Why do we read Shakespeare?

[mortalterror]

I have seen two live performances of Midsummer Night's Dream long ago which I thought were entertaining enough for me but were probably performed poorly. I've seen ten or so of his plays as videos over the past few years, including Midsummer Night's Dream, since the library has them. If I compare those videos to modern movies, I think I would rather watch a modern movie, but then I am a cultural cretin, so my opinion doesn't really count.

Most Shakespeare movies are pretty lousy and aren't worth watching. He's been adapted to the screen more than 1,100 times, because his works are in the public domain. He's probably the only bankable writer which studios can use for free and people have heard of. That means there's more diversity of interpretation to performances of his plays than those of any other author. That also means one has to sort through a lot of dreck to find gold.

If I were to pick the best screen adaptations of Shakespeare, not counting Akira Kurosawa's Ran or Throne of Blood because they only make use of the plots, I'd rank them:

1.Hamlet 1996 by Kenneth Branagh
2.Othello 1952 by Orson Welles
3.Julius Caesar 1953 with John Gielgud
4.Henry V 1989 by Kenneth Branagh
5.Macbeth 1971 by Roman Polanski
6.Titus 1999 with Anthony Hopkins
7.Richard III 1995 with Ian McKellen
8.Much Ado About Nothing 1993 by Kenneth Branagh
9.The Taming of the Shrew 1967 with Elizabeth Taylor
10.Chimes at Midnight 1965 by Orson Welles
11.A Midsummer Night's Dream 1996 by the Royal Shakespeare Company
12.Twelfth Night 1988 by Kenneth Branagh

For the rest, I'd mostly go with the complete works of Shakespeare series performed for British television by the RSC from '78-'85, and which every library should have a copy of. However, I haven't seen the new Coriolanus and Macbeth which from all accounts sound very good. The Orson Welles Macbeth looks promising, and I generally hate Peter Brook, Laurence Olivier, or Zeffirelli productions, which most other's seem to love.

[ennison]

He didn't make his living publishing his plays nor turning them into "movies". They were performed. That's how he and his mates earned a crust.

[YesNo]

1.Hamlet 1996 by Kenneth Branagh
2.Othello 1952 by Orson Welles
3.Julius Caesar 1953 with John Gielgud
4.Henry V 1989 by Kenneth Branagh
5.Macbeth 1971 by Roman Polanski
6.Titus 1999 with Anthony Hopkins
7.Richard III 1995 with Ian McKellen
8.Much Ado About Nothing 1993 by Kenneth Branagh
9.The Taming of the Shrew 1967 with Elizabeth Taylor
10.Chimes at Midnight 1965 by Orson Welles
11.A Midsummer Night's Dream 1996 by the Royal Shakespeare Company
12.Twelfth Night 1988 by Kenneth Branagh

I saw 6 and 9 in the above list. They were well done.

Unlike a lot of action films where the good guys beat the bad buys after the bad guys show how bad they are, in Titus Andronicus it is hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. They're all bad.

I'm trying to remember how the shrew was tamed, perhaps by despairing of ever being able to tame her, but I do recall the scene where Elizabeth Taylor starts taming the other shrews herself at the end.

I may have seen 11 as well. However, the two teenagers in the movie Tamara Drewe reminded me of Puck and Oberon.

[mortalterror]

Checking my papers, a long time ago I wrote an essay on the 1935 film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The concluding paragraph is relevant to our discussion since it sums up why reading the original text is often superior to viewing a cinematic version of the text:

In his critique of an 1816 version of this play Hazlitt wrote “Oh, ye scene-shifters, ye scene-painters, ye machinists and dress-makers, ye manufacturers of moon and stars…ye musical composers… This is your triumph; it is not ours. (Calderwood, p.xxi)” He was referring to the way Shakespeare’s play had become a secondary text in the performance. I concur with his opinion. People go to a Shakespearean play to hear the words of the bard. It is in poor taste for a director to cut out words or bowdlerise them so that he may have more time for his music and ballets. This film won an Oscar for best cinematography. It had wonderful make up and costumes. The special effects were interesting, though mostly the cameraman just double exposed the film to give the fairies a transparent quality. There was all sorts of pageantry and wire work. But this is all eye candy. As Sidney Carroll put it “No expense has been spared with either costumes or scenery to completely eliminate Shakespeare from the picture (Jorgens, p.22).” There are two types of film: narrative film which focuses on telling a story, and spectacle film. This film is simply a spectacle. It’s appeal is the same as a juggling act, or a martial arts film. Shakespeare’s text was just a Christmas tree for Reinhardt to hang ornaments on until the original tree was barely visible.

[YesNo]

“Oh, ye scene-shifters, ye scene-painters, ye machinists and dress-makers, ye manufacturers of moon and stars…ye musical composers… This is your triumph; it is not ours. (Calderwood, p.xxi)” He was referring to the way Shakespeare’s play had become a secondary text in the performance.

One can look at all the different performances as "texts" along with the actual script. Make a video of the play and store it in the cloud for people to view later is another type of text or objectification. These things are not the reality itself which I see as only one aspect of a language reality which may be an aspect of an even larger reality and requires subjectivity for that reality to be present. They are projections of that reality into objects.

The texts are attempts to objectify something that cannot be completely present. They do this by subtracting out our subjectivity so that something, say a computer without subjectivity, can store and even "read" them. This is a useful process, but these texts are not the play. The play isn't present until someone with subjectivity is in the process of experiencing it.

So, I agree. When the play is performed, other people besides Shakespeare get involved in creating the object. Hopefully they add value, but perhaps they don't. They add value to the extent they allow people (who have subjectivity) to better experience the real play.

[Alfonso Espada]

Three reasons from the top of my head.

1. Because he might be required reading.
2. Because we wish to learn his methods.
3. Because we might be curious as to why he is considered great.

[YesNo]

Sometimes required reading isn't actually read.

If I were a high school student today I would take matters into my own hand and watch a video of the play with the text near by just in case something wasn't clear.

[byquist]

One reason are short assertions or statements that stick with you. Such as:

"Age is unnecessary" -- Lear
"Who can control his fate?" -- Othello
"Boy!" -- Coriolanus
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep." -- Prospero
"I have been thinking how I may compare this prison where I live like unto the world but I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out." -- Richard II
"Blow wind, come wrack; at least we'll die with harness on our back!" -- Macbeth

[noface0711]

I read maps. Place names tell stories. Good maps have more info than apps. WS wrote his sonnets to be read and his scripts to be acted but despite what was said about technology there are lots of people in the first world who have never seen a play by WS - even if they took part in a reading of a play in school. And as for the third world well ... you need to have literacy to read.

[YesNo]

If we take a step back from the original question of the thread, "Why do we read Shakespeare?" we could ask a more basic question, "Why do we read?" Answering that might help us understand what is at stake and help us decide whether we should bother reading Shakespeare or not.

Both questions suggest that "we" are human beings. In order to make sure the answers are complete, we could test them and ask, "Why do zombies read (Shakespeare)?" and "Why do computers read (Shakespeare)?" Our answers why we read (Shakespeare) should be different or our answers are not very good.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

Yet you read on Shakespeare giving memorizing and flashing back to the Elizabethan period, I might be on pleasure if I reveal something, please just hear:
Someone anywhere said that Shakespeare is Iraqi origin, yet I don't puzzle, look often to literature by anyway to read Shakespeare period was not dark period but the first school of literature began from that time, however, we can't gather on or touch on the classical period and all the transformation of upswing jumped yet to minds including the renaissance on poetry in general. Moreover, if we have to do a research on the certain period of Shakespearean glimmering light on literature including his plays, we ought to read all surrounding environment trying to find the beginning of epoch yet anyone could precisely point out its starting line because some of history is gone away which I mean the dated certain period, thus we need more to examine the history and yet not finished

[TheEgyptian]

Great stories, unforgettable characters, beautiful poetry