luka

Well-known member
Good choices. Midsummer's tends to get a bad rep because of force-fed GCSE experiences, but when you read it as an adult, with some romance and life force under your belt, it is the most beautiful, gossamer-light weave of words ever spilt on the subjects of love and foolishness, etc. A splendid music box, a rich fantasy.

Lear is just massive and monumental: so savage, yet so tender. And many other things too.

I like your rating conceit. I might have a go at that tomorrow. I've read almost all of them.

RATE THEM NOW NOW NOW!!
 

luka

Well-known member
"34. Remember that reading intelligently also includes reading aloud,
vocalising and performing a text as
a spoken sequence of pitch and in-
tonation, of modulated phrase contour and
rhythm and tone or tones of voice.
Different kinds and period-styles of composition aim at different modes of
voicing, using sound and pace and emph
asis for different kinds of effect.
Metre and rhyme give shape to verse in ways best explored by reading aloud,
just as wit and the nuances of comedy or
satire come alive in skilled control of
vocal inflection. Precise marking of irony or parody often depends on
recognising the tones which signal these effects. Actors and singers are not
the only ones who should practise to become versatile in these text-
performance skills, because spoken utterance is an acutely testing aspect of
formal interpretation, especially in re
gard to the patterns of writing in its
rhythms and cadences, and in its styles of social delivery. Experienced
readers can also develop skills to hear the sound-aspects of a text silently in
their own minds, just as musicians can read over a score and 'hear' its
sonorities. Try to learn some poems or
passages by heart; try out your powers
of recognition and delivery by reading aloud to yourself or to each other, and
then estimating how fully you have been able to catch the voice-qualities of
the text. A person who can read aloud
Venus and Adonis
or
The Rape of the
Lock
or
Little Gidding
, and can do so with apt verve and insight, is already well
advanced in literary understanding. "

https://www.cai.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/reading.pdf
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Craner’s Shakespeare Scorecard

(Including plays written in collaboration but excluding those of seriously dubious authorship and the poems. Even though he had magnificent contemporaries, the collaborations are among those with the weakest marks.)

Two Gentleman of Verona – Not read

Taming of the Shrew – C

Henry VI (3) – C

Henry VI (1) – D

Henry VI (2) – B

Titus Andronicus - D

Richard III – B

Edward III – Not read

Comedy of Errors – C

Love’s Labour’s Lost – B (just missed out on an A)

Richard II – A

Romeo and Juliet – A

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – A*

King John – Not read

Merchant of Venice – A

Henry IV (1) – A*

Merry Wives of Windsor – C (saved from being a D because I quite like the fact it was designed as a cynical vehicle for the popular Falstaff, and I enjoyed the silly
bawdiness, like a crap 70s Italian sex comedy starring Edwige Fenech!)

Henry IV (2) – A*

Much Ado About Nothing – B

Henry V – A

Julius Caesar – A

As You Like It – A

Hamlet – A*

Twelfth Night – A (this play used to irritate the crap out of me until I saw a stunning RSC production that lit up the text, not often you can really say that about
contemporary theatrical performances.)

Measure for Measure – A

Othello – A

All’s Well That End’s Well – C

King Lear – A*

Timon of Athens – C

Macbeth – A*

Antony and Cleopatra – A

Pericles – D

Coriolanus – A

Winter’s Tale – A

Cymbeline – Not read

Tempest – A

Henry VIII – Not read
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Why no A* for Othello, Craner? Not disagreeing just interested in your reasons.

Currently reading "A High Wind in Jamaica". Also reading a book on prosody which is finally helping me to understand poetry. I think it will also help me understand why Shakespeare is the guvnor.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Craner’s Shakespeare Scorecard
Winter’s Tale – A

Really? I thought this play was a pile of arse. Full of daftness like characters easily disguising themselves so as to pass undetected by people they've known their whole lives. Yes I know you're meant to suspend disbelief, but come on.

Having said that, it does have unarguably Shakespeare's greatest stage direction.

Everything else of his I've seen or read has been pretty great.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Why no A* for Othello, Craner? Not disagreeing just interested in your reasons.

Currently reading "A High Wind in Jamaica". Also reading a book on prosody which is finally helping me to understand poetry. I think it will also help me understand why Shakespeare is the guvnor.

Sort of hard to say, it's like the difference between 'Axis: Bold as Love' (A) and 'Electric Ladyland' (A*), if you get what I mean.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Really? I thought this play was a pile of arse. Full of daftness like characters easily disguising themselves so as to pass undetected by people they've known their whole lives. Yes I know you're meant to suspend disbelief, but come on.

Having said that, it does have unarguably Shakespeare's greatest stage direction.

Everything else of his I've seen or read has been pretty great.

Hmm, all about the intensity, extreme/opaque language, and general air of strangeness, airy complexity, savagery mixed with silliness. Saying it's daft seems a bit like watching 'The Exorcist' and saying, "well, that would never happen, would it? Rubbish."
 

luka

Well-known member
Really? I thought this play was a pile of arse. Full of daftness like characters easily disguising themselves so as to pass undetected by people they've known their whole lives. Yes I know you're meant to suspend disbelief, but come on.

Having said that, it does have unarguably Shakespeare's greatest stage direction.

Everything else of his I've seen or read has been pretty great.

Quintessential Tea criticism. Also highly wrong.
 

luka

Well-known member
As it happens it's the one I'm reading at the moment (on Craners recommendation) and it's got speeches as intense as nearly anything else in Shakespeare. The righteous Paulina laying into Leontes is v. Powerful.

As you like it has disguises too. It's a standard dramatic device.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Hmm, all about the intensity, extreme/opaque language, and general air of strangeness, airy complexity, savagery mixed with silliness. Saying it's daft seems a bit like watching 'The Exorcist' and saying, "well, that would never happen, would it? Rubbish."

Maybe I'm being harsh, I just remember not enjoying it as much as the other stuff I've studied/seen.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Joyce famously thought Ibsen was a superior dramatist to Shakespeare. I think there is a line of criticism which sees Shakespeare's achievement as being the poetry, not the plays (if you can separate the two things, I'm sure some would say that's impossible). And then there's Harold Bloom, at the extreme other end, who thinks Shakespeare 'invented the human'.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
There was a good, if extremely thespy, film version of Coriolanus a few years back, which I liked. Anyone else see it?
 

jenks

thread death
I've seen many decent versions of Shakespeare in recent times and think that the general quality of the RSC productions over the last ten years has been very high. It really is about the stage and not just the page.

I am very firmly on the pro - Winter's Tale club - there are great bits in there about friendship as well as jealousy, young and old love and the quality of mysticism of the coup de theatre of the final scenes is (when performed well) very moving.
 
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