Shakespeare, or students.

I studied Richard III and Twelfth Night for Advanced level, and it resulted in excluding me from enjoying those plays for a long time, but now, RIII, is one of my favourites in the entire canon.

[Threetrees]

That's the fault of teachers. Teachers are of the opposite opinion. Shakespeare is in no way to blame (eventually he didn't know he'd be in the literature studies). Parents don't care. Literature is not for everyone. What would Richard III say to this?
__________________________________________________ _______________________________________

We should give them so much curriculum to cover that there is no time for creativity, technology or innovation in the classroom. We should place unrealistic mandates over them so that they can burn themselves out trying to meet them all. We should allow parents to decide the educational level of their children, rather than professionals with 4-8 years of training in education. Because it’s the teacher’s fault. That’s a shame. Because it’s also a teacher’s fault that I strive to excel.
It’s a teacher’s fault that creativity and innovation can flourish in classrooms where those qualities are prized. It’s a teacher’s fault that children I see every day who struggle can get excited about coming to school because of what is going on in their classrooms.

(from Susan Riley "It’s the Teacher’s Fault")
http://educationcloset.com/2011/02/1...eachers-fault/
with 1 comment

jakya hunter says:
January 21, 2012 at 4:30 pm
you are so right i am only 11 years of age and u speak to me

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________

[Hamlet]

Stanley Wells, the leading Shakespeare scholar has suggested special courses for teachers before they are let loose on children; it's controversial, has been called eliitist, but Wells says in his defence that many teachers are not exposed to enough culture themselves, so they simply don't understand Shakespeare. Conveying the excitement of the plays therefore becomes much more difficult. The concern here is that Shakespeare will be lost from the curriculum.

I couldn't find the article, it's in The Sunday Times.

However, Richard III was available for comment, Richard said:-

"Chop off their heads, man, that's something we shall do!"

~or words to that effect.

[Hamlet]

New text, or fairly new by Simon Tussler, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, very easy read and synopsis of the best of the other writers working alongside Shakespeare, described as a POCKET GUIDE, but much much more, an easy read and chock full of details detailing why these plays should be better known, reviews concern around 35 plays.

[Hamlet]

http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeares-C...+common+prayer

An intriguing source text for the plays of William Shakespeare, this new volume due to be publshed later this year considers one of those audible and written influences on the greatest of writers. The scholarly industry has a sub-branch long employed in discoveing the source material for the playwrights works, however, and taking a cautious note form Jonathan Bate in his "The Genius of Shakespeare" and perhaps the introductory chapters to Kenneth Muir's excellent and brief volume, "The Sources of Shakespeare's Plays" it seems the writer may have only skimmed 20, or at most 40 books and created his works from these limited texts, but nevertheless, endless sources of information. Ovid was one of these, there are many others...including Mr Rapheal Holinshead or 'Rafe's as he was probably known to his mates, for the history plays.

The Book of Common Prayer, known to the writer from his time in childhood at church, and later compulsory attendance, would have absorbed the rhythms and flow and vocobulary subconsciously, and along with the people shouting and chatting in the steet, London street banter, this may be an interesting consideration in terms of how all writers create and choose their words...

... to read widely, or not to read widely, maybe... that is the real question?

[Philipson]

I have only read Macbeth!! Great piece of work

[Remora]

Guess who we don't have a thread on?

Personally have read Macbeth, Julius Caesar and The Tempest. Started Hamlet but got stalled.

The only poem of his I've read is (surprise) "All The World's A Stage".

I really like him and agree that he's brilliant, but would honestly like to know why there is so much love for him.


Also, the man's provided me with my favourite out-of-context quotation (from Macbeth):
Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"

Shakespeare doesn't whisper. He/she shouts at the top of his/her lungs. We're used to novels where whispering is the norm. It's an adjustment. Once made, there's nothing even remotely close. Dickens manages to write novels at nearly the same register, but that's another story.

[Hamlet]

I sometimes wonder which is the greatest play, Hamlet or King Lear...

[Remora]

I sometimes wonder which is the greatest play, Hamlet or King Lear...

I'm leaning to King Lear. I can recite chunks of Hamlet, which I can't say the same of King Lear, but that's probably because I've identified with Hamlet more than with any other Shakespeare character. I'm getting over that though, and thank God that phase is over and done with.

Lear all the way.

By the way, Hamlet, do you know the names of Lear's three whippets? It's the key to understanding King Lear.

[Hamlet]

Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart, and something about being mad to trust in wolves.

I'm saturated in Shakespeare, Remora, but tending to read around and avoiding him at the moment, writers like Marlowe, or Thomas Heywood, or even a bit of Thomas Middleton are the substitute, or the history of the period... and at times, even... some rare Ben Jonson.

Seriously, Lear's a play I never expect to get to the bottom of, I'm taking a break from Shakespeare at the moment, because I was too familiar with some of the plays, so wish to distance myself a little. Hence the reading around.

Interesting times, the 1590s in London, England, lots of writers all slogging it out in the Elizabethan playhouses and drinking and brawling and whoring inbetween...
oh, and dodging the plague too...

[Hamlet]

Good question btw, thanks for highlghting that one. Daughters hey, such cruel curs...

I presume Sweetheart is Cordelia.