the ocean always dreamed blue dreams

So beautiful. Now I'm going to stay up all night reading his works lol.

I can't think of anyone better to spend the evening with! O brawling love! O loving hate!

I really need to read more Shakespeare. I plead sloth and a dislike of Hamlet but I still like Macbeth best.

That's my favorite, too. I get chills up my spine!:

"out, out brief candle..."

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes..."

"Screw your courage to the sticking place" (my all-time favorite quote)

"As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move."

I once went to a lecture that claimed that Shakespeare was a time traveller (that's how he came up with all of these words, and why his plays were so advanced... he even had a "token black guy" in a lot of them). It was pretty good, too.

What a piece of work is a man,
how noble in reason,
how infinite in faculties,
in form and moving how express and admirable,
in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!

Ah good thing you mentioned Shakespeare's use of language and poetry. I only got into his characters in my blog and felt a little guilty not mentioning it. Thanks Qimi.

I'm not a fan of Romeo and Juliet, but there's no disputing the beauty of Shakespeare's poetry. And how many phrases did he put into the language! Next time someone asks what the relevance of Shakespeare is I'll have to point them to this entry.

Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

I once went to a lecture that claimed that Shakespeare was a time traveller (that's how he came up with all of these words, and why his plays were so advanced... he even had a "token black guy" in a lot of them). It was pretty good, too.

I think lhe was a time traveller! It's the only explanation for everything, for how one man can be such a marvel in so many areas! (Not to mention DaVinci, Ben Franklin, those other uber-achievers of bygone eras (sorry, I don't think I've got an umlaut on my keyboard))

Originally Posted by Lote-Tree

What a piece of work is a man,
how noble in reason,
how infinite in faculties,
in form and moving how express and admirable,
in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!

"Oh brave new world that has such people in it!"

I know where my quote comes from ("The Tempest"), but from which play does yours hail? I should know, I'm sure, but I don't.

but from which play does yours hail? I should know, I'm sure, but I don't.
----

No way!!!!? :-)

The Bard will be turning in his grave and drown his book!!!!

It's Hamlet ;-)

Well, Fifth, having taught, more or less, Romeo and Juliet, I can tell you that you are not alone. Most English teachers don't like it much, or Julius Caesar, either.

But I think there is merit there. Granted at the end any reasonable adult is privately shouting, "For God's sake, grow up and wait a little! You're both alive!"

It makes me think of the final scene of "Dead Poet's Society" which I dearly love, but much as the scene moves me, I just want to smack that boy who decides to commit suicide, and say "Snap out of it! Your father cannot tell you what to do with your life!"

It might help to think of R & J as a sort of timelapse photograph of love from young love through marriage to the inevitable ending of any relationship.

Anyway, how can anyone with a heart not be moved by Juliet's words as she contemplates waking up in her family tomb alone (don't answer that ):

"How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,--
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed:
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;--
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:--
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefather's joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point: stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee."

She was a spirited girl, anyway. I kind of like her.

Thank you, Lote.

"Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven."

I don't suppose that this is the place to confess that Romeo and Juliet was one of my least favorite ;) I like it well enough to read once in a while, but it has become the model for teenage romance everywhere :sick:.

I especially love Macbeth and Othello, but Titus has always satisfied the bloodthirsty side of me. I guess there isn't too much of his I [I]don't[/I] like. The sonnets are always good, but I've never been too interested in the more historical plays.

It's funny, I've always liked this histories the best. . . .

[QUOTE=The Comedian;bt48171]It's funny, I've always liked this histories the best. . . .[/QUOTE]

I keep thinking that I should give them another try. I'm basing the dislike on the last time I tried to read them which I'll confess was about a decade ago now :blush:

I've done Romeo and Juliet with my former GCSE students a lot, and it did grow on me after initially not liking it. There are some brilliant lines in it.

Good post Qim.

Thank you, Paul.

Meg and Comedian, do you, perhaps,
"loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little
More than a little is by much too much"?

I love McBeth, and I like, or I did when I read it eons ago, Henry IV. I love the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V.

And this from Richard III:

"A horse! A horse! My Kingdom for a horse!"

That's what I love about this man. Just a few words and you are hanging by your fingertips form a cliff's edge. And it's night and there's a storm.

I have to confess, Meg, that I have never read Titus Andronicus.

Meg, the Histories are excellent. Read both Henry IV, Henrty V, Richard II, and Richard III. Check out the movie of Henry V with Kenneth Branagh. I think it's great.

I love the movie versions of many of the plays. Check out the Othello with Laurence Fishbourne as Othello and Branagh as Iago. Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ-8ihr_VXU.

I love living close to Stratford, Ontario, and being able to regularly attend really well-done Shakespeare. Richard III is one of my favorites, but also, The Tempest. Loved the link to National Geographic- very interesting.