www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Shakespeare Fans

Do we have any here ? And what plays in particular do you like the most ?

Hi Lawrence,

I like Hamlet and all the political intrigue.

Shakespeare would probably have been called a tin-hat conspiracy theorist today by some people here on this board.

Well, the first entity to conspire against God was Satan, and he has not stopped. Then there was Eve, and Adam, and their son Cain.

Hamlet is my favorite too. It's an absolute masterpiece. If you ever find the time, rent the BBC version with Derek Jacobi. It's outstanding, and Jacobi, after seeing his father's ghost acts so traumatized it's almost unsettling.

Well, I did see a real ghost in a friend's home.

I did not really believe the house was haunted, until I saw that ghost. When I described that nightly visitor in detail to the homeowner, she was not surprised as she had seen her deceased step-mom too many times. I even described her favorite bathrobe, her preferred way of wearing her hair, her height, her face, and her weight.

I will see if I can rent the BBC version of Hamlet from our university library. Is it at the local video stores too?

I got it at my local library, which has a pretty good Shakespeare collection. Another excellent recommendation is Roman Polanski's MacBeth.

Did you know that in the Old West cowboys usually carried two books with them? One, of course, was the Bible. The other was an anthology of Shakespeare's works.

No! ?

My favorite is King Lear.

King Lear is a bit disturbing for my tastes. I can be pretty morbid myself, but the insanity scenes, particularly in the 4th Act-The Fields Near Dover, tend to upset me. Michael Hordern as King Lear in the 1982 BBC version really lays the insanity on thick.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

I have always liked Henry V.

He restored the throne with such magnificence that all the ills of the past royal abuses were erased.

Plus he showed that the errors of his own life as Prince Hal could absolutely be severed from his new and reformed life. This is a perfect picture of true repentance, and is very much what the Church teaches.

Deacon El

There's a lot to be said about _Henry V_, except for the whole Joan of Arc, as well as _Hamlet_.

Anyone familiar with C. S. Lewis's essay "Hamlet: the Prince or the Poem?" It's a really great critique of critics. Lewis says you can't appreciate SHakespeare unless you can look at the plays for their entertainment value first.

As for _King Lear_, if you think _Lear_ itself is disturbing, try _A Thousand Acres_, which modernizes, and then inverts, the Lear story to give a view of maybe why his daughters hated him so much.

The strength of the dual plotline is what draws me. The insanity scene with Gloucester is very difficult to bring to the stage; that scene, or the wilderness scene with Lear, doesn't disturb me. I actually bring up tears when he reconciles with his son, who had gone though the tricks to let his father heal of the despair he brought upon himself by trusting false love.

As a 'writer', I admire Shakespeare as I admire Bach. Bach strings multiple melodies, variations, and counter-melodies together in as many measures as other composers take to bring out one melody. I like reading Lear for how he strings the choices of Lear and Gloucester and the consequences together. They are so similar yet distinct. Most striking to me is how the plots play off each other and build the tension when switching from scene to scene to build the dramatic conclusion to heights unreached by most writers.

Terry

I'll have to disagree with you about Henry V, Fr Deacon El. The play itself is outstanding.I love the 'Once more unto the breach ' monologue, and of course the 'We band of brothers' speech before the Battle of Agincourt, but the real Henry V was unusually cruel, even for the time of the Hundred Years War. English historian Desmond Seward gives a detailed account of the king's excessive cruelty in his book Henry V:The Scourge Of God.

Still, I think the 1989 version of Henry V, with Kenneth Branagh in the title role is brilliant. Strangely, I find the scene when Henry V and his soldiers clear bodies from the field of Agincourt to the strains of Non Nobis Domine, to be ethereally beautiful.

It would be nice to see the beatification of Henry VI.

Fr Serge

I also like Richard III, Merchant of Venice, and Othello. Actually, I like most of his plays.

I don't like Titus Andronicus and A Midsummer Night's Dream very much.