I must eat my dinner
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
The meme doesn't have a category for the romances -- probably because there are only four of them, five if you count The Two Noble Kinsmen (which practically nobody does), and they go with the comedies in the Folio anyway (except for Cymbeline which is put in with the tragedies for some reason which I think had to do with copyright) -- so I am going to assume they count here and pick The Tempest.
The Tempest is a play I've had a vexed relationship with for a long time. It was my very favorite after my high school Shakespeare class read it -- he was very into the whole Shakespeare's-farewell-to-his-art thing, and also, we all signed up for parts and read it aloud, and since I was in a particularly reticent class, I got to be Prospero. It was especially fun because the teacher (who was one of my favorites) always reserved the part of Caliban for himself. I am not sure what that says about me, because that particular relationship is one of the things that makes the play so problematic (I guess in this particular case it was the power reversal).
I guess the thing that makes my love for The Tempest so complicated is that it's sort of the Shakespearean equivalent of fugu: if you don't handle it just right, you get a lot of colonialist nastiness, or some totally shit productions, including most of the ones I've seen (Caliban should not wear a chastity belt, nor should he resemble the offspring of Chewbacca and the wolf from Into the Woods; if Ariel is going to be played in nothing but bronzer and a tiny speedo AND by a bad actor, he should at least look good in bronzer and a tiny speedo). I decided not to write my undergraduate thesis on the play because I knew that it would ruin it for me (instead, I wrote on Richard II and look how that worked out).
But when I think I've gone off it I remember the brilliant college production I saw with an adorable Ferdinand and Miranda and a tiny brilliant Pierrot!Ariel, or how much fun it was reading the play aloud with my sisters back when we used to do that sort of thing, or William Hutt performing "Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves" in a way that felt like he was personally addressing each member of the audience. And that "such stuff as dreams are made on" and "O brave new world / That has such people in't" became cliches for a reason, and that Ariel's insistence that he would show pity if he were human, and Caliban's description of his island's music, make me cry as much as anything in Shakespeare.
...it is probably weird that for my favorite comedy I named a play that has made me cry at more productions than any other, but I am weird that way.
Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
>Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line
The meme doesn't have a category for the romances -- probably because there are only four of them, five if you count The Two Noble Kinsmen (which practically nobody does), and they go with the comedies in the Folio anyway (except for Cymbeline which is put in with the tragedies for some reason which I think had to do with copyright) -- so I am going to assume they count here and pick The Tempest.
The Tempest is a play I've had a vexed relationship with for a long time. It was my very favorite after my high school Shakespeare class read it -- he was very into the whole Shakespeare's-farewell-to-his-art thing, and also, we all signed up for parts and read it aloud, and since I was in a particularly reticent class, I got to be Prospero. It was especially fun because the teacher (who was one of my favorites) always reserved the part of Caliban for himself. I am not sure what that says about me, because that particular relationship is one of the things that makes the play so problematic (I guess in this particular case it was the power reversal).
I guess the thing that makes my love for The Tempest so complicated is that it's sort of the Shakespearean equivalent of fugu: if you don't handle it just right, you get a lot of colonialist nastiness, or some totally shit productions, including most of the ones I've seen (Caliban should not wear a chastity belt, nor should he resemble the offspring of Chewbacca and the wolf from Into the Woods; if Ariel is going to be played in nothing but bronzer and a tiny speedo AND by a bad actor, he should at least look good in bronzer and a tiny speedo). I decided not to write my undergraduate thesis on the play because I knew that it would ruin it for me (instead, I wrote on Richard II and look how that worked out).
But when I think I've gone off it I remember the brilliant college production I saw with an adorable Ferdinand and Miranda and a tiny brilliant Pierrot!Ariel, or how much fun it was reading the play aloud with my sisters back when we used to do that sort of thing, or William Hutt performing "Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves" in a way that felt like he was personally addressing each member of the audience. And that "such stuff as dreams are made on" and "O brave new world / That has such people in't" became cliches for a reason, and that Ariel's insistence that he would show pity if he were human, and Caliban's description of his island's music, make me cry as much as anything in Shakespeare.
...it is probably weird that for my favorite comedy I named a play that has made me cry at more productions than any other, but I am weird that way.
Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
>Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line