Shakespeare, Harry Potter and Me, Gehayi

[gehayi]

I looked over the Shakespeare meme that's going around, but the problem with that is that it presumes that you've seen the plays both on stage and in the movies. I have never seen a Shakespeare play on stage or in the movies. The only adaptation of a Shakespeare play that I know I've seen is West Side Story. I've only ever read two plays for

Comments

[lovefromgirl]

05. Wizard Rock: discuss. (What IS it?)

I have never really understood the wrock phenomenon. It's... highly specialised filk, I suppose, except it's more the rock version. About Harry Potter. Which I've never felt was particularly filkable.

Naturally, I have friends who adore it.

But! I digress!

You belong in the fandom as much as any other fan -- it's just that you're more a book person than a media person, which is also how I am considering how early I started (the movies were not even a dirty thought in JKR's mind at that point). You relate to the work differently. I personally wouldn't invalidate you as a fan for the way you do things. I hope to hell nobody else tries. *gets all glowery*

As for Shakespeare? I read him for the slash. Take that, purists.

[gehayi]

I'm...probably the worst person in the world at spotting slash. Which means if I notice that a character is behaving in a slashy way, it's REALLY noticeable. The subtext has become text, in other words. (Hi there, Dresden/Marcone!)

I think the only slash I've ever spotted in Shakespeare has been Romeo/Mercutio. And really, that's hard to miss, so I can't get much credit for that.

What other Shakespearean slash have you spotted?

[lovefromgirl]

Brutus/Cassius in Julius Caesar, and I know I'm not alone because it showed up on shipmanifesto the other day. :-)

[gehayi]

That one must have made no impression on me. Where did you see the slashiness?

[gehayi]

I don't get it either. And they were my parents. I never did figure out where all the animosity came from.

[quizzicalsphinx]

I hate Shakespeare, and can back up my hatred citing many quotes. The Reduced Shakespeare Company takes the Bard apart very humorously and artfully and I highly recommend them: you get all your Shakespeare in an hour and a half, and they actually provide the comforting revelation that some of Shakespeare sucks and needs to be buried.

[gehayi]

I hate Shakespeare, and can back up my hatred citing many quotes.

I don't hate Shakespeare. If I did, I wouldn't have written about Lady Macbeth for femgenficathon.

But I will admit to an abiding hatred for Romeo and Juliet. I have two issues with that play:

1) The kids don't know each other. They meet at a party, talk for long enough to recite a sonnet, talk to each other after the party (her on the balcony, him in the garden, and probably every neighbor in Verona yelling, "Would you shut UP, we're trying to sleep!"), and the next day Romeo is tearing off to Friar Lawrence's telling him that he wants to marry this girl he met the night before. And they get married the same day. And they have sex that night. That's it. The sum total of the time they know each other breaks down to less than twenty-four hours.

Now, I don't believe you can love anyone in so little time. Be infatuated as hell, yes. Be in love, no.

2) Everyone and their brother claims this story is about true love. And I see no evidence of this. Romeo blathers about Rosaline

[lovefromgirl]

You'd still love the RSC. Trust me on this one. :-)

[gehayi]

Are you talking about the Royal Shakespeare Company version or the Reduced Shakespeare Company version?

[erastes]

oh I recommend the following movie versions:

1. hamlet with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart
2. Kenneth's Branagh's Hamlet (which I believe is the only full-version screen version)
3. Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet--the first version I saw on screen and is quite beautiful.
4. Oddly - considering how much I hate di Caprio, his version of R&J because it just WORKS.
5. Jeremy Iron's VERY VERY slashy version of Merchant of Venice - utterly spellbinding. It plays down Portia thanks God.

There's a great list here - any of the RSC versions are great.

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/566363/index.html
6.

[lareinenoire]

Yes to all of these! Did you ever see the RSC's version of King Lear with Ian McKellen? I was crying buckets by the end.

[erastes]

yes! my mother falsely told me that Lear ended better than it did. or i took it that way. i have that version on a free dvd i got from the newspaper. fabstuff

[gehayi]

I honestly don't know if most of those are at my library. The Zeferelli R & J is, but there isn't much Branagh stuff, and what there is isn't allowed to circulate (which is very stupid). The Branagh version of Hamlet exists, but for some reason it's filed under non-fiction in one library and basement materials in the other.

The Jeremy Irons Merchant of Venice has a "no circulation" tag on it.

*blinks* Leonardo DiCaprio was actually GOOD in something?

The David Tennant-Patrick Stewart version of Hamlet simply does not exist in any library in my town, and possibly not in all of Connecticut.

[aunty_marion]

Shakespeare can be a love it/loathe it kind of thing, and not just in general, but for individual plays as well. I'm lucky in that my mother was an English teacher before she married, so we had a copy of Shakespeare in the house, plus we were given Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare fairly early on. And our local theatre, which was then about a mile from its current site, and has always been known locally as 'The Vic', did a Shakespear play every year, usually one that was on the O-Level or A-Level syllabus, so I did get to see quite a few of the plays that way

[gehayi]

I was given a copy of Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare too, among others--as I said, my parents didn't object to prose adaptations, but to the plays and poetry.

What I'd really like to see is Richard III done in the Jasper Fforde way, with audience participation.

Okay, I've read the Thursday Next series and the Nursery Crimes series...but I don't know what you mean by seeing Richard III done the Jasper Fforde way, unless you're going to introduce an agent from Jurisfiction into the plot.

[aunty_marion]

In the Thursday Next books, one popular entertainment in Swindon is going to see Richard III, but people from the audience get to play the parts, all the audience knows the script (and the backchat), and many go in costume.

Sort of like a Shakespearean version of Rocky Horror Show...

[lareinenoire]

Oh, that would be incredibly fun! Actually, I think they tried it in Swindon once when there was a one-day convention of sorts for Fforde, and a good friend of mine apparently knew all the callbacks off by heart.

And my old housemate and I used to amuse ourselves by randomly shouting 'When is the winter of our discontent?' at one another, thereby prompting the other one to launch into the speech while the former did all the callbacks.