Comments on: Understanding (and misunderstanding) Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:12:10 +0000

A reading of the Lincoln-Douglas debates from 140 years ago gives an idea of the average American’s ability to “hear sophisticated speech and be able to divine meaning from its poetry, its playful images and complex metaphors”

We have fallen far from our cultural roots.

Scott

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 07:42:33 +0000

Neo-TC, Stumb.

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 05:24:33 +0000

That WAS good, stumbley. You’ve got his phrases down to a “T”(or is that a “TC”?)!

By: stumbley

stumbley — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 04:46:58 +0000

Lee:

Did I fool anyone?

By: NOT TC

NOT TC — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 04:46:22 +0000

Hollywood is run by Jews—it’s no accident that “West Bank Story”, a grim parable about the ethnic cleansing of “Palestinians” on the West Bank won “Best Short Subject”.

Just another Zionist plot…Sally probably enjoyed it in her childish way…

Sad, really…

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 04:42:39 +0000

Is it me? Or, don’t the “trolls” ever have any comments about the “lighter” or “cultural” articles neo-neocon puts up?

By: Fausta

Fausta — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 03:31:55 +0000

Jen,
You’ll probably enjoy the RSC’s Playing Shakespeare http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086780/
and IMK’s Acting Shakespeare http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0269355/

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 03:18:31 +0000

Thanks, stumbley. Brannaugh’s Henry V is my favorite Shakespeare. The “band of brothers”, “we happy few” is very stirring. I liked the “Once more into the breach” part. “For Harry, England, and St. George!” But for all that, it was actually a love story. “Will you teach our cousin English?” “I would teach her how much I love her, and that IS good English.”

By: Sergey

Sergey — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 00:17:05 +0000

In one of his essays Gilbert Keith Chesterton noted a special advantage of reading classics: he found this is a powerful antidote against heresy and fashionable insanity. And among many he especially distinguished Shakespeare as the most comprehensive “Eternal Man”, possessing what he called “plenitude of orthodoxy”.

By: Jen in NY

Jen in NY — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 23:27:27 +0000

A good while back I had the distinct pleasure of attending a one-man show by Ian McKellan on Shakespeare. I wish there was a recording of it, because it should be required viewing for all high school students prior to the study of Shakespeare. Your Mr. Jones, Neo, certainly would have approved, as McKellan brought out many of the same points you have made in this post.

The central thrust of McKellan’s show was that Shakespeare was NOT writing literature, expecting it to be read. He was writing plays expecting them to be performed. We are supposed to be able to SEE what he was talking about (as in the hands-kissing gestures Neo mentions.)

Furthermore, because Shakespeare is so sparse when it comes to stage direction, the actors must take their cues from the script itself, and this, McKellan argued, was precisely what Shakespeare meant them to do. The hands-kissing scene you mentioned was not just offering visual imagery, it was suggesting actions the actors were to portray. Hence the richness of the visual imagery Shakespeare provides.

I tell you, that production by Ian McKellan was quite the eye-opener, and it opened Shakespeare’s work up to me in a way no teacher of mine, sadly, ever did. My teachers seemed to regard Shakespeare entirely as a literary writer — they expected us to read the works to ourselves (NEVER aloud) and never showed us any video of it being enacted. The fools.

God bless the Mr. Jones’s and Ian McKellans of the world. 🙂