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Thread: your least favourite shakespeare play ?

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    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Lightbulb your least favourite shakespeare play ?

    there is always one that does not sit well within our literary comfort
    so which would you say is your least popular and why?
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  2. #2
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by pastandprologue View Post
    The Two Gentleman of Verona

    It's interesting academically - seeing the artist in development and all that - but it withers once you've enjoyed the mature comedies!
    ah the mature comedies!!
    are you able to quote one or two as a point of reference?
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  3. #3
    Registered User Poetaster's Avatar
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    Measure for Measure - I don't know why, I just can't find much love for it.
    'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
    we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'

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    Registered User Jackson Richardson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cacian View Post
    ah the mature comedies!!
    are you able to quote one or two as a point of reference?
    Contrast Two Gents with Midsummer’s Night Dream. In both case we have two pairs of young lovers where at one point both boys fancy the same girl. In neither case is there deep personal psychology at work.

    But in Two Gentsit is a comic formula (and rather uncomfortable and unconvincing) whereas in Midsummer’s Night it is, well, magic….
    Previously JonathanB

    The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1

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    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Poetaster View Post
    Measure for Measure - I don't know why, I just can't find much love for it.
    ''the problem play'' comes to mind.
    was not there a similar idea with the nazis when referring to jews??
    cant' remember.....

    and
    ''some rise by sin and some by virtue fall''??
    not sure how much truth is in there.
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

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    Quote Originally Posted by JonathanB View Post
    Contrast Two Gents with Midsummer’s Night Dream. In both case we have two pairs of young lovers where at one point both boys fancy the same girl. In neither case is there deep personal psychology at work.

    But in Two Gentsit is a comic formula (and rather uncomfortable and unconvincing) whereas in Midsummer’s Night it is, well, magic….
    Formula is indeed the correct word. The formula is there, too, in A Midsummer's Night Dream, but the Ovid-esque, Apuleius-esque, and Elizabethan/Shakespearian myth and magic keep it from becoming trite and conventional. But beyond even that, A Midsummer's Dream captures and preserves something unique in the human experience. The four lovers are mawkish children when they enter the brightly haunted and utterly confusing woods of their teenage years--where even the spirits don't really know what they're doing. They emerge adults (and is it me or were they more likable as mixed-up kids?) There is a wonderful and usually ignored moment near the story's end, in which Hippolyta catches sight of the young people from a distance, after they have emerged from the forest, and comments on what she sees them doing. It is a multiply layered but utterly effortless verse; one that comments on the dramatic action, the play itself, and the experience of youth: "It is," she says, "a sweet story." This is genius, you see--the other, mere convention.
    Last edited by Pompey Bum; 07-09-2015 at 12:49 PM.

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    Alea iacta est. mortalterror's Avatar
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    I read them all and Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, and Henry VIII were pretty horrible.
    "So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
    "This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
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    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mortalterror View Post
    I read them all and Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, and Henry VIII were pretty horrible.
    what was horrible about them?
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  9. #9
    Registered User Jackson Richardson's Avatar
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    I know the late plays are a bit weird, but Winter’s Tale has given me a lump in my throat (Thou looks’t on things adying, I on things new born) and Cymbeline has its moments (Fear no more the heat of the sun.)

    I don’t care for Henry VIII, but that is in large part my catholic sympathies. I can’t really regard a husband dumping his faithful wife as sympathetic.

    I was reading through Shakespeare’s plays, and I’ve got stuck at the prospect of having to read Love’s Labour’s Lost and Comedy of Errors but you never know I might enjoy them. At any rate they have individuality which is more than I can say for Henry VI, part 1. (2 & 3 have their moments.)

    But the play which is much admired and on consideration I could happily do without is Richard III.

    Hemyngs and Condell's least favourite was The Two Noble Kinsmen.
    Last edited by Jackson Richardson; 07-09-2015 at 10:44 AM.
    Previously JonathanB

    The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1

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    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JonathanB View Post
    I know the late plays are a bit weird, but Winter’s Tale has given me a lump in my throat (Thou looks’t on things adying, I on things new born) and Cymbeline has its moments (Fear no more the heat of the sun.)
    how do you write that in today's English?

    I don’t care for Henry VIII, but that is in large part my catholic sympathies. I can’t really regard a husband dumping his faithful wife as sympathetic.
    I am surprised at that. religion rakes marriage seriously we dont.
    i have feelings for neither but it better to be released then cooped up sympathies or not.


    I was reading through Shakespeare’s plays, and I’ve got stuck at the prospect of having to read Love’s Labour’s Lost and Comedy of Errors but you never know I might enjoy them. At any rate they have individuality which is more than I can say for Henry VI, part 1. (2 & 3 have their moments.)
    how do you meant by 'stuck'?
    But the play which is much admired and on consideration I could happily do without is Richard III.

    Hemyngs and Condell's least favourite was The Two Noble Kinsmen.
    that the king in the car park?
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  11. #11
    Registered User Jackson Richardson's Avatar
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    I have not got on and read those two comedies yet. I am reluctant to do so. That's what I meant.

    Richard III was indeed the king in the car park at Leicester.

    There are two quite seperate reasons why I don't warm to Henry VIII. A It is protestant propaganda. B It shows Henry humiliating Katherine. I wouldn't warm to that even if I was a paid up member of the Richard Dawkins fan club.
    Previously JonathanB

    The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1

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    Registered User Poetaster's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cacian View Post
    ''the problem play'' comes to mind.
    was not there a similar idea with the nazis when referring to jews??
    cant' remember.....
    I don't know.

    Quote Originally Posted by cacian View Post
    and
    ''some rise by sin and some by virtue fall''??
    not sure how much truth is in there.
    That is actually my favourite line from that play, I think there is a lot of truth in it.
    'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
    we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'

  13. #13
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Poetaster View Post
    I don't know.



    That is actually my favourite line from that play, I think there is a lot of truth in it.
    truth?
    could you elaborate with an example?
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  14. #14
    Registered User Poetaster's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cacian View Post
    truth?
    could you elaborate with an example?
    Well, some rise by sin and some by virtue fall. Some people seem to get ahead in life by awful means, crime, drugs ect, and some people who try to do good in this world get nothing but trouble and pain for their hard work. In short, life is cruel and random, and sometimes the bad guys win.
    'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
    we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'

  15. #15
    King of Dreams MorpheusSandman's Avatar
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    I think all of these are bad-to-mediocre:

    Taming of the Shrew
    Henry VIII
    Two Noble Kinsmen
    Two Gentlemen of Verona
    Comedy of Errors
    Pericles
    III Henry VI
    I Henry VI
    All's Well that Ends Well
    Titus Andronicus
    Merry Wives of Windsor
    King John

    Quote Originally Posted by mortalterror View Post
    I read them all and... Winter's Tale... were pretty horrible.
    WHAAAA?! That's in my Top 10 Shakespeare! Perhaps his most beautiful play outside The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra.
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

    "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

    "I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers

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