How I Like to See Shakespeare Performed

[minoanmiss]

"HAMLET VLOG//TO BE OR NOT TO BE?" (Watch on YouTube)

Poor Shakespeare. Because he has a cool name and wrote at the head of a great flowering of English literature, people treat his words with a kind of ossified reverence, and declaim them like hard jewels falling individually out of their mouths. He wrote dialogue for characters in order to make them people! Speak his words like they're what someone is actually thinking up and saying!

(Not that I have any opinions or anything.)

Comments

[acelightning]

I have seen performances of Shakespeare deliberately performed in modern vernacular style - sometimes that was intended to be humorous, but other times it was meant to remind the audience that Shakespeare's plays were the TV sitcoms of their time, vulgar popular entertainment for the lower classes.

When I was majoring in English Lit in college, I was always struck by how Shakespeare and Dickens are considered "LITERATURE" and studied and analyzed endlessly. But they were the TV and YouTube of their era, complete with knockabout comedy and fart jokes.

[china_shop]

That was great! <3

[bikergeek]

I am so glad that this was how the English Lit. classes I took in high school taught Shakespeare.

[mekare]

>>declaim them like hard jewels falling individually out of their mouths.

What a beautifully apt turn of phrase!

Also thank you for sharing this video! It is great the monologue performed so naturally.

[cmcmck]

That's why Antony Sher was the best Richard III I ever saw!

[mific]

Hamlet would SO be an emo youtube blogger if he was around these days!

[cjsmith]

omg spot on!

[sabotabby]

Whenever the kids tell me that they hate Shakespeare, I know that they've been taught him wrong. Because he was the populist MCU of the day.

Also this guy's delivery is better than 99% of the versions I've seen, and better casting too.

[minoanmiss]

Yes exactly! Whenever someone tells me they hate Shakespeare I try to tell them that, and at least one dirty joke.

[clevermanka]

I find it hilarious/infuriating that most people who study Shakespeare are like "yes! adapt that shit! throw in alllll the anachronisms!" It's mostly gatekeeping idiots who took, like, one (bad) introductory class in college (or the over-50 white dude professor of Renaissance Lit who taught the bad intro class) and they're all Hot Shit About Shakes arguing for ~the purity~.

[stranger]

You're right, of course, about the characters being human and frequently comedic even in the midst of tragedy. At the same time, Shakespeare did come up with evocative phrases worth repeating in various contexts. Like: "returning is as tedious as go o'er" which applies well to doing half a recipe and being kind of stuck but finishing anyway to see what happens. On the other hand "out, out, damned spot," is (or can be) heartbreaking in context but gets thrown around as one of those hard jewels because it sounds a bit funny.

I think the first main barrier to Shakespeare for 21stC readers is the seeming length of a printed play (thirty whole pages! in verse requires whole new brain functions!). The other barrier is old language vs. current, which is where performances show instead of tell and give a better sense of story and character than words on the page. Learning it from context is how you learn any language ever.

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

Out, out, damned Spot was not spoken of the dog.

Ann O. [g & d]

[marcelo]

That was fantastic!

[vettecat]

Beautifully done, thank you for sharing.

[amaebi]

That is absolutely beautiful. Thank you!

There are so many things other commenters have said that I agree with, first and foremost how much performance lights up Shakespeare, and any play.

Chun Woo loves Shakespeare so much-- though not every Shakespeare play.

That said, different ages have wanted different things from their theatre. Shakespeare's audience seems pretty much like ours, actually. But a couple of decades ago I read Robertson Davies talking about 19th century Anglo audiences. (He was a baroque Canadian novelist I like a lot, who had an unusual interest and expertise in 19th century Anglo theatre.) He said that those audiences had a pronounced taste for Fine Speeches and Elevated Characters. And that such tastes still exist in today's audiences, or anyway those of the 1980s. I wondered whether that was true. But a few years later I was part of the audience for Henry VIII at Stratford, Ontario. It's really a pageant, not a play, and is structured by genealogy and fine speeches. And the audience loved it.

I think that people sometimes want big extravagant performances to magnify feelings they know themselves to have.

I think that people sometimes want to say emotions displayed nakedly that would likely be covered up and finessed over in today's politeness standards. I think that may be something his devotees like about President Joffrey.

I guess I like to try and understand how to appreciate things.

So I find myself unsure that there's One Best Standard for performance, though of course a given audience member's preferences are completely legit for them.

P.S. I love theatre.