Sadly (?) the only memories I have of Shakespeare are the forced readings in my sophomore (Julius Caesar) and junior (King Lear) years in high school, both of which I hated and for which Cliff's Notes were my crutch to get through.
Much of what he writes about requires, I think, experience in the 'real world' in order to understand and relate to te play. In high school I couldn't understand why Hamlet dithers; what kind of hero feigns insanity and procrastinates? Heroes, everyone knows, charge right at the Death Star and the only question is whether he'll use the battle computer or the Force.
Sometimes I wondered, are these just random ravings of a lunatic? I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
Now I understand it and his genius is a a pleasure, an education in humanity, and a wonder to behold. But perhaps it's wasted in high school. Another problem is that there are so few good films of his plays, so people don't have a chance to see well-done versions of them. Some of the films are so poorly produced and such wooden film-making that I'm afraid they will scare people away.
I thought it was illegal not to have read Hamlet by 21?
Seriously though, give it another try. Shakespeare's wide-ranging enough that there's likely to be something to your taste. And with his comedies, especially, I'd recommend watching Shakespeare and not reading him- that's how his plays were meant to be experienced. Although it's nice to read an annotated version and discover all the (often dirty) jokes you didn't get.
Added benefit to reading Shakespeare: you'll understand about 40% more literary allusions (read the Bible, Ovid, Homer, and Virgil to get the rest).
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is that there are so many succesful modern retellings of his plays. Something about the stories are just timeless.
Watch the originals, by all means, but the reimagined ones are not too shabby either:
As someone new to Shakespeare, you should definitely start out by watching performances, rather than reading scripts. Until you've absorbed the rhythm and the literary style, it can be very difficult to follow their plots just from a cold reading of the text; particularly for the histories. (And while King Lear is classed as a tragedy, I've personally always felt that it reads more like one of the histories)
If you do start reading the scripts for pleasure (which totally is not required!), then it's probably a good idea to start with one which you've seen performed, just to let your brain adapt itself to seeing the words in written form, and to get used to looking back and forth between the text and the annotations, without needing to worry about losing the plot.
This. Plays were the movies of their time; they were meant to be watched. The scripts are great, too, but they're supposed to accompany the play, not the other way around.
It's like reading the lyrics to a song. Sure, some lyrics are absolutely fantastic in their own right, but they were meant to be sung to music, not just read by themselves.
Hell, even with music, some bands go from being mediocre to flat-out amazing when they perform live.
Over the years I've seen (heard) a lot of Shakespeare plays, and I mostly agree with you. Yes, just reading the play is inadequate because the written form is so bare. Attending a live performance is a much better experience. The dialog is meant to be spoken and to be heard.
What I do recommend, and is my own practice, is reading the play before going to the performance. We are especially blessed to read Shakespeare today, the internet is so very helpful. So many versions of every Shakespeare play, most have annotations about Elizabethan language that help the reader make sense of it.
Reading AOT makes it much easier to follow what's happening on stage. Even small local productions can be done well, Shakespearean plays were always meant as entertainment, go and enjoy!
I think you are right about the classification of the plays, Comedy, Tragedy, etc, don't necessarily fit our modern sensibilities. In Shakespeare's time, "Merchant of Venice" was called a "comedy", but in our era we'd say it's more tragic than not. I'd agree familiarity with the play is more important than its categorization.
It's been a long time since I was in that position; almost none of the plays are new to me at this stage. (I'll confess, though, that I've neither seen nor read Coriolanus, Cymbaline, or Timon of Athens. Or, for that matter, any of the Apocrypha) For me personally, I would absolutely do exactly the same as you; if I was going to attend a production of any of those plays which I've not yet experienced, I would read the script, first.
But for someone who isn't yet accustomed to the language, I expect that it would be a hard slog, getting through the texts without an actor's interpretation to help you along.
> But for someone who isn't yet accustomed to the language, I expect that it would be a hard slog, getting through the texts without an actor's interpretation to help you along.
That's the beauty of the web. The online transcripts of the plays provide many explanations of the language and its cultural context, which makes the dialog so much more understandable to people coming to it the first time.
Without doing this it will be difficult for a beginner to understand what the actors are saying or what's happening on stage. Frankly, I can have trouble with plays I've seen only once before or haven't seen in a long time, I figure it won't hurt to read it before seeing it again.
You don't watch/read Shakespeare for M Night Shyamalan twists, but instead for the quality of the language, the actor's performances, and the director's liberties with the script.
I'd highly recommend performances using original pronunciation if you can track some down. It makes a remarkable difference compared to the RP commonly used for Shakespeare. Half the rhymes just don't work in modern English, and especially not in RP English.
It took me a little while to tune in to what sounds to modern ears like a heavy West Country (pirate!) accent. That said I found it far easier to enjoy than RP.
Grown up in Japan and got into theatre, I've tried a few of Shakespeare (in Japanese translations), but I didn't fully get it---until I came to US and actually read it aloud in English. I agree that it is much more approachable as spoken words.
I never enjoyed Shakespeare until I began reading King Henry IV on a mobile WAP site on my Nokia about 12 years ago while guarding some railroad tracks.
i think there is a lot to be enjoyed in his writings, i would encourage you to reinvestigate his work
the other comments in response to yours speak well of approaching his work
LEAR
How old art thou?
KENT
Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing,
nor so old to dote on her for anything.
who answers the question 'how old are you?' like this? what does that even mean?
i love the way shakespeare densely muses on social and personal issues indirectly whilst playing with language and dialogue
i sometimes read his works like others read holy books, meaning i'll just open up to a random spot and read a few lines until i find just an immeasurably unique use of language and close it satisified
shakespeare wrote for the pit and penny people, the work is intended to be fun, it just happens to also be brilliant
