Bold Mulleted Bard

sharke
I'd love to read Shakespeare. I just wish he spoke English!

To get a better handle on it, watch "Prospero's Books", Peter Greenaway's film, and just listen to Sir John Gielgud ... and how his words just flow ... it will give you a completely different feel for Willie, and take away the academic way that we're taught to read these things (complete with rhyme!), so that we lose the appreciation for what the actual words mean, and stand for.
 
The visuals in the film, is another story, as it comes off as a psychedelic version of The Tempest ... but it is, by very far, one of the best versions and interpretations of that play!
 
Another actor that also has a tendency to not read/play with the academic style is Ian McKellen ... and you can see the film from 1995 and how he kinda changes the meaning of the poetry ... so the words come through much better. 
 
The earlier style of the bard, in the days of Olivier and Burton, was more about accentuating a word, and point, to get attention, which works in some plays, but not in the meandering and thinking plays like The Tempest, where one's thoughts seem to be more important than the story or the characters themselves. And then, if you get bored there is always the strip tease done to Hamlet .... !!!!

sharke
 
...
I was made to study Shakespeare at school, and we also went out and watched various productions of it, and were shown movies etc. I still didn't get it. But then again, I don't understand poetry either. You might as well just show me a page of random hieroglyphics. 
 
Having said that, I think Shakespeare is probably marginally easier to understand than Chaucer, which we were also forced to "read" (i.e, stare at blankly until the bell rang for lunch). 

Watching the many varied versions of Shakespeare in film, gives you a completely different idea of things, and even a lot of its history. The modern versions, from Sir Peter Hall and Sir Peter Brook, are by far, the most "advanced" and clear versions of Shakespeare in that the words are not "read" at all, and it is very different. Brook's King Lear with Paul Scofield and Diana Rigg is magnificent. Even better is what he went on to do with the Royal Shakespeare company (Midsummer Night's Dream on a child's playground), and eventually things like Marat/Sade, where the wording is what it is all about, and how Marat is an idealist and de Sade is a realist ... I am the revolution, says Marat and Sade says ... no you are not. You are just another idiot man with ideas! 
 
(Note: Even more fun is finding the moments and bands that took stuff out of Marat/Sade ... hint ... Beatles, too!)
 
You can also see other versions, like Derek Jarman's Tempest, and it is ... way out there ... and then Peter Greenaway's version of The Tempest, and you will find that these are not about "Shakespeare" as much as they are about ... the words and how they flow ... not as poetry is supposed to, but as words that simply fly like music.
 
It changes your appreciation of Shakespeare in a way that is hard to explain. The English Literature versions begin falling apart ... and the Human versions come alive a lot more.
 
In one of Peter Brook's books about directing he explains how one scene goes and how you say the lines ... you say it as you are taking a piss and you aim it everywhere else but the pisser! All of a sudden, when you hear the words, they do not sound the same, and you don't think of the romantic version of Shakespeare which to me, is the pits ... just pathetically awful.
 
At UCSB, one of the professors at our Drama Dept had the idea that we theater folks had to take a couple of the Shakespeare classes in the Literature Department, and it was the biggest war you ever saw ... the theater folks figured out quickly that the Literature Department only cared about their ideas and pentameter, and didn't give a cahoot about the human side of the work at all. The Theater Department, of course, told them to take the ideas and shove them, since you can not resolve ideas on a stage when they are "imaginary" and not REAL for people to see.
 
It was lovely, and by that time, when Ian Richardson and Gemma Jones did a fall schedule at UCSB with us, this was the kind of stuff I spent a lot of time asking, and Mr. Richardson was just so excited that someone could actually have a good feel for words and lines, instead of ideas.
 
You have to catch the odd stuff ... they help resolve a lot of questions you have, but the Literature ones are really up the butt!

jamesg1213

Love Bill Bailey. Saw him in NYC a few years ago and my sides were in agony by the end.

 
These days, I can only dream of having enough hair to carve into a mullet 
 
'Hair today, gone tomorrow' as they say.
 

SteveStrummerUK
 
These days, I can only dream of having enough hair to carve into a mullet 
 
'Hair today, gone tomorrow' as they say.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have hair that goes round in circles ? 
 
 
 

When I've reached a low bar I simply turn off my phone or drive faster.

 
So .......................
 
 
 
.................... a dyslexic walks into a bra.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
And cue the tumbleweed 

WOW Smart Donkey ....
 
Kenny