Shakespeare

[sodascouts]

Regarding movies, if you're a purist, you can see all the plays performed in their entirety thanks to the BBC's television series where, over a series of years, they filmed every one of his plays without making any cuts or changes. Unfortunately, purchasing all of them is quite pricey, but you can get them from your local library, even if you have to request inter-library loan. Lucky for me, I could request the university to purchase them as a teaching supplement.

While the BBC productions have terrific acting and are true to the text, they also have limitations; certainly, the budget is much smaller than that of a film, and it shows. Secondly, some of Shakespeare's work simply does not translate well to the small screen. It can seem overlong when you're watching it on a television rather than a stage.

I enjoy film adaptions that keep most of the play intact and choose their cuts with care, but I understand why the cuts are necessary and don't begrudge them. I only begrudge them when they change too much and the play loses its punch.

Also, despite the fact that the original productions in the Globe had a minimal set, I like cinematographers to take advantages of the medium's larger scope to give the locales and sets additional realism.

A pet peeve of mine is when they change time periods. It takes the plays out of context. A lot of times it's done to make a "statement" - like the modernized Macbeth starring Patrick Stewart which likens his character to the Communist revolutionaries of the early 20th century - or to make it more "accessible" such as that awful modernization of Romeo and Juliet in the nineties starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes. Sometimes it's done for no apparent reason at all, which is even worse! That's why I can't get behind Branagh's Hamlet, as much as I love his other Shakespearean productions. Moving the play up a few hundred years was so gratuitous that I wonder if he did it simply because he thought 19th century costumes looked better on him.

While the BBC productions are the truest to the plays, here are some film versions that, while not entirely true to the plays, I find entertaining (you'll note two directors who are excellent with Shakespeare that keep popping up, lol):

Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing
Branagh's Henry V
Parker's Othello
Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet
Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew
Zeffirelli's Hamlet (controversial, I know, but I think it works for all its flaws)
Olivier's Richard III
Radford's The Merchant of Venice
Brook's King Lear (the 1971 version)

Also, in spite of the swath of cuts made and the extremely low budget since they were produced for 1960s television, I love An Age of King's presentations of Richard II, Henry IV (all parts), Henry V, Henry VI (all parts), and Richard III all in a line using the same actors - including a young Sean Connery as Hotspur!

For the rest of Shakespeare's plays, I haven't yet found movies that have struck me as particularly well-done, except the BBC productions of course.

[UK TimFan]

A pet peeve of mine is when they change time periods. It takes the plays out of context. A lot of times it's done to make a "statement". Sometimes it's done for no apparent reason at all, which is even worse! That's why I can't get behind Branagh's Hamlet, as much as I love his other Shakespearean productions. Moving the play up a few hundred years was so gratuitous that I wonder if he did it simply because he thought 19th century costumes looked better on him.

[Freypower]

This is one of my absolute pet peeves. When Shakespeare is taken out of context and played in Fascist Germany or Stalinist Russia that is just telling you how 'clever' the director or actor thinks he is. We have a company called Bell Shakespeare which only performs his work in modern dress. Their 'vision' statement gives you an idea of what they are about:

http://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/about/vision

I take particular issue with 'to use Shakespeare as Australians'. Why? Shakespeare was/is for everybody and doesn't have to be dumped on top of a particular society to be relevant.

It says all you need to know now that the company logo has the word 'Shakespeare' upside down.

And look at what they apparently are going to do with their new production of Macbeth. Turn the Macbeths into yuppies.

http://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/whatson/2012/macbeth

As for Lady Macbeth being 'highly erotic'; she's the opposite.

I could go on. The bottom line is I don't believe in Shakespeare being used to push one person's belief in what it SHOULD have been about.

[EaglesKiwi]

I know I'm going back a few days, but I wanted to comment on this:

...
You started with a sonnet and I have to say I have not studied them in depth, but I also like 130 and the one my mother recited at our wedding, 116, which of course is:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


Is it a cliche to have this said at your wedding? It wasn't for me, because it's true...

IMHO, Shakespeare is often quoted in little snippets which people then think are cliched. Certain of the sonnets are referred to over and over again, ditto lines from plays e.g. "To be or not to be, that is the question".

Taken out of contect and overdone they lose their original impact and/or beauty.

I watched an episode of Doctor Who where the Dr and Martha travel back to Shakespeare's time. At the very end of the episode Shakespeare is saying goodbye to Martha (after flirting with her all episode) and says something along the lines of writing a poem for her - then starts wtih "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

Okay, this is a very long-winded way of saying, "Wow, imagine being the person one of the sonnets was written for, and hearing it for the first time - not only is it so beautiful, but it's about you."

[Freypower]

I don't necessarily think use of Shakespearean lines out of context is cliched. I always get a laugh from 'it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance' from Hamlet even if the person using it has no idea it's from Shakespeare.

I think if there's one line that may be overused it is 'if music be the food of love, play on' from Twelfth Night.

[EaglesKiwi]

I don't necessarily think use of Shakespearean lines out of context is cliched. I always get a laugh from 'it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance' from Hamlet even if the person using it has no idea it's from Shakespeare.

I think if there's one line that may be overused it is 'if music be the food of love, play on' from Twelfth Night.

Yes - the line itself is good, but it MAY get a reaction from some people of "oh not that old line again".

Maybe you always get a laugh because you quote appropriately!

[Freypower]

What I meant was I find that line amusing, as so much of Hamlet's speech is:

Horatio:
My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.

Hamlet:
I prithee do not mock me, fellow studient,
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

Horatio:
Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

Hamlet:
Thrift, thrift, Horatio, the funeral bak'd-meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

[sodascouts]

It's always interesting to see whether the actor playing Hamlet does those lines with a laugh or a sneer. The lines are obviously jabs at Gertrude and Claudius either way, but since this is the first time we meet Hamlet in the play, noting how they are said often cues you as to which direction the actor will go when it comes time to portray Hamlet's "antic disposition."

[Freypower]

If it were me, I would play that absolutely straight; he's still in shock at the betrayal of his father by his mother & he isn't kindly disposed to anyone or anything. Profound disillusionment is how we first see him.

[EaglesKiwi]

If it were me, I would play that absolutely straight; he's still in shock at the betrayal of his father by his mother & he isn't kindly disposed to anyone or anything. Profound disillusionment is how we first see him.

I agree - the laugh is more appropriate for the audience at this stage, not so much for Hamlet.