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Captain Mog posted:Apologies because this isn't related to Falstaff. I teach Shakespeare in my English classes and I have to say that a lot of the disdain for him in the younger set comes from the fact that his works are often read silently rather than watched (like they should be). I actually think that it's much more effective for most to watch him performed. I didn't understand Twelfth Night at all as a 17-year old and found it confusing as hell until I actually saw it and thought it was hilarious. Agreeing with most of this so hard - except I always adored and got Twelfth Night (and As You Like It) because they were the gender-bending plays, and those tended to be me among my absolute favorite. But your point about early Shakespeare plays being really wonderful and fun when you see them live? Absolutely true. I remember in high school, in my Sophomore year we did a production of Comedy of Errors - definitely one of the lesser works in his canon, possibly the least in terms of depth? I'm not going to argue the point either way. What I'm saying is that a bunch of 14-17 year-olds putting on a production of it was a *tremendous* amount of fun for everyone involved, and the audience legitimately enjoyed it, I mean, it was high school theater but we had a rather ambitious director (we did a production of Marat/Sade later that year too - high school kids doing that play, seriously). But yeah - I'd never recommend A Comedy of Errors as a play for someone to read, but I'd absolutely recommend someone to go see a good production of it, is the point I think I'm making. Even the sonnets deserve to be read aloud. I'll probably go on and on about the sonnets at, uh, some point in the thread unless I'm hopelessly shouted down. I've always found them beautiful and mysterious and fascinating all at once.
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Dec 8, 2014 04:06
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Falstaff Infection posted:I'd love to hear someone knowledgeable talk about the Sonnets. I'm shamefully ignorant of pretty much everything Shakespeare did that wasn't a play. I've never even tried to read the Rape of Lucrece, for example. Well... I don't know how "knowledgable" I am about the sonnets, per se. I've read them and read a certain amount about them. It's somewhat difficult to discuss the sonnets without touching on the subject of Shakespeare's sexuality; that being said, it's still an absolute mystery as to whether the sonnets reflect any aspect of Shakespeare's life. There is definite continuity and specific characters which are dealt with in the sonnets (although only three of them besides The Poet over 154 sonnets - The Fair Youth, The Rival Poet, and The Dark Lady) and it's reasonable that the character of the Poet was intended to be Shakespeare given the amount of punning on his name, particularly in a specific poem that I can recall. In any case, I'll admit that one of the reasons why I was initially interested enough in the sonnets to read them was because of the evident homoeroticism, and I remember reading them as a teenager for the first time, and like everyone I had always assumed that they were strictly heterosexual in nature, so I was rather shocked when I discovered that easily the most well-known of them (Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee....") is written from the perspective of a man, to another man. In fact, that exact sonnet is the moment (within the narrative of the sonnets) when the relationship between the Poet and the Fair Youth begins to have overt romantic overtones; Sonnets 1 through 17 are also addressed to the Fair Youth, but generally consist of exhortations for him to marry and beget children, with the homoeroticism much more buried. But after Sonnet 18 the tone definitely changes, and Sonnet 20 is easily one of the most fascinating of the bunch, as well as another one of the most well-known. I'm generally surprised how little-known it is that Sonnets 1 through 126 are all addressed to the Fair Youth - 127 through 154 are written to the character of the Dark Lady. They're all great, though, and the contrast between the two sets of poems is quite significant.
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Dec 8, 2014 21:39
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It's a tricky question; I try to sidestep it by saying that Shakespeare's sexuality is simply immaterial historical curiosity; the important thing is that he absolutely did write about what we would now consider to be "queer" issues, dealing heavily with the concept of gender in many of his plays. It is important not to read too too much into everything - after all, gender was hardly a fixed concept in the theater. Quite to the contrary, I've always felt that it was fairly significant to a play like Twelfth Night that at the time it was written, Viola (and all the other female parts) were being playing by androgynous young men. Given that context, I think Shakespeare's exploration of gender and its fluidity and artifice in so many plays makes a great deal more sense. I always viewed the sonnets (certain parts of them, at any rate) as a continuation of the same sorts of ideas and themes, and done so in a manner that wouldn't really have been possible via theater. He is very much playing with established conventions and cliches in love poetry (like his plays) and its dangerous to take anything at even close to face value. All that being said, it's hard not to say that Sonnet 20 (especially following Sonnet 18) isn't sexually suggestive, and a fascinating and bold little part of his canon. I still remember the first time I read it in High School like 15 years ago. As to whether the poems have any bearing in real life (certainly a debated topic) there's no denying that the narrator of the sonnets is meant to be some version of William Shakespeare. I'd mainly point to three sonnets in the Dark Lady portion (Sonnet 135 is the one I remember, I know the other two are sequential with it) and they all pun heavily and repeatedly on the word/name "Will" ("Whoever hath her wish thou hast thy Will, and Will in overplus and Will to boot!") I was always rather amused that even then, will/willie was known as slang for genitalia, which is absolutely part of the humor of those sonnets. But they certainly seem to indicate that the narrator's name is "Will", whatever the case. kaworu fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 13, 2014 23:27
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