Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Falstaff Infection
Oct 1, 2014
To put it another way: the speaker in the Sonnets is definitely bisexual.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

kaworu
Jul 23, 2004

It's a tricky question; I try to sidestep it by saying that Shakespeare's sexuality is simply immaterial historical curiosity; the important thing is that he absolutely did write about what we would now consider to be "queer" issues, dealing heavily with the concept of gender in many of his plays. It is important not to read too too much into everything - after all, gender was hardly a fixed concept in the theater. Quite to the contrary, I've always felt that it was fairly significant to a play like Twelfth Night that at the time it was written, Viola (and all the other female parts) were being playing by androgynous young men. Given that context, I think Shakespeare's exploration of gender and its fluidity and artifice in so many plays makes a great deal more sense. I always viewed the sonnets (certain parts of them, at any rate) as a continuation of the same sorts of ideas and themes, and done so in a manner that wouldn't really have been possible via theater. He is very much playing with established conventions and cliches in love poetry (like his plays) and its dangerous to take anything at even close to face value.

All that being said, it's hard not to say that Sonnet 20 (especially following Sonnet 18) isn't sexually suggestive, and a fascinating and bold little part of his canon. I still remember the first time I read it in High School like 15 years ago. As to whether the poems have any bearing in real life (certainly a debated topic) there's no denying that the narrator of the sonnets is meant to be some version of William Shakespeare. I'd mainly point to three sonnets in the Dark Lady portion (Sonnet 135 is the one I remember, I know the other two are sequential with it) and they all pun heavily and repeatedly on the word/name "Will" ("Whoever hath her wish thou hast thy Will, and Will in overplus and Will to boot!") I was always rather amused that even then, will/willie was known as slang for genitalia, which is absolutely part of the humor of those sonnets. But they certainly seem to indicate that the narrator's name is "Will", whatever the case.

kaworu fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Dec 14, 2014

Falstaff Infection
Oct 1, 2014

kaworu posted:

It's a tricky question; I try to sidestep it by saying that Shakespeare's sexuality is simply immaterial historical curiosity; the important thing is that he absolutely did write about what we would now consider to be "queer" issues, dealing heavily with the concept of gender in many of his plays. It is important not to read too too much into everything - after all, gender was hardly a fixed concept in the theater. Quite to the contrary, I've always felt that it was fairly significant to a play like Twelfth Night that at the time it was written, Viola (and all the other female parts) were being playing by androgynous young men. Given that context, I think Shakespeare's exploration of gender and its fluidity and artifice in so many plays makes a great deal more sense. I always viewed the sonnets (certain parts of them, at any rate) as a continuation of the same sorts of ideas and themes, and done so in a manner that wouldn't really have been possible via theater. He is very much playing with established conventions and cliches in love poetry (like his plays) and its dangerous to take anything at even close to face value.

Yeah, it always blows my mind when I think about the Russian doll of gender bending that was Shakespearean Comedy. Like, you've got young men playing young women masquerading as young men.That's is probably one reason why the church was so down on theater at this point.

And, yeah, I think the repeated puns on "Will" are pretty solid proof that the sonnets are at least to some extent autobiographical. I'm sticking by my guns-- Shakespeare was almost certainly attracted to both men and women.

Stick Insect
Oct 24, 2010

My enemies are many.

My equals are none.
As someone who speaks English as a second language, I recommend not reading Shakespeare but watching a (movie of a) play instead. I prefer having subtitles too, so I can learn both the spelling and pronunciation of some of the weirder words.

Another tip is to spoil the ending and maybe read a summary. This way, even if you miss a few lines here and there, you won't lose track of the story and you know which characters are important and which are not. Having a play subtitled "A tragedy" means you know it'll end badly, and some of them, such as Romeo and Juliet, outright give away the ending in the first minute. If you want to watch a play again, you can probably find a different edition on youtube or something, just to keep things interesting and see what different interpretations are possible.

If you actually want to try reading, get one of those "The Oxford Shakespeare" editions. Half the book is analysis, I skipped that. But the other half is the text of the play with 50% footnotes explaining the meaning of various words. I found that pretty helpful.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Stick Insect posted:

If you actually want to try reading, get one of those "The Oxford Shakespeare" editions. Half the book is analysis, I skipped that. But the other half is the text of the play with 50% footnotes explaining the meaning of various words. I found that pretty helpful.

This. I've found it also helpful to read a lot of English literature. A lot. Go read Middle English, come back to Shakespeare and admire the clarity of his writing.

Reading the plays is good if you want to savour every line and think about poetry and other stuff for literary weirdos, and seeing them is good if you want to have fun.

Sally
Jan 9, 2007


Don't post Small Dash!

Stick Insect posted:

As someone who speaks English as a second language, I recommend not reading Shakespeare but watching a (movie of a) play instead. I prefer having subtitles too, so I can learn both the spelling and pronunciation of some of the weirder words.

Another tip is to spoil the ending and maybe read a summary. This way, even if you miss a few lines here and there, you won't lose track of the story and you know which characters are important and which are not. Having a play subtitled "A tragedy" means you know it'll end badly, and some of them, such as Romeo and Juliet, outright give away the ending in the first minute. If you want to watch a play again, you can probably find a different edition on youtube or something, just to keep things interesting and see what different interpretations are possible.

If you actually want to try reading, get one of those "The Oxford Shakespeare" editions. Half the book is analysis, I skipped that. But the other half is the text of the play with 50% footnotes explaining the meaning of various words. I found that pretty helpful.

As someone who speaks English as a first language, this.

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious by this car park corpse

Ague Proof
Jun 5, 2014

they told me
I was everything

End Of Worlds posted:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious by this car park corpse

My kingdom for a hearse.

CestMoi
Sep 16, 2011

So I've been reading a lot of Shakespeare (and Bloom) lately and is Hamlet the most fully realised character in literature? Every other character in fiction seems to pale in comparison.

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012

CestMoi posted:

So I've been reading a lot of Shakespeare (and Bloom) lately and is Hamlet the most fully realised character in literature? Every other character in fiction seems to pale in comparison.

I'm not sure who the other candidates for the position are (and the question of the most fully realized character probably deserves its own thread), but Bloom is prone to silly hyperbole where Shakespeare is concerned.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
If you're talking about Shakespeare: the Invention of the Human, yeah, Bloom gets caught in the hyperbole instead of properly demonstrating his thesis: that Shakespeare is the first true artist of characters. I think that it's with Shakespeare that we start to consistently find interesting characters as opposed to interesting character types. Take Marlowe, Jonson, Kyd, Ovid whoever - they just don't compare to Shakespeare when it comes to characters. I can name only one character from Tamerlane. A couple from Volpone.

Trin Tragula
Apr 22, 2005

Hamlet is incomplete without an actor to perform him.

CestMoi
Sep 16, 2011

Silver2195 posted:

I'm not sure who the other candidates for the position are (and the question of the most fully realized character probably deserves its own thread), but Bloom is prone to silly hyperbole where Shakespeare is concerned.

Haha, it's actually something i was thinking myself that I found Bloom echoing in The Western Canon. I'm not sure what it is, I just feel like Hamlet is intriguing in a certain way that I've only felt about real people, never about characters.

CestMoi
Sep 16, 2011

Maybe intriguing is the wrong word, but he seems to have a property that other fictional characters lack, and I'm not sure what it is.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

CestMoi posted:

Haha, it's actually something i was thinking myself that I found Bloom echoing in The Western Canon. I'm not sure what it is, I just feel like Hamlet is intriguing in a certain way that I've only felt about real people, never about characters.

The biggest issue with Hamlet is that his critical moment of character development takes place offstage and is just narrated.

We never really fully understand Hamlet or get all the answers about him. He remains a bit if a mystery, even at the end. I think that's part of it. Makes him more realistic.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:31 on May 19, 2015

Raxivace
Sep 9, 2014

So I just watched the Richard II adaptation as a part of the BBC's The Hollow Crown series. Really good all around, and I'm pretty excited to check out their version of Henry IV: Part 1 next.

Can anyone explain to me why Richard II seems to have been more or less almost forgotten about? Other than this recent BBC production I'm only aware of one other version even being filmed. I've heard some argue that it simply requires too much background information from audiences, but that hasn't stopped the other history plays from being performed as individual entities.

spider bethlehem
Oct 5, 2007
Makin with the stabbins
I was Banquo back at the start of the year, in a version of Macbeth that was basically the Vikings version of the story (set in the historically accurate period, beards, more stabbing, etc.). It was awesome- apparently they also went that way with the new film adaptation. I never realized the extent to which Shakespeare's visions of comedy and horror persist to this day, and Macbeth is a hell of a horror movie.

In the version I was in, we had the witches take the part of the murderers, because otherwise they have a big chunk of play with nothing to do and the only woman with a fight scene is Lady MacDuff (and little MacDuff, can't remember her name.). They took the role of choosers of the slain, and Banquo has figured that out by the time they come for him.

So after getting through all the big "Macbeth decides to totally kill Banquo and pretty much whoever else," it was amazing how tightly the scene where Banquo dies is.

It's basically just Banquo challenging the murderers with "It'll be rain tonight," and the leader responding with "let it come down!"

It's crazy. I just saw 12th Night and adaptations of The Tempest. This stuff still carries so much weight - and it really does seem to be unique. I was part of a group of people trying to put together scripts for a season at a theater and his contemporaries do not read the same or have the same power. They feel ancient. Dusty in a way Shakespeare doesn't.

Did anyone see the new Macbeth? Is it any good? Bearing in mind that Kenneth Branagh is my favorite existing adaptor of Shakespeare, because good taste is something that happens to other people.

Raxivace
Sep 9, 2014

Was it just the same actresses as the witches playing the murderers, or were they literally playing the same characters?

Either way that's an incredibly ballsy and cool choice.

spider bethlehem
Oct 5, 2007
Makin with the stabbins

Raxivace posted:

Was it just the same actresses as the witches playing the murderers, or were they literally playing the same characters?

Either way that's an incredibly ballsy and cool choice.

Same actors, same characters - the Witches basically did everything the murderers do in the original play. It's a smaller change than you'd think and helped support the thesis of the show which is that the Witches are setting Macbeth up from the beginning and doing what he wants just to bring about the ultimate battle between a righteous man wronged and a blood-soaked animal getting his comeuppance.

It also meant that I had to swab the stage with three female actors with a spear, catch a shield thrown to me by a nine year old and get it in line to stop getting three-on-one swarmed, and then get killed, nastily, with a spear, axe, and two daggers all at once.

It was awesome.

I could talk about the fights all day - we also had the battle that opens the show actually take place on stage (lovingly known as Macbeth and Banquo Kill The Rest of the Cast) and Lady Macduff and the child get their chance too, I think the kid got to stab one of the witches in the kidney in her fight. Made the whole thing much more female-oriented, which since Macbeth's impotence/infertility and Lady Macbeth's emphasis on childbearing is such a part of the plot, made a lot of sense to me.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
After 400 years, your noble dust is no doubt stopping a bung-hole :toot:

doug fuckey
Jun 7, 2007

hella greenbacks
Realizing how inventive staging could influence Shakespeare is what really blew it open for me. I took a Shakespeare class as an elective as an undergrad and it was completely fascinating. The duel between Hal and Hotspur is a really good one to play around with-- we read the scene and discussed it for a while, and then watched some stage versions of it. In one (I think it went like this) Hal disarmed Hotspur, let him reach for his sword, and then killed him as soon as he was armed again.

Similarly in Macbeth, choices on how to stage the ghost scene are really interesting too. I realize this is all really entry level stuff so sorry but this is what did it for me.

Any other interesting or inventive stagings y'all have seen?

Dr Dracula
Oct 30, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
Grimey Drawer
Shakespeare wrote a bunch of Disney films for adults and now his legacy is kept alive as a way for literary mediocrities to make a living. Shameful.

Raxivace
Sep 9, 2014

Dr Dracula posted:

Shakespeare wrote a bunch of Disney films for adults and now his legacy is kept alive as a way for literary mediocrities to make a living. Shameful.
What?

Lankiveil
Feb 23, 2001

Forums Minimalist

Stick Insect posted:

As someone who speaks English as a second language, I recommend not reading Shakespeare but watching a (movie of a) play instead. I prefer having subtitles too, so I can learn both the spelling and pronunciation of some of the weirder words.

Another tip is to spoil the ending and maybe read a summary. This way, even if you miss a few lines here and there, you won't lose track of the story and you know which characters are important and which are not. Having a play subtitled "A tragedy" means you know it'll end badly, and some of them, such as Romeo and Juliet, outright give away the ending in the first minute. If you want to watch a play again, you can probably find a different edition on youtube or something, just to keep things interesting and see what different interpretations are possible.

If you actually want to try reading, get one of those "The Oxford Shakespeare" editions. Half the book is analysis, I skipped that. But the other half is the text of the play with 50% footnotes explaining the meaning of various words. I found that pretty helpful.

Middle English is difficult for most native speakers of English too. It makes a lot more sense watching it performed; a lot of the disdain for Shakespeare IMHO comes from making kids learn it through reading rather than seeing it performed.

PatMarshall
Apr 6, 2009

Lankiveil posted:

Middle English is difficult for most native speakers of English too. It makes a lot more sense watching it performed; a lot of the disdain for Shakespeare IMHO comes from making kids learn it through reading rather than seeing it performed.

Shakespeare was not writing in Middle English.

Teriyaki Hairpiece
Dec 29, 2006

I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.
From last page, but what I love the most about the Baz Luhrmann Romeo + Juliet is that it's silly but also the most faithful adaptation out there when it comes to lines and line readings.

Taeke
Feb 2, 2010


Lankiveil posted:

Middle English is difficult for most native speakers of English too. It makes a lot more sense watching it performed; a lot of the disdain for Shakespeare IMHO comes from making kids learn it through reading rather than seeing it performed.

Try Chauser.

doug fuckey
Jun 7, 2007

hella greenbacks
Even Chaucer is pretty understandable given a few footnotes (hearing it read is actually more confusing, I think, because of more recent vowel changes):

The Knight posted:

A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie

Not to derail on language too much, but it's really telling how English evolved so rapidly after the French influence when from Chaucer to Shakespeare there's about ~220 years and either could be read and at least partially understood by anyone with partial English proficiency today, 400 years after Shakespeare. Compare to Layamon's "Brut," which predates Chaucer only by about 180 years (and is thus about twice as old as Shakespeare):

Layamon posted:


An preost wes on leoden; Laȝamon wes ihoten.
he wes Leouenağes sone; liğe him beo Drihten.
He wonede at Ernleȝe; at æğelen are chirechen.
vppen Seuarne staşe; sel şar him şuhte.
on-fest Radestone; şer he bock radde.

Taeke
Feb 2, 2010


I've never had too much trouble with it all at uni, but I'm Dutch and both my parents are Frisian (which I don't speak but understand pretty much fluently) so it always kind of felt like cheating. I'm just always amused by people saying Shakespeare's English is too old to make sense of.

Anyway.

Zesty Mordant posted:

Realizing how inventive staging could influence Shakespeare is what really blew it open for me. I took a Shakespeare class as an elective as an undergrad and it was completely fascinating. The duel between Hal and Hotspur is a really good one to play around with-- we read the scene and discussed it for a while, and then watched some stage versions of it. In one (I think it went like this) Hal disarmed Hotspur, let him reach for his sword, and then killed him as soon as he was armed again.

Similarly in Macbeth, choices on how to stage the ghost scene are really interesting too. I realize this is all really entry level stuff so sorry but this is what did it for me.

Any other interesting or inventive stagings y'all have seen?

Two things come to mind: I saw a production of Hamlet by the Globe company (I think) whose Polonius was a bit goofy and hilarious, clumsy at times and generally a well meaning fool, which was a nice change and really, really well done.
The second is from the final season of the HBO series Oz, in which they do a production of MacBeth. They changed to witches to be judges, which was very appropriate given the context of the show.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Zesty Mordant posted:

Not to derail on language too much, but it's really telling how English evolved so rapidly after the French influence when from Chaucer to Shakespeare there's about ~220 years and either could be read and at least partially understood by anyone with partial English proficiency today, 400 years after Shakespeare. Compare to Layamon's "Brut," which predates Chaucer only by about 180 years (and is thus about twice as old as Shakespeare):

The Pearl/Gawaine poet is contemporary with Chaucer and is much harder to read though. From what I've read, it's mostly because Chaucer wrote in the London dialect, which became the standard dialect when printers and literacy started spreading, and everyone got more and more literate, print slowed down a lot of the rate of language drift.

TychoCelchuuu
Jan 2, 2012

This space for Rent.

cheerfullydrab posted:

From last page, but what I love the most about the Baz Luhrmann Romeo + Juliet is that it's silly but also the most faithful adaptation out there when it comes to lines and line readings.
"Most faithful" is pushing it quite a bit. It's not awful but if you're following along with the play in your hands there are plenty of times you're going to be like "hold up..."

Lankiveil
Feb 23, 2001

Forums Minimalist

PatMarshall posted:

Shakespeare was not writing in Middle English.

Early Modern English then. Point still stands.

Teriyaki Hairpiece
Dec 29, 2006

I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

TychoCelchuuu posted:

"Most faithful" is pushing it quite a bit. It's not awful but if you're following along with the play in your hands there are plenty of times you're going to be like "hold up..."

Of the available adaptations.

TychoCelchuuu
Jan 2, 2012

This space for Rent.

cheerfullydrab posted:

Of the available adaptations.
The BBC one is more faithful, at least.

JnnyThndrs
May 29, 2001

HERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWELS

Zesty Mordant posted:

Any other interesting or inventive stagings y'all have seen?

I saw an excellent production of Julius Caesar at Ashland about 30 years ago where the characters were all wearing third-world-type military garb and carrying assault rifles.

a kitten
Aug 5, 2006

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the best version of Hamlet.

Well, ok at least one of the best.

Trin Tragula
Apr 22, 2005

Recently saw Henry V at Middle Temple with a very interesting conceit that considerably elevated a very dull play. It's quite hard to explain, but they did it with this sort-of-a-frame story that the actors are all First World War soldiers (half British, half French, plus a couple of nurses) who get attacked and wounded and gassed in a joint attack, and one of them happens to have a copy of Henry V about his person, and they start reciting bits to entertain each other, and then it very quickly faded from "these are soldiers screwing around with the play" into "these are the actors performing Henry V in First World War dress", with occasional moments when the original idea of "these are soldiers screwing around with the play" suddenly snapped back in.

Mr. Squishy
Mar 22, 2010

A country where you can always get richer.

JnnyThndrs posted:

I saw an excellent production of Julius Caesar at Ashland about 30 years ago where the characters were all wearing third-world-type military garb and carrying assault rifles.

People used to love setting Hamlet in a Baltic kelptocracy

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat

Trin Tragula posted:

Henry V [...] a very dull play.

condolences on your terrible opnion

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

HighwireAct
May 16, 2016


Pozzo's Hat
Has anyone ever seen Shakespeare performed with original pronunciation? It really illuminates a lot of wordplay lost in modern English.
http://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s

  • Locked thread