Shakespeare Day

Thursday  in mid-afternoon  Mystie

Whether or not it’s actually his birthday, whether Shakespeare was from Avon or a Puritan or an Earl, today is his official day. How can I not take the opportunity to honor the greatest wordsmith of English?

Around the Winckler household you might often hear “A hit! A palpable hit!” or “There’s a double meaning in that.” The latter is also my favorite quote to use when teaching Shakespeare. Two bonus points for you if you know the plays those lines are from. Yes, whenever I end a sentence with a preposition, I feel I am honoring Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Tolkien.

Shakespeare is the exception to the “read the book before seeing the movie” rule. Quite the opposite is true of Shakespeare. Watch a production. Read the play. Watch a production. Watch a different production. Read the play. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Shakespeare was written to be produced, heard, and seen, not read.

These are some of my favorite Shakespeare films:

Othello & Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet contain adult content to hammer home Branagh’s interpretation of the plays. We also generally skip the first scene in Much Ado after the soldiers’ arrival is announced; again, however, it does illustrate a theme of the play and I don’t think it’s particularly offensive. There are a couple others that I like, but would only recommend with reservations and cautions. Richard III is great, but unnecessarily and strangely gory. The Merchant of Venice is amazing, but unnecessarily has prostitutes in the background of the city scenes, dressed in a historically-accurate manner (their bodices begin just above their belly buttons; for a time, even respectable women dressed this way, and even Elizabeth I is recorded to have so dressed at least once). Perhaps it well illustrates the adulterous woman of Proverbs who calls from her window, but it only adds even more bawdiness than Shakespeare already contains. Of course, I expected much worse since it is an Al Pacino movie. There are quite a few still on my “to be seen” list, too. No, I haven’t seen Leonardo DiCaprio’s Romeo and Juliet. And I don’t like any of Laurence Olivier’s Shakespeare. Sorry. I know they’re classics, but give me Kenneth Branagh instead, please.

Head on over to Dominion Family and Mental Multivitamin for more on Shakespeare today. :)

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Autodidact, Linguaphile, Parishioner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.