Any Shakespeare fans here ?

[sm maddy]

Hey guys . Pls post interesting Shakespeare plays , stories and poems that u feel are very innovative and educational. :D

[sm maddy]

I Know of a famous play " The Merchant of Venice ". I 've read only a part of it and am highly excited to finish it . Have any of u read it?

[Wibha]

:yes: MERCHANT OF VENICE IS A GOOD PLAY :D

[Designer]

sm maddy : ya "Merchant of Venice" is a good play :). You can also try reading "Taming Of the Shrew", "Much Ado About Nothing", "Romeo and Juliet" among others.

[Tia]

I'm not a shakespear fan but for school in year 8 and 9 we are given one shakespear play to perform and no teachers help its all up to us and we are the directors and cast and crew and everything from sound and lighting to even the role of a donkey :lol:

in year 8 we got the merchant of venice...it wasn't v successfull :cry2: i think ours was the worst play that year! :lol:

this year we got the MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM!

IMO its the bestttt play by him! :D luvdd it to bits, and since my whole class liked the story we managed to get into it and we won 1st prize this year for overall best play :D was really fun....such a comedy play...speshly where bottom says...i hear a face, i see a voice :lol:

[Wibha]

don't read MACBETH it's SOOOOOOO BORINNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGG

[pavalamani pragasam]

:roll:

[Sinthiya]

:)...I liked Hamlet...so good...
and Twelfth Night is also good and funny!

More to come....

[sm maddy]

I feel that " As You Like It " is also a fantastic play . Its kind of comedy and funny too . My favourite character was Rosalind - The daughter of the banished duke. :D

[Tia]

twelfth night is funny...theres a proffessor who looks like tony belch in twelfth night...well how tony belch was described in the play :roll:

ba midsummer nights dream roxxxx ma soxxx! :D

[Wibha]

As u like it is cool

i haven't read "twelth night"

[sm maddy]

So haven't I . Maybe I can try it out.
I like the Tempest too . (shorter version)

[Querida]

I really think it is worth the while to read Shakespeare...they are so rich on many levels...

Wibha I'm quite surprised that you found Macbeth boring I ask you to use maybe a reader or sparksnotes so that you can better understand it's philosophical intricacies...all i ask is that you give it a chance...

anyways I have only watched "Hamlet" at the Stratford Theatre here....it was quite badly done by some popular canadian tv star...I would love to see either "King Lear" or "Othello" or "Antony and Cleopatra" both my favourites....as a masque "Midsomer's Night Dream" would be absolutely gorgeous...

though i have my lesser favourites as well such as "Taming of the Shrew" and the more gruesome "Titus Andronicus" it just filled with violence and gore...of his comedies I really found one of his earliest plays "comedy of errors" and "As you like it" quite annoying and tedious

[pavalamani pragasam]

"Antony and Cleopatra", a brilliant movie starring Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor - try the old movie!

[Querida]

Thank you Madame PP,
I have watched "Taming of the Shrew" with Burton and Taylor...I have yet to watch Cleopatra....Liz Taylor surely has a bewitching look as Cleopatra...her eyes...my God they are just so....violet! I would love eyes like that!!!

http://www.mrdowling.com/images/702cleopatra.jpg

[Wibha]

Que Macbeth was intresting in the beginning.

Later it started boring.
1. it made no sense basically. This macbeth is one stupid guy :oops:

He is a person who can be manipulated by anyone.he doesn't think for himself. I found it really boring

[Querida]

well Wibha i agree and disagree...I mean i guess this makes more sense if you can see that he had the opportunity to see into the future which allowed him to also shape his future...who else ever gets that chance....but then again you have to think does the fortune shape his destiny...is it fate and he is powerless...or does he lead to his own demise? Is it by making the fortune true that lead to his villany or was it also his wife who kept egging him on...and what of her madness? All these are questions that crowd my mind when i think of Macbeth...hope this reply wasn't too boring for you and leaves you feeling :roll:

[pavalamani pragasam]

A vibrant portrayal of Mrs.Macbeth's guilt,"not all the perfumes of Arabia can sweeten this little hand"- that bloodstain sticking to the conscience is poignant. Macbeth's blind belief, overconfidence that he is invincible until the woods of B come walking.. Shakespeare emerges as an intellectual, as a perfect pshyco-analyst, and 'wow' for sheer poetry & imagery!

[Janar]

Interesting to note the Lady Macbeth is described to be the "Fourth Witch" of the play

[Querida]

Really Janar that's interesting to know :D

I have been taught that many of the witches parts (Hecate and the other witches) such as their songs and the scenes in which they recall their deeds were added later due to the interest surrounding witches and stories of witches by the editor, Middleton (from his own less popular play "Witches") to the First Folio...if you do look back you can see how those parts can be cancelled out and it still does not damage the story. There is also the arugment that the witches were originally nymphes or fairies, as seen in the Globe (Theatre) Copy of Macbeth.

For a more scholarly and authoritative look into the same argument please do consult Frank Kermode's "Witches and Jesuits in Shakespeare's Macbeth" found in the London Review of Books.

[P_R]

More about the witches....

Vishal Bharadwaj's Maqbool which puts Macbeth in the Mumbai underworld, the witches are two cops, played brilliantly by Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri. The latter dabbles in astrology and predicts, Maqbool taking over the reins from Abbaji Jahangir Khan.
The movie proceeds without making it necessarily clear, whether the prophecy proves right or is proven right. Even the other prophecies are very cleverly written in this film.

The two cops are shown to have ulterior motives in maintaining a kind of balance (they let Banquo's son escape on purpose) and also go in the opposite direction attempting to help Maqbool (Macbeth) escape. This leaves the viewer with many interesting questions about Fate taking sides, if at all

[Querida]

Sigh...yet another movie to add to an ever growing list of movies...anyways there it is added

[sm maddy]

[tscii:3383238acb]Guess what !!!! We did a Shakespeare skit in our class last year. :D
We were divided into 4 groups of which two groups performed Merchant of Venice, 1 group did Tempest and our group performed As You Like It. The girls group in Merchant of Venice did an awsome job but the boys group could not make it up tp the mark. TheTempest group of boys did a horrid job but I feel ours was the worst of all. I was the head of the crew and also the dialogue writer. Now I feel it was I who completely spoiled the skit because I made the play too long but :( But partly it was because of those stupid northies who would not put in any sort of effort and hard work. Always muttering curses upon me in hindi for bringing them into the nice skit and made it horrible. Ils parlent à peine en anglais et toujours entretien dans le hindi donc il est très difficile de les comprendre :( They speak in english only to me because I don't understand as much hindi as others do :( We had to take because they were the only classmates available :cry2: They never used to come for practice and didn't at all understand my english so I had to rewrite all the dialogues in the simplest english and then get my friend to explain it to them in hindi and I also had to give their parts the lowest amount of dialogues :cry2: and then I, my 3 friends ( all 4 of us had good spoken english knowledge and I have always been the best and the pet of all my english teachers ) had more than one role in the play but I had the most of the roles of about 4-5 !!!!! Imagine it !!!!! On the day of the skit the northies came to me and told me that they were going to withdraw from the skit :shock: I became so angry that I literally sat on top of their heads and the whole corridor came running to our class on hearing the comotion and they never forgot that day. They forgot all their dialogues and started reading from their sheets. I was horrified :shock: Another disaster appeared in the form of the lunch bell. We hadn't even completed a quarter of the play when it rang. I was the only one who was audible, rest all were shivering and were shaking with fear :shaking: so it was not at all to be heard.I was heart broken and was almost on the verge of tears. My friends and my teacher came and comforted me saying it was not bad and was quite nice but I knew it was not true because I knew that most of my friends were calculating marks for my class teacher in his office :cry2: The ones remaining in the class did not come forward to comfort me or any others of our group :cry: whereas the northies came and just made me feel worse by saying - " Is skit hamari paatshaalaa ke itihaas men sabse bhoori aur gandhee skit thee. Yah skit itni gandhe hone ke kaaran thoo hi ho :argh: " I got so irritated and started shouting at them like hell and 5 of my friends had to literally pull me off them :oops: After that I went home with a long face and mum cheered me up a little and then I became alright I guess :D[/tscii:3383238acb]

[pavalamani pragasam]

That clearly shows how important sincere teamwork is! Better luck next time, maddy!

[sm maddy]

That clearly shows how important sincere teamwork is! Better luck next time, maddy!

PP ma'am : I always have good team spirit but those northies have never in their lives shown any signs of team spirit (according to me that is !!!!!!) They ruined the complete skit which was excellently lined in with the dialogues completed to perfection :( I had prepared the whole dialogues from a mere sheet of summaries :cry: Thanks a lot anyway :D :ty:

[Designer]

Maddy : reading ur posts kindles nostalgia - of the time I acted in Shakespearean plays & other skits during my school days, so many decades ago :)

btw I can very well understand ur feelings reg the Northies - majority of them tend to criticise us Southies and try to put us down. And they also tend to pass on the blame for their own short comings, like not learning their parts properly :evil:. One solution (which worked for me) is to put them in their place (prefereably right from the beginning) and things will be ok. I guess ur ticking them off produced some results ! :)

[sm maddy]

Ramky anna :Well the next time we perform any skit I shall not include any of the northies in the play :) None of my classmates have agreed to allow them even for a group project :) so I feel from now on all our projects and plays will go well :D

[Designer]

Maddy : ya that should make the Northies cooperate with you next time you take them for plays, and even if not so, at least ur plays will go on smoothly without a hitch :)

[sm maddy]

Ramky anna: Thanks a lot for your encouragement :ty: I am sure that from now on every thing will go on well and guess what our sections have been shuffled giving the good news that all the northies have been shuffled to entirely new sections and thereby also giving the sad news that all my very good friends have also been shuffled :cry2: so thanks again :D

[Wibha]

Ramky anna: Thanks a lot for your encouragement :ty: I am sure that from now on every thing will go on well and guess what our sections have been shuffled giving the good news that all the northies have been shuffled to entirely new sections and thereby also giving the sad news that all my very good friends have also been shuffled :cry2: so thanks again :D

oh :(

unga school-leyum section problem-a? :lol:

u will get used to the changing :(

[sm maddy]

Hey every body :D Here is a sonnet by Shakesepeare by which I was truly touched :)

O thou my lovely boy


O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time's fickle glass his fickle hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st.
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May Time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may detain, but not still keep her treasure.
Her audit, though delayed, answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.

William Shakespeare

[pavalamani pragasam]

All his sonnets & non-drama verses ..in fact everything he penned is lovely! :D

[Querida]

I like "my mistress' eyes" because of the comical parody each line contains. You can see Shakespeare's playful sense in humourizing the love sonnet convention yet he does not insult her fully, leaving her well praised.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

*****************************************

IMO the most famous non-dramatic sonnet by Shakespeare is "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day", it not only captures the beauty of the subject but gives her the immortality that Nature herself denies summer.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

[Suguna Kannan]

What is amazing is that what he said about human relations holds good even today with no boundaries of region or any other barrier! Awesome!