When people are sitting around discussing Shakepseare, I often wonder whether they have read it or just have read Cliff' Notes about them. When they start discussing other classics, I feel the same way. I want to know how many people have actually read Shakespeare other than what was required in school. I know that I would much rather pick up Jack Reacher than Hamlet, but always feel like an idiot saying that.
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72 comments:
I only read what was required in high school.
However, I will read Jane Austin over and over again. That is my dabble in romance. Otherwise I'm John Sandford, Robert Craig, Michael Connelly, etc all the way.
I have read several of the Bard's plays, mainly due to the fact that I was auditioning for a role in one so I had no choice. Some I liked some I hated.
Agreed! When reading for fun (and not work related) I want something that is easy to understand! Sorry Mr Shakespeare! :)
Haven't read the sonnets or anything, but I'd rather watch the plays than read them.
And that's the most pretentious statement I'll make all day.
I've read the comedies! "Twelfth Night" is my fave.
"If music be the food of love, play on."
Shakespeare is meant to be heard, not read! I have read some, but seen many.
I read several of them for fun in high school and college, but that was years ago. I'll always go see a production of Twelfth Night or The Tempest. I keep saying I want to re-read Othello, but always seem to get distracted by the Internet (and my Enty habit)
I really think my brain has atrophied from Internet addiction. sigh
The first class I signed up for in college was Shakespeare Survey. I love Shakespeare (and even played the lead in As You Like It), but honestly have not read any since college. I still have the complete works from then, maybe I'll go back and read some...then again, I promised myself to read the works of Dickens and Mark Twain this year.
I only read the required reading from the bard, but I did go through a phase were I spent a year knocking off the World Library's best 100 books ever written
I'm also a Jack Reacher fan but we've read every single Shakespeare play aloud, going back and forth to the summer place over the years. I went to a high school with an amazing Shakespeare program so I joined the cult early. It's addictive once you get into it. We've tried to persuade the kids that everyone does it, but they are catching on.
What @ms girl said.
I took two semesters of Shakespeare in college--not required and not even remotely part of my major. One semester of histories and tragedies, one of comedies and poetry. I loved the in-depth of it all!
I always have Shakespeare's complete works on my iPad and iPhone for occasional reading when traveling or trying to write.
But then I again I had to Google "Jack Reacher" because I had no idea whether he was an author or character.
I've read about half the plays, and all of the sonnets/poems. I'm also one of those annoying people who love to quote Shakespeare. Cleaning is just more fun when you're muttering "Out, damned spot! Out, I say!"
I've read all of Shakespeare's works more than once. The first time in HS where we had to dissect and translate the meaning of the phrasing and symbolism before it was funny or tragic.
I enjoy going to the plays and seeing the variations on them. Some modern music and props add so much and other times i enjoy it sticking to the book.
I was named after Shakespeare, so people always assume I love his stuff. I hate it (well, reading it). I only read what was required, and never wanted to pick it up again. I like watching as movies/plays, though.
I've closely read 16 Shakespeare plays and enjoyed every one of 'em. Except for Coriolanus.
My favorite Shakespeare/Acting joke:
Casting director: What Shakespeare have you done?
Actor (bluffing): Titus Andronicus
Casting Dirctor: Which character?
Actor (bluffing): Ronicus
I am not a huge fan...love watching the plays but would rather read something I don't have to concentrate on quite so much. But really, in my mind the bigger question is where are you that people are sitting around discussing Shakespeare? Does this happen regularly? My life has changed so much since having kids, I can't even imagine when this would come up in conversation, haha.
I tried to read Coriolanus since Ralph Fiennes made the movie. But I gave up after 10 minutes of reading it. My brain can't wrap my head around the writing.
I have a 2-volume set at home with the plays and sonnets. I have read the sonnets. Whenever a Kenneth Branagh movie came out on video/dvd, I'd sit there with my Shakespeare open to see if he followed it word for word. (Some parts of Henry V have been placed in different areas, but it's basically the same.)
There is a Shakespeare trivial pursuit-type game out there. Saw it several years ago.
I loved it when there was the spate of teen movies based on Shakespearean plays. Hated Twelfth Night. My favourite must be Romeo and Juliet because I remember that play the most. (But I also like Hamlet.)
I've actually read and/or seen theater productions of a lot of Shakespeare plays that weren't required for school. I spent one summer working as a nanny for an obnoxiously rich family and their 6-year old wanted to watch Grease II at least 3 times/day when I tried to get her to do anything else she informed me that I was her servant and would do what she said. The mother never corrected her so it was a rough summer until the step-father caught me sneaking and watching As you like it on TV one rainy day when the 6-year old was shopping with her mom and the baby was down for a nap. He apologized for the girl's behavior and told me he was shocked I didn't quit because she was such a spoiled brat.
Have read the bard for fun and for class.
I go back again and again for passages and characters.
Love his sonnets.
Maybe it's just me but I don't hear people discussing Shakespeare often at all.
Um, I read a few plays in high school English & every year of theater of course had some Shakespeare plays but none of them stood out.
I certainly would not include myself if I do ever come across a discussion of this type since I'd have absolutely nothing to add past, "I loved both Romeo & Juliet movies".
I love how Enty wrote "Shakepseare"
I am not a Shakespeare fan.
I love Shakespeare, and I have friends who do too and actually read them and we do discuss them. Personal preference cause I had to google who Jack Reacher was haha
I've read Shakespeare and the classics. Literature was one of my majors in college (economics was the other). Been reading the great stuff since early childhood; my parents have an extremely good home library and they love those works too.
While I didn't dislike it when it was required reading in school, you won't catch me reading it now for fun. I'd rather read a foreign policy magazine if I'm looking for something "challenging" to read.
Only "Julius Caesar" and "MacBeth", in high school. Enjoyed them at the time, and I can still recite parts of them (my English IV teacher was very fond of memorization) but I read to escape, and plays are not that easy-flowing escapism that I look for.
I've read all the plays and sonnets. Love the comedies, admire the more serious works. Othello is an amazingly powerful story of envy and evil and blind jealousy. I've never really been a MacBeth person; I don't like the crazy. The comedies are great, both the written play and film versions. But I love irony.
Shakespeare in the Park rocks!! For people who don't like the Old English language, try getting an out-of-print volume called 'Shakespeare for Children.' Tells the stories in plain language, which can be a nice gateway to the real thing.
When I was age 10-12 I read Shakespeare's plays all the time. I used to pretend to be a different character each time and act them out in my room, alone. But past age 12, no
Took a Shakespearian class in college and also visited the theater in London. If you just read the cliff notes, you get the gist of the story, but you lose all the details and humor in the comedies and you lose the depth of the characters and true meaning in the tragedies.
I have had a giant Shakespeare book of his plays and sonnets since my teens. I love it. I reread some of my favorites from time to time. I enjoy Hamlet and Julius Caesar the most. Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing are also fun.
I really like the adaptations of Hamlet (1996) and Much Ado About Nothing (1993).
Once you get the hang of the language, Shakespeare is quite enjoyable.
Read it all, took a 2 semester college course which covered every play and most of the sonnets. Also read a lot of the plays in high school. It's really not that bad, once you start in on it, but it's not casual reading either. It's almost like a different language. Better in some ways. Go see a play, or one of the well-done movie adaptions, and get into it that way.
I read quite a few after high school but would much rather read something else. Shakespeare is much better experienced on stage the way it was meant to be experienced.
Ken Branagh's "Henry V" was really awesome.
they're meant to watched! i've read a heap though not for fun, for school, both high school and uni. I love watching them. i love movies and i love stage. look up bell shakespeare in australia, i'm going to go and see their macbeth in a couple of weeks.
And i cannot wait to see coriolanus
also there's nothing wrong with NOT liking shakespeare and prefering jack reacher. a lot of thrillers have shakespearan elements - i though for example sons of anarchy was very shakespearean and i think homeland was trying to be. failed, but good try.
Absolutely hated 'ol Bill in HS and hated it even more when I tried to be "cultured" and read it later in life.
I'd much rather read Bukowski, Edward Bunker or Vonnegut to be honest.
I don't think I have ever read and Shakespeare other than an excerpt here and there for school. I mostly read biographies. The more scandalous, the better.
I have read and still read sonnets and some of the plays.. i generally leave out the most bloody tragedies [e.g. Titus Andronicus] cause they are too boring :P
Glances over at the row of Variorum editions on the bookshelf. Yeah, I've read a few of Bill's screeds.
I still remember my audition soliloquy from Henry IV, Part 1: "I know you all, and will a while uphold / the unyoked humor of your idleness..."
I've read a lot of Shakespeare but my bachelor's degree was in English and my master's degree was in Theatre so it kind of went with the program, lol.
As a young person--like in high school-I was fascinated with Greek and Roman literature---my mom had to take me to a nearby town with a college bookstore to get a copy of the Illiad (my little town didn't even have a bookstore in those days).
Nowadays, I prefer more contemporary things when I read for pleasure....I do love watching Shakespeare adaptations on film tho.
I've read lots of plays by Shakespeare, and I wish other people would have too, he is a genius...
But as I'm an actress I don't think it's average!
Well said!
I am an English literature prof and I LOVE Shakespeare. Once someone unlocks it for you, you will fall for him.
Why on earth are you talking about feeling guilty about not reading plays? Go and see them on stage, for God's sake! And yes, read the sonnets and Venus and Adonis if you want. Just don't refer to him as "Will" or "the Bard" unless you want to sound unspeakably vulgar.
I've read them, and will flip through to a favorite scene or two every now and then. That being said, if it's a toss up between "Anthony and Cleopatra" or a new Warhammer 40k novel...
I've read a lot of Shakespeare, even plays and sonnets I didn't have to read.
I read a lot though
I find the whole Shakespeare thing really funny and slightly ironic, because this is a guy who wrote his plays for the benefit of EVERYBODY, including the majority of England who were illiterate peasants. I don't like the fact that people have built it up to be something that's really highbrow and make it intimidating, when that's the reverse of his intentions.
I agree with what a lot of you have said, his plays aren't there to be read, they're there to be performed. I'm really lucky in that I grew up really close to Stratford-Upon-Avon so have been able to see a lot of his plays and now I live in London so I go to the Globe most years.
I gotta say, I think his contribution to English literature is a bit over rated. Some of his plays are good but a lot of the tragedies are quite samey, so then you have to enjoy the production of it to make it special, I guess in the same way that a song can sound really bad when it's not done particularly well but amazing when it's done well.
I'm another one who prefers to watch them; I've never gotten where I could really process the language on a page without the nonverbal expression that makes it come alive. I love Tennant's Hamlet and the movies of "Much Ado" W/Branagh and Thompson, and "Midsummer Night's Dream" w/Kline :) As far as reading, let me sit down with The Dresden Files and I am a totally happy camper!
I can't get into reading Shakespeare...can't focus.
Saw Coriolanus and was struck by the themes. It comforted me to know that the same mistakes are played out in every century: It's not just me that can't seem to learn a lesson.
I also thought the Gerard Butler couldn't keep in character and was annoying.
I've read all of Shakespeare's works. My faves are As You Like It and King Lear. Another one that I really like, but not quite a fave, is A Winter's Tale. It's too choppy and uneven, but it has high points.
Of course I teach him, so I better know him.
I have to brag for a second, my sophmore college daughter was encouraged by her English Professor to publish a paper she just wrote on a Shakespeare play. Publishing as an underclassman is kinda cool.
Presently reading Fool by Christopher Moore, his take on King Lear. Damned funny too.
@Patra: "Once someone unlocks it for you" is a key phrase with me. I had a teacher in high school who read the sonnets and soliloquies from Hamlet and Julius Caesar, and they came to life before my very eyes. A revelation. I still think they have to be seen, not heard; this same teacher used to say, "All poetry is meant to be read aloud."
@Liza: Good point! Don't forget the Groundlings! The same teacher mentioned above told me that the sword fights were performed on stage with actors with retractable swords and bags of sheep's blood hidden in their clothing to make the stabbings as realistic as possible.
In Amadeus, as well, I was surprised to see all the rowdy lowbrows in the cheap seats during Mozart's performances. I guess you had to take whatever live entertainment was available in them days.
Wow nobody mentioned Taming of the Shrew, the only play I ever could read and dayum Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. LOVE that movie. Love the play.
I was a theatre major and an English minor in college. I've performed several of Shakespeare's plays, read most of them, and read a shelf or two of the classics.
Now I write and edit horror novels.
High-brow to low-brow.
Amartel - Henry V is probably the most realistic movie in terms of fighting, isn't it? Just brutal.
I keep meaning to get the book "The Mystery of William Shakespeare". Friend of mine read it many years ago and when he told me about it, I was highly intrigued.
How I got into Shakespeare, and subsequently things medieval/renaissance in general, is a story too long to tell here, but suffice to say I've been a longtime fan of his--when you get into it, it's wonderful how the language just flows off your tongue while you're reading it. (I used to have the opening soliloquy memorized from Richard III, which was my gateway drug, I mean, play...) And yes, I think he really did write those plays; all the naysayers who insist it would have taken someone from a far better social strata to write like that can just go kiss my working-class, English major ass--haven't they ever heard of reading? I do seem to recall that people were doing that during the Elizabethan era, and you can learn an awful lot that way, even if you weren't to the manner born...*grumblebitchsnarl*
I was - originally - an acting/communication major .. that required me to read, memorize and act in nearly all Shakespeare's plays. It was TORTURE!! Iambic pentameter is not and never shall be my chosen mode of speech.
Needless to say, after about 2 1/2 years of that .. I decided I hated acting and decided to become a Philosophy major. Ya .. out of the frying pan ..
I love Hamlet - I re-read it every year! But it's the only Shakespearean work I habitually read.
Worked on a couple of productions in my 20s, including The Tempest, Lear, and The Scottish Play. I know about six or seven of the texts pretty well, but much prefer to hear them than read them. Can still remember struggling through reading Romeo & Juliet in 9th grade, page by page.
I love Shakespeare, and took a number of classes on his work in high school and college. After a while, the old English gets easy to read, and he tells a great story!
I agree, though; it's better to watch his plays than to read them. He's so great that even an amateur production is entertaining, and when you have a professional production, it's mind-blowing.
I read what was required in high school/college. I enjoyed some and disliked others, but I never found it as excruciating to read as some of the other stuff that was "required" reading. The Canterbury Tales always sticks out in my mind as something I barely got through.
I'm a librarian and I think most classics are boring. Except for Charles Dickens and the Russian authors like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev...I love the Russians.
Shakespeare did not write in "Old English." That would be Beuwolf. Shakespeare wrote in early Modern English. Chaucer wrote in Middle English.
I too like the Russians, especially Chekhov. In a grad school class, we use to say,"The Russians are coming!"
I'd read all of his plays and sonnets by the summer after my eighth grade in school. Completely fell in love with the language -- Many thanks to Caedmon Records, too.
Anyway, that summer i cajoled/browbeat/charmed/forced my four younger siblings into performing selected plays -- With me, of course, always the lead. As well as being the director, producer, wardrobe master and props procurer. They still talk about that summer. The audience, however, still snickers.
Actually, only a few of the audience remain, and they shake their heads at what we tried to do on those hot summer nights.
Hardly ever - Only to find out where a quote came from.
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