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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEnglish Teacher Already Armed With Deadly Weapon Called Shakespeare
(From The Onion)
https://local.theonion.com/english-teacher-already-armed-with-deadly-weapon-called-1823427645
underpants
(182,788 posts)I hate Shakespeare
Aristus
(66,328 posts)The fault lies not in yourself, my dear underpants, but in the stars who portray the Bard...
OnDoutside
(19,956 posts)with fellow students, and were primed to interject at time honored points like
LADY MACBETH
[...] I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this. (1.7.62-67)
In unison they made the popping sound with their finger inside their mouth
The actors did really well to hold it together, but the point is that Shakespearean theater was like that.
Mosby
(16,306 posts)OnDoutside
(19,956 posts)ehrnst
(32,640 posts)It was never meant to be read by anyone but a skilled, trained performer.
He wouldn't even give his actors full scripts - just their lines, and the four words preceding their lines as a cue.
See a good production by a good company.
And having been trained as such, I don't consider it children's theatre. Maybe Midsummer's Night Dream, but anything else, no.
Especially the history plays - his audience knew those people's stories like we know about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Leith
(7,809 posts)I had to read Julius Caesar in sophomore English. The lines of the play were on the left side, the explanation and translation to modern English on the right.
I hated it. C'mon! Making a joke with "awl" and "all" wasn't funny!
Then my teacher heard that the theater department of Wayne State University (Detroit) was doing the play and arranged for us to go see it.
Of all the field trips I ever took in school, this was the best.
Plays are not meant to be read. They are meant to be watched. After that, I made sure to see every movie made from a Shakespeare play that I could: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew. Heck, you wouldn't judge Casablanca or Fiddler on the Roof just by reading the scripts, would you?
ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)Besides, everyone dies in Shakespeare, so he is not the best role model for children.
Anti-Semitism, racism, misogyny are all major themes.
Hekate
(90,667 posts)Just joking -- but as an old Lit major, I can say it's a worthy exercise. I read a number of Yukio Mishima's elegantly-written books in translation back when, and concluded that yes, he was a great author, and no, I couldn't stand his themes. So there you have it.
ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)Jewish character in Shylock but gave up in the end because he understood his audience wouldn't appreciate it. I can believe it. The rabble in the pit at the Globe would have harbored some anti-Semitic attitudes and would have loved the fact that Shylock was bested in the end (and by a woman no less!).
Zounds! Can you imagine having to create plays that would appeal to both the Queen and the deplorables?
DBoon
(22,363 posts)... to a Beowulf fight
Hekate
(90,667 posts)Huzzah!
ehrnst
(32,640 posts)Riverside?
Hekate
(90,667 posts)ehrnst
(32,640 posts)Filled with notes and highlighting.
Lugged that sucker across campus in undergrad school.
Hekate
(90,667 posts)cloudbase
(5,513 posts)The real WMD in literature is Dickens.