I am relatively ignorant of Shakespeare

[liv]

So people are talking about which Shakespeare plays they've seen. I am nostalgic for the 2000s when someone would've put up a quiz on Quizilla so you could just tick the boxes and generate a graphic to post in your journal. But since we can't have nice things, I have gone through the list manually. I got the list of titles from hilarita but it's pretty much all over.

All's well that ends well: Nope

Antony and Cleopatra: Seen once, at Cambridge Shakespeare festival.

As you like it: Nope

The comedy of errors: Nope

Coriolanus: Nope

Cymbeline: Nope

Hamlet: Strangely enough I've never interacted with Hamlet in any way, unless you count the Disney film The Lion King. Which is weird, but I've just never happened to see any version of it.

Henry IV, Parts I and II: Nope

Henry V: I have seen this in some fairly trad production, possibly at Stratford? But either I forgot to blog about it or it was pre-LJ days. It was a modern setting, with TV news broadcasts in the background doing some of the exposition, and most of the characters wearing military fatigues rather than Tudor dress or plate mail. But it wasn't updated in any other respect than the costumes, which in particular made some of the humour about people having funny accents jarring.

Henry VI, Parts I, II and III: Nope

Hentry VIII: Nope

Julius Caesar: Nope

King John: Nope

King Lear: Another of the big ones I've never seen in any shape.

Love's labour's lost: Nope (Also thanks hilarita for knowing the correct punctuation for the title.)

Macbeth: School set text a bit before GCSE, I think maybe Yr 8? We went on an exciting end-of-term trip to Stratford to see the Jacobi staging, and I primarily remember being absolutely boggled that a famous name actor from TV could be that bad.

Also I worked on Macbeth with a kid I was tutoring, when I was only a few years older than him. At 20 years' remove I've forgotten the kid's name but I clearly remember being absolutely incandescent at the prevailing educational theory that it's colonialist and unfair for immigrant kids to study Shakespeare. Fourteen-year-old boys, even if they happen to be brown, are obviously going to be way more excited about the blood and guts and betrayal and revenge of Macbeth than some 1980s blank verse thing about a flower garden, deemed to be "relevant" because the poet was also an Asian immigrant. Macbeth was the only thing my tutee read willingly, with no cajoling or bribery, and he voluntarily read the whole thing, not just the three short excerpts the bottom set (which just ~coincidentally~ happened to include most of the immigrant kids) was assigned.

Also also I read King Hereafter, Dorothy Dunnett's fictional take on Macbeth.

Measure for measure: Cambridge Shakespeare Festival.

The merchant of Venice: I've seen at least one student production. And had lots of discussions about whether Jews or people sympathetic to Jews should see the play. I don't think it's inherently evil, but I am not particularly going to prioritize seeing it over lots of other things.

The merry wives of Windsor: Caught an outdoor production at the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival. It's not too cringey but definitely minor Shakespeare.

A Midsummer Night's dream: School set text when I was in Yr 7. I know it well enough to get the literary references, at least, eg Gaiman is slightly obsessed with it. I was already familiar with Puck from Kipling, too. I must have seen some stage productions (I think in school we watched one of those terribly educational BBC films), but I can't specifically remember any. One I'd be happy to see again as an adult, or to check out some kind of clever artsy take on it.

Much ado about Nothing: School set text for GCSE. Discussed it endlessly, saw the Branagh film multiple times. Later on I dated someone who was really obsessed with said Branagh film, and used to go to sleep to the soundtrack every night, so I have a sort of perpetual earworm of Emma Thompson reading Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more / Men were deceivers ever / One foot in sea and one on shore / To one thing constant never. I also saw a somewhat terrible Cambridge Shakespeare Festival production, where they made Beatrice just bitchy and mean. I haven't seen the Whedon film.

Othello: I have never actually managed to see this either, maybe I should fix that...

Pericles: Nope

Richard II: Another Cambridge Shakespeare Festival one. I liked it a lot better than I expected for a relatively lesser known history.

Richard III: I have thought about this play a lot, but I'm not sure whether I've ever actually seen a production. My parents have a huge print of the wedding scene, and both my year 5 class teacher and my GCSE history teacher talked a lot about the play as an example of how propaganda is different from history. And I read Josephine Tey's The daughter of time at an impressionable age. So I definitely hold a strong and not very examined opinion that Richard III was innocent.

Romeo and Juliet: School set text somewhere when we were close to Juliet's age, I think Yr 9. Lots of discussions, we definitely watched the Zeffirelli film and were completely bowled over by the fact that our school teachers were showing us a naked man's bum. Also West side story, and I've seen a couple of not terribly memorable stage productions here and there. Probably the most recent is in the early 2000s in Brighton with my family of origin.

The taming of the shrew: My other GCSE set text, which was mainly used as an illustration of the pseudo-feminist view that men are bastards. R&J was expounded to us as demonstrating that if you let a man talk you into sex you will end up dead (Never trust a man who reads you poetry was the key message from my GCSE English teachers.) And Shrew was taught as an illustration of how men are horrible to women and it's better to avoid marriage if possible. We also did compare-and-contrast with Kiss me Kate.

Our sixth form put on a horribly memorable version of the play done as a black comedy, making it very explicit that the humour is about a woman being severely abused. The lead was played by a girl in my class who was very talented (she went on to become a professional actor) and who was in the middle of a mental health crisis at the time; her best friend had been killed suddenly at the start of the rehearsal period, and she wasn't eating. She was lit and made up to highlight how starving-thin she was by the final scene, the shadows on her face just barely exaggerated to look like bruises. In a way it seems exploitative to show a teenage girl's very real suffering blended with the fictional suffering of Kate's character, but she wanted to do it.

I also saw a very odd version by the RSC, where they cross-cast it and tried to make it accessible to children. I think if you want to introduce children to Shakespeare you should probably just not start with Shrew, but they made a valiant effort.

The Tempest: I've seen a few productions, none terribly exciting. Another Cambridge Shakespeare Festival stalwart. Another one I'd like to see again, especially interesting twists on it.

Timon of Athens: Nope

Titus Andronicus: Nope

Troilus and Cressida: Nope

Twelfth Night: I've seen a couple of productions of this, one at Stratford on a more successful school trip than Macbeth. And a Cambridge Shakespeare Festival one with cjwatson fairly recently, which I don't appear to have written about. It impressed me by getting exactly the right balance with Malvolio; they made him a bit awful and deserving of the tricks played on him, but kept the tricks at the level of mean pranks, not horrible bullying and torture.

Two Gentlemen of Verona: Nope

The Winter's tale: Nope

Unlike some of the people commenting at rachelmanija's, I've never seen a wacky outrageous production. I've mostly watched conventional things, CSF and Stratford and respectable films. I think the weirdest was the child-friendly version of Taming of the Shrew mentioned under the cut. I've also never seen a really traditional production at the Globe – it's on my bucket list.

Compared to lots of my friends I feel a bit uncultured, tbh! If anyone has plans to see any interesting Shakespeare within commuting distance of Cambridge, or would like to make some, I'd be up for that. I'm not hugely excited to see any more Merchant of Venice or Taming of the Shrew, but even with those I could be persuaded.

Comments

[rmc28]

I have been enjoying all the Shakespeare discussion and I'm in general inclined to see any production I can get to easily - I will ping you next time I am making concrete plans.

Could the Henry V you saw have been at the National Theatre? I went with a friend in approx 2000-2001, when the NT when running a £10 promotion if you'd never been before. I remember tmodern-military and TV screens, but also that I was more underslept than usual and struggled to stay awake in the second half.

[liv]

Ooh, 2000-ish at the National sounds quite likely, thank you for identifying!

And yes please, if you do come up with a Shakespeare plan I'd love to join you.

[rmc28]

Great!

(also, gosh, sorry about all the typos in that, which is what I get for sleepily bashing stuff out on my phone I guess)

[naath]

We did R&J and liked Romeo+Juliet more than the Zeffirelli, although we watched both. I've a bit lost track, I've seen a lot of amdram and films, Macbeth in Stratford (was in a lift with Patrick Stewart, omg) and (surprisingly?) nothing at the Globe though I'd like to.

[liv]

I will definitely invite you if I get round to organizing a trip to the Globe!

I thought I must have seen some amdram Shakespeare but not really since school I think. I've not even done readthroughs with friends.

[sfred]

I think I will have about the same number of 'nope's as you.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Did you never see the Baz Luhrmann film of Romeo and Juliet, with Leonardo diCaprio and Clare Danes? That's the version of R&J I'm most familiar with (I've never seen a "proper" production; I've read the script once or twice). I found it very engaging as a teenager in the 90s.

As for "wacky outrageous productions", we did Macbeth for GCSE and the school took us to see a weird production where they'd cut out the witches! It didn't make much sense to me (both the production and the decision to do that).

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

We saw Othello + Macbeth as one play, but any scene without women was cut. It was interesting.