#i’ve got hamlet and twelfth night and i think macbeth is getting there | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

s1utspeare · 3 years

Text

DMBJ Characters as Shakespeare Leads

I got into it in the notes of a moonfall echo post and now I’m going insane about what Shakespeare Characters each DMBJ person vibes the most with who do I blame for this

ANYWAY WELCOME TO MY LATEST NONSENSE THESE ARE MY PERSONAL OPINIONS AND ALSO BASED ENTIRELY ON VIBES ALONE

WU XIE as VIOLA from Twelfth Night

okay bear with me, I know this is a strong one coming right out the gate. But the GAY ENERGY. the ATTEMPTING TO BE SOMEONE THEY’RE NOT ALL THE TIME. the sheer amount of LOVE INSIDE. also this bitch spends SO much time in the series dressed up as other people like??? mans loves cosplaying except the cosplay is for Life and Death Situations. also the love triangles are hilarious. plus they’re both cute and gay and i love them

ZHANG QILING as CORIOLANUS from Coriolanus

did i choose these two because they’re arguably the hottest characters in each of their canon? maybe. also Cori Boy is the only one violent enough to even come CLOSE to xiao-ge’s deadly energy. I could have done Hamlet, who is the only other real Shakespearian swordsman, but Hamlet talks too much. also something about the desperation and side-switching that appeals to me. OH THEY BOTH HAVE GOOD TITS yeah that’s a good reason too

WANG PANGZI as THE FOOL from King Lear

okay before any of you come for me in the notes, the Fool is arguably the greatest Shakespearean character. They’re only CALLED the Fool cause it’s their job, but actually they’re the only one with any braincells in the play. Both start out as the archetypal comic relief character and then become the heart and soul of the story. The Fool makes a bunch of jokes and also prophesies the end and possibly is magic?? who’s to say. But anyway Pangzi also does all of those things and I feel like he should get to wear a funny hat. plus the Fool just has to deal with idiots trying to take his job by being clowns for free, and Pangzi can relate to that energy I think

LIU SANG as ARIEL from The Tempest

If it weren’t for just the SHEER amount of creepy magical energy they both exude, it’s the loyalty and sacrifice that does it for me. Not only are they both Ethereal Beings, there’s also a lot of sound ties to Ariel in The Tempest, so like it checks out. Plus they both Crouch. Also I just want Liu Sang to be able to smite some bitches sometimes. That would be good for him (it’s NOT because they’re both my favorite characters IT’S NOT)

Bai Haotian as Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

So this is not only because i have a thing for casting women as Puck, but also because they fit so well together!! like. they both have crushes on people they perceive to be in authority! they both like being helpful! they both should get to be a little feral and also do magic! like Xiao Bai would be SUCH a cute Puck and if Wu Xie weren’t such a dumbass he’d make a good Oberon but alas. He is a Dumbass. so Xiao Bai is Puck but Wu Xie doesn’t get to be in Midsummer because he is simultaneously Too Dumb and Not Dumb Enough.

LI CU as PRINCE HAL from Henry IV Part I

sorry for more Tom Hiddleston pics but he’s genuinely like the best Shakespearian actor I’ve ever seen, and he’s done it all. Anyway Li Cu is Hal but specifically Hal from Part I because Part II isn’t as good and Hal is basically Dead when we get to Henry V so it has to be Part I. Anyway. Troubled youth who doesn’t want to do what his father wants so he basically gets kidnapped and raised by an older man who is full of Trickery and also Witty Remarks? The Best Friends Trios? The evolution into a Hero in Their Own Right? These guys are perfect for each other. Also I go feral about both of them at any given moment

A-NING as LADY MACBETH from Macbeth

YES I used A-Ning from Time Raiders because I think she’s the hottest version of A-Ning WHAT ABOUT IT. Anyway A-Ning could be no one other than the scheming girlboss Lady Macbeth. They’re both Morally Ambiguous but Fuck they look so good doing it. Can And Will manipulate literally any man into doing what they want. Su Nan was also a contender for Lady Macbeth because she resonates very strongly with the “Out, damned spot!” monologue, but she respects authority too much. A-Ning would not hesitate to kill the bitchass king of Scotland so that her family could ascend to the throne and I love that for her

ZHANG DADDY RISHAN as HAMLET from Hamlet

OKAY BEFORE ANYONE SAYS “brigid i know u chose them because ur a simp for zhang daddy rishan and ur a simp for hamlet stop being so predictable” LITERALLY NO ONE ELSE COULD DO IT THO??? LIKE??? ok they both are setting their life purpose on the bedrock of an older mentor figure’s death... they both have to deal with conspirators trying to usurp them... both the Ultimate Tragic Hero and Make Me Cry Every Damn Day... both are torn away from their nerd boyfriends by death... they both live in my head rent free... I know Zhang Daddy Rishan does not talk as much as Hammie Boy but I 100% think that there’s a CONSTANT monologue going on in his head at all times. Also the Am I A Coward speech? That’s our Daddy Rishan to the MAX. No one look at me or im gonna start making picsets of him with Hamlet quotes superimposed over it I swear to GOD

and finally....

WU SANXING as IAGO from Othello

Not only does this picture from the NTL production of Othello represent what I want to do to Sanshu every time I see him onscreen, but these bitches are two of The Fakest Hos I have ever come across. It’s a love-hate relationship with them most of the time; you hate them for what they’re doing to the heroes, but they’re so good at the Trickery that you can’t help but admire them for it a little bit. They can, have, and will sell their family members for a single Lick of Power and Wealth. And yeah, you could MAKE an argument for them to be Good or at the very least Morally Ambiguous but they’re both giant dicks and deep down in our hearts we all know it.

#so welcome to my hell #it's an ambiguous amalgamation of all of my interests and they only sort of interlap #anyway i have a lot of feelings about Shakespeare and a lot of feelings about DMBJ #if u have any questions or would like me to assign a different character a Shakespeare-sona #or would like me to assign YOU a Shakespeare-sona #please drop by my ask box #thank u and goodnight #dmbj #dmemebj #the lost tomb #billy shakes #i did not have to do this and yet

48 notes · View notes

suits-of-woe · 2 years

Note

Alrighty so I’m kinda new to Shakespeare. I’ve studied Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear for class and have seen an amateur stage production of Midsummer’s, and I’ve really enjoyed the plays I’m familiar with so far! I wanna start reading his plays on my own time, but I also find it a little daunting. My library does have the SparkNotes additions of a lot of his plays so I’m thinking I’ll start with those so that I’ll have the study guide and dictionary, but it’s still not exactly easy to read. Do you have any advice? Also, would you recommend starting with Hamlet or Macbeth? I can’t decide.

Hi, thanks for asking! Hamlet was the play that got me into Shakespeare, so I've obviously got a huge soft spot for it, but I'd actually recommend starting with Macbeth — it's shorter, faster paced, easier to follow, and also an incredible play.

I'm not specifically familiar with the SparkNotes editions but it sounds like they'll have some helpful resources. Other things that might help include reading a summary of each scene beforehand so you know the gist of what's going on and watching filmed performances, since it's often easier to understand things when they're being said in context on a stage. And don't be afraid to skim or skip a passage if you get super stuck on it. Congrats on getting into Shakespeare more!

#asks

9 notes · View notes

smokeybrand · 3 years

Text

Smokey brand Select: Violent Delights

I was waxing nostalgic the other day about the Nineties version of Romeo and Juliet, about how much i actually like certain aspects of that film and absolutely abhor others. It got me pondering how much i unabashedly enjoy Shakespeare and many of the big screen adaption of “his” work. These things run the gambit of genre and i think it’s a ripe subject to kind of pick from. I mean, there are just so many ways to adapt this cats catalog and i figure i might as well pick out my favorites.

10. Forbidden Planet

This movie ain’t great. It;s not. But love it anyway. I have a soft spot for those old timey, Fifties, monster flicks and Forbidden Planet is one of the best. It’s campy schlock, don’t misunderstand, but i used to watch this thing late night, right before regular TV went of air. It’s the worst, but i appreciate the fact that it’s true to its time and is one of the very, very, few adaptions of The Tempest. That play never gets the love it deserves.

9. Ophelia

Ophelia is Hamlet from the perspective of his wife, Ophelia. It’s an interesting take on the Hamlet narrative, not really one of would gravitate toward if not for this ridiculously stellar cast, particularly Daisy Ridley. She kills the role as Ophelia and kind of makes you want to see where this version of the story goes. I definitely prefer the tragedy of Hamlet over this take on the narrative, but Ophelia definitely stands on it’s own and is totally worth a watch.

8. She’s the Man

Listen, this is a guilty pleasure. She’s the Man ain’t great. It’s actually pretty terrible, but i love it for how earnest this film is in telling it’s story. An adaption of Shakespeare’s gender-swap farce, Twelfth Night, it’s one of the few, comedic, plays that got the big screen treatment and Amanda Bynes carries this whole goddamn movie as this version’s Viola. I actually miss when Bynes wasn’t crazy and just made funny, endearing, sh*t like this. I mean, who doesn’t love Big Fat Liar, you know?

7. Scotland, PA

This is probably the most creative take on a Shakespeare property i have ever seen in my entire life. This is MacBeth, told as black comedy a la Fargo, set in a 1975 Pennsylvania fast food restaurant. Yeah. I’m not even going to go any further into it. This was one of the most ridiculous viewing experiences i’ve ever had and i loved very second of it.

6. Hamlet

I feel like this is a cheat, like there would be something different here. I actually pondered the Lion King because, technically, that’s a Hamlet adaption but, the more i thought about it, the more this one had to go on the list. It’s just that good. The1996 version of Hamlet, directed, screenplay written by, and starring Kenneth Branagh, is a whole ass classic. It’s a straight forward interpretation of the original play only updated with a nineteenth century aesthetic, which fits the narrative surprisingly well. This version of Hamlet is high f*cking art, man. It’s gorgeous in every way. The score, the costumes, the sets, the colors; All of it is a legitimate feast for the eyes. That said, this motherf*cker is four hours long so, you know, understand that sh*t going in. It;s worth, don’t misunderstand, it’s just real long in the tooth, man.

5. My Own Private Idaho

Idaho is probably the bleakest film on this list. Gus Van Zant is pretty great at capturing the sordid, cruel, reality of the human experiences which makes his adaption of Shakespeare’s Henry tetralogy. I don’t much go for European history for reasons, but i dug this flick and how it kind of mutes all of the glamour and Victorian nonsense for a more guttural, street level, desperation. My Own Private Idaho is not an easy watch I t can be incredibly difficult to get through at times but that doesn’t mean it’s not a brilliant film. that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take on this challenge. The performance that River Phoenix gives, alone, is enough for admission. As dope as Joaquin is at his craft, River was definitely the superior talent and that is no more apparent than in this movie.

4. 10 Things I Hate About You

The Taming of the Shrew is actually one of my favorite Shakespeare plays and this film, 10 Things I Hate About You, is one of the best versions of that narrative. This film is f*cking hilarious. It’s outstanding and unique and never strays from the heart of it’s inspiration. Plus, i mean, it’s got a young Heath Ledger just stealing all of the scenes. When you watch him in this, you know dude has all of the talent. This film is why i was completely okay with him as Joker when they announced it. Everyone else lost their sh*t but me? I remembered Ledger’s Patrick Verona and knew the role was in good hands.

3. Throne of Blood

If i had to choose a favorite Shakespeare story, it’s definitely MacBeth. I love that sh*t. There’s intrigue, betrayal, violence, lust, and even a little magic; Everything you need to build an intriguing plot. Take the basic narrative and funnel it through a true master of film like Akira Kurosawa and you get a real classic like Throne of Blood. This is an old one, it dropped back in ‘57, but it’s worth a watch. Kurosawa was a true visionary in his craft and the way he was able to, not only adapt but elevate the source material? F*cking amazing, man. Y’all should watch more Akira Kurosawa, man. He’s one of the most influential filmmakers ever to do it and it’s for good reason. Also, f*cking more MacBeth adaptions, please? There are only, like, six. The f*ck, yo?

2. Romeo + Juliet

I’ve already spoken about my love for this decidedly Nineties take on that classic, uncomfortably problematic, laughably toxic, romance that’s just rife with all of the tragedy and tropes. Why the double-dip? Because i love it THAT much! Tybalt, Mercutio, the aesthetic, that soundtrack; F*cking chef kiss, bro! If you’ve never seen this version of Romeo and Juliet, you don't love yourself enough.

1. Ex Machina

Yeah, that’s right, this f*cking masterpiece of existential, cyberpunk dread, is based on Shakespeare, too! Motherf*ckers wouldn’t know because it’s kind of a deep cut but a lot of the themes from The Tempest, actually my second favorite Shakespeare outing, ring true to Garland’s narrative. I mean, do i really have to explain why i love this movie so much? Actually, i have. Repeatedly. My praise for this movie is rife throughout the backlog of this blog. This thing has made multiple of the Select lists because it’s so f*cking great. Obviously, it’s my favorite adaption but, more than that, like Throne of Blood, it’s just a great f*cking film by itself.

Honorable Mentions: The Lion King, Titus (1999), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999), Men of Respect, Richard III (1995), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Ran, MacBeth (2015), Coriolanus (2011), Get Over It

2 notes · View notes

mortuarybees · 5 years

Note

What books do you recommend me to read?

I’m not sure what your tastes are but I’ll tell you some of my favorites! To be quite honest, I mainly return to the same books over and over again so the list is rather short and I doubt I have anything to recommend that you won’t have heard of already. I’ll recommend my favorites. It consists mainly of my usual rotation of things i read over and over or books that left an impression on me and I refer back to them often.

When it comes to the non-fiction section just like….keep in mind that most academic texts have many, many problems and I’m not presenting any of the texts I list as The Quintessential Must Read Best Flawless Overview of a topic, I’m mainly listing the books I have found to be approachable and reasonable introductions to topics. Read everything critically, always (and that includes everything else on this list, not just the non-fiction).

Plays:

An Oresteia, translated by Anne Carson (Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Elektra, Euripides’ Orestes)

Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides

I mean like. Shakespeare, obviously; my personal favorites are Hamlet, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth; recently, thanks to the productions starring David Tennant, Much Ado About Nothing and Richard II have been added to the list

Doctor Faustus, Edward II, and Dido by Christopher Marlowe

Antigone, particularly Anne Carson’s translation, and after you’ve read Antigone, I’d recommend reading Antigonick, but not before

Lysistrata by Aristophanes

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (I feel like Lady Windermere’s Fan is also kind of necessary reading and I do love it of course but I’ve only read it the once, for the sake of it, whereas I’ve come back to the Importance of Being Earnest a million times and the 2002 movie is one of the things I watch when I’m down)

Novels (and Epics)

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett if you haven’t yet, obviously

Maurice by E. M. Forster

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

VIRGINIA WOOLF. everything but particularly the Waves, Orlando, and Mrs. Dalloway. The Waves is my favorite, followed closely by Orlando, but I’d start with the Mrs. Dalloway because it gets you accustomed to Woolf’s writing style and the way she approaches her characters if you haven’t read her before.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (If you haven’t read it yet and you have seen 2005 P&P and love it and you’re opening the novel with the expectation that it’s similar to the 2005 film in tone and feel, you’ll be disappointed. If you’ve seen the 1995 miniseries, that reflects it very well. So just approach it with an open mind with 2005 on the back burner and you’ll find it an amazing and very repressed love story)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

The Iliad (the translation I own is Lombardo. It’s extremely approachable and colloquial and I enjoy it, and if you’ve never read the Iliad and you find it intimidating, I would very much recommend it, but my high opinion is not universal. Fagles and Lattimore are very popular translations and I like them both well enough)

I’m dying to get a copy of Emily Wilson’s Odyssey translation. I don’t love the Odyssey personally but I am a big fan of Wilson and from what I’ve read about her translation and what she’s said about it, if anything could make me enjoy the Odyssey, it would be that translation.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I would personally recommend reading the Iliad first just because Miller takes…….liberties with it, but I also don’t think there’s a problem with that at all, so if you’re not interested in the Iliad, or you think tsoa would get you interested in it, there’s nothing at all wrong with reading it on its own or reading it first. I just think it’s a genuinely more enjoyable experience to read the Iliad first and then see what Miller does with it. And regardless of what order you read them in, if you read them both you will understand how very different tsoa and the Iliad are from one another and you will not be one of those people who talks about the Iliad when what they mean is tsoa. Again, there’s nothing wrong with tsoa, it’s one of my favorite novels, but it’s just a very separate thing and it gets just a little maddening.

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. It’s both poetry and a novel but it’s got to go somewhere so

When I was 14 I got very into Les Mis and i will recommend it. I genuinely love it and it will always have a special place in my heart. I have read the entire brick only once however because as much as i love it. as much as i Relate to the infamous off-topic tangents. there is a limit to my patience.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is just like. extremely good. I really don’t know enough about it to recommend any specific translations; in high school I was given a stapled copy of the whole thing and I read that til I lost it and now if I want to reread it or refer back I just look it up online. I’m a fake fan.

Poetry

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho translated by Anne Carson

The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson

Devotions, Felicity, and Winter Hours by Mary Oliver. Those are the anthologies that I have read and I adore them. I imagine that all of her anthologies are also amazing and all of them are on my to-read list. I don’t think you could possibly go wrong

I do not have the singular published collection of Elizabeth Siddal’s poetry (My Ladys Soul) but I have read all of her poetry and she is an amazing poet and I hold her very near and dear to my heart

Crush by Richard Siken

Useless Magic by Florence Welch……..yall knew what you came here for

Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

Non-fiction and Essay Collections (again. None of these are recommended as the definitive, end all, be all, all-you-need book on any given subject, they’re just some of my favorites). I have limited myself to collection specifically because this is long enough already and if I start just adding essays it’ll never end. All of these were either purchased online for under $10, are available somewhere on the internet as pdfs, or were at my library, so if you look, you can probably find them somewhere (I say this bc while trying to find the authors of some of these I have been stunned by their retail prices and I’m assuring you, don’t be scared off by your initial search bc I sure as fuck did not pay $30):

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama

Marie Antoinette: the Journey by Antonia Fraser (controversial but well-researched and approachable and I love it. I would recommend reading like. almost anything else first because Fraser does obviously focus on Marie Antoinette and her life and experiences; and while she does talk about the revolution, it isn’t the focus of this biography, and you won’t understand why it was necessary if you don’t come to it with a good grasp on the broader events outside Marie Antoinette).

A Day with Marie Antoinette by Hélène Delalex

Robespierre: a Revolutionary Life and Liberty or Death: the French Revolution by Peter McPhee

The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James

If you’re at all interested in 18th century art, I recommend Rococo to Revolution:Major Trends in Eighteenth-Century Painting by Michael Levey

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn is controversial. But it’s approachable and well-researched and if you don’t know a lot about American history, I recommend it highly (especially for Americans).

Eros, the Bittersweet by Anne Carson (okay literally everything by Anne Carson. All her essays, her poetry, her translations, her weird mashups, all of it. There are a few things I haven’t read yet but. I very much doubt you’re going to be able to go wrong, so just take what I’ve listed as my favorites)

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate and the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: and Other Lessons from the Crematory and From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty (also the illustrations by Landis Blair are absolutely phenomenal. Look at this. I love it so much I pulled it out of the book to hang in my momento mori corner because it’s so beautiful.)

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

Alexander of Macedon by Peter Green is. okay we have a love-hate relationship, me and this biography; me, and peter green, but I have major issues with every single Alexander biography I’ve read and this was the first so if you want to start somewhere, I guess go for it.

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

The Honey Bee by James L. Gould. It’s out of date in some respects but a good, simple introduction into honeybee biology and behavior

Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s by Otto Friedrich

Vanishing Bees: Science, Politics, and Honeybee Health by Sainath Suryanarayanan and Daniel Kleinman

Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present by Neil Miller

Holy Madness by Adam Zamoyski isn’t by any means perfect, but it’s a alright introduction to the Age of Revolution. Just don’t let it be the only thing you read. It’s here because it has a special place in my heart as my introduction to it.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Erotic Exchanges: the World of Elite Prostitution in 18th Century Paris by Nina Kushner

Radical Love: Introduction to Queer Theology by Patrick S. Cheng

Our Lives Matter: A Womanist queer Theology by Pamela R. Lightsey

Our Native Bees: North America’s Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Save Them by Paige Embry

At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell (I really do not know that much about philosophy or existentialism specifically or this subject generally, so I have no idea where the faults of this book are, but I really enjoyed reading it and it made me think a lot. I have a feeling it’s very simplified so take it with a grain of salt as I did?)

Walden by Henry David Thoreau (just. just. it’s enjoyable but don’t get too into it please for the love of God). My copy (and I think most copies?) includes his essay Civil Disobedience as well which is very good.

Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave by Ona Judge

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

The Diaries of Virginia Woolf: I’m currently in the midst of volume 2 (1920-1924). They’re very enjoyable, but they’re something of an undertaking as all diaries are if you aren’t already very familiar with the biography of the person in question, so like. If you find yourself moving slowly don’t worry about it.

Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity by Robert Beachy

To Be Broken and Tender: A Quaker Theology for Today by Margery Post Abbott

The New Jim Crow byMichelle Alexander

The Environmental Case: Translating Values into Policy by Judith A. Layzer is a textbook that was assigned to me in my Enviornmental Policy class last semester and I really fkcing enjoyed it. It’s a book of case studies in environmental policy and it’s dense at times, but really interesting and enjoyable.

The Second Amendment: a Biography by Michael Waldman

Michelangelo’s Notebooks: the Poetry, Letters, and Art of the Great Master by Carolyn Vaughan. Just like. Genuinely. Genuinely. unintentionally hilarious. but also sometimes very sad, and very gay. I just adore Michelangelo. Just a shy foul-tempered repressed disaster. Jesus Christ.

#my next read is going to be richard ellmann's biography of oscar wilde #i'm v excited #henry speaks #vocallsama

262 notes · View notes

harry-leroy · 4 years

Text

Canon Checklist - December 2019

Plays with an asterisk (*) will be plays that I’ve read before but I’d really like to read again because it’s been a little bit >-<. Thought I’d keep you guys updated (because I’m gonna try and finish the canon before the year’s over - wish me luck).

Tragedies

Antony and Cleopatra

Coriolanus

Hamlet*

Julius Caesar

King Lear

Macbeth*

Othello

Romeo and Juliet*

Timon of Athens

Titus Andronicus

Histories

Henry IV, part 1 / part 2*

Henry V*

Henry VI, part 1 / part 2 / part 3

Henry VIII

King John

Richard II

Richard III

Comedies

All’s Well That Ends Well

As You Like It

The Comedy of Errors

Love’s Labours Lost

Measure for Measure

The Merry Wives of Windsor

The Merchant of Venice

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Much Ado About Nothing

Taming of the Shrew

Troilus and Cressida

Twelfth Night*

Two Gentlemen of Verona

Romances

Cymbeline

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

The Tempest

Winter’s Tale

Back at it again! Trying to actually finish the canon this time around because ahhh it’s break and I should do that. To be fair, it’s only been about a year since I got into Shakespeare, so I’m not pushing myself too hard at this point about it. But I’ve also got a thesis that I need to start thinking about ahhhh.....

Anyway!

I read King John! Wow that play was a mess. Everyone was high-key a disaster, but you know what? I enjoyed it. Motherhood was a big theme that hit me with this play, and it was quite nice to see so many well-rounded mother figures in it (as in many other plays it’s like hey! the mother’s dead, we don’t know where she is, but does it matter? *the answer is yes, because these men would seriously get their vibes checked had they been there). I adore Blanche of Castile and I’ve also fallen into the trap of just adoring Philip Falcounbridge because who doesn’t love that bastard?

It’s on to The Merchant of Venice!

10 notes · View notes

noshitshakespeare · 5 years

Note

I read lots of Shakespeare and took lots of college classes about Shakespeare and now i want to expose myself to different texts. I know Arden Shakespeare is very popular but i was wondering if you had any suggestions or if you have different preferences for different plays! My favorites include... hamlet, Macbeth, antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, winters tale, tempest, midsummer, twelfth night...

Hi @disneyinnocent-blog ! Sorry for taking so long to reply. I suppose you’ve read my Shakespeare Editions Guide?

I do sometimes have preferences according to play, but that’s not necessarily because other editions are no good. Generally speaking, the Arden, Oxford and New Cambridge editions are much alike in terms of quality, their introductions and ease of use. But there are some editions in all series that haven’t been updated for a while. For instance, Arden has plans for new editions, but their most up-to-date version of Measure for Measure is the second edition published in 1964, same with All’s Well that Ends Well, published in 1954. Same goes for Oxford, many of whose major editions were (while not as old as the Arden ones), were published in the 1980s (including Hamlet), hence the push for the New Oxford Shakespeare, though that only comes as a large complete works volume. The Arden editions are about to go out of date too, since they’ve commissioned editors to start on the fourth series now.

So for Hamlet, my recommendation is either New Cambridge or Arden. The Oxford edition is a conflated edition, which means it takes bits from the different quartos and folios of Hamlet and combines it into one edition. That’s easy enough to read, but for clarity and scholarly use, the New Cambridge, which is based on the Q2 and gives textual variants on page is the most versatile. The Arden edition is the most recent version because they just published a revised edition. They separate the play into the main edition, which is the Second Quarto version, and an additional volume that contains the first quarto and the first folio texts. There may be benefits to doing this in terms of clarity, but it’s a tad unwieldy, costs more to get both editions, and I’m not sure its necessary to reprint the entire text to see textual variants (though the first quarto is an exciting thing to see in its entirety).

I have a personal fondness for the Oxford edition of Macbeth, but the Cambridge and the Arden editions are newer, with Arden being the newest. I own those too, but haven’t used either extensively, because when I teach the play I use my trusty Oxford editions with all my notes in. In the case of a text like this, where there’s only one source (the folio), there’s not all that much variation between the texts, although each text treats the question of Middleton’s revisions differently, some with more scepticism than others (the Oxford edition is pretty much positive about Middleton’s hand in the play as we have it).

For Anthony and Cleopatra, I also use the Oxford edition. The Arden edition was published within a year of the Oxford edition, so there’s not much difference between the two in that sense (the Cambridge edition is a few years older, but also good). Once again here they all have good quality introductions and it’s hard to choose one over the other because there’s only one source (folio). I like and am familiar with Michael Neill (the Oxford editor)’s work as an academic, so that sways me somewhat.

With Julius Caesar, I don’t have a personal preference. This is one of the few texts I’ve never taught in class so I’ve never needed to think about what edition to set. Again, it’s based on just the folio so there are no controversial editorial decisions to be made about this text. I know that the New Cambridge released an updated edition which would be the newest one in terms of scholarship.

Funny how many of your favourites are ones that are based on just the folio. The same applies to The Winter’s Tale, and since the three main editions were published all within a year of one another there’s little difference in terms of newness either. The key thing editors face with this play is how they deal with the Leontes’ complex speeches, and all three editions do this well, giving their own reasons for taking the approach they do. I use Stephen Orgel’s Oxford edition right now because I’m drawn to his conception of ‘the poetics of incomprehensibility’, and so I think his introduction rather illuminating.

For A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of those texts with two quarto editions as well as a folio version, but there are very few substantial differences between the versions, which makes it reasonably straightforward for editors. Most will follow the Q1 text because there’s evidence to suggest that was printed from Shakespeare’s manuscript (the ‘foul papers’ as they’re called). Any changes tend to be emendations of obvious errors and improvement of the consistency of speech prefixes and such. The Oxford edition is the oldest, published in 1994. Cambridge edition came out in 2003; it’s rather short in terms of introduction and other material. The Arden edition is the newest, published in 2017, which means I own an edition I haven’t used very heavily. A cursory look suggests that it’s got lots of great extras, and that it contains a lot of material on more recent productions and scholarship as well as a robust appendix.

Last but not least, Twelfth Night is another of those texts that wasn’t published until the printing of the first folio so no big issues there. Oxford is oldest again, published 1994 (a good edition, mind); Arden came out in 2008, and Cambridge has a third edition that came out in 2017, which is an updated version of their 1985 first edition, which had a second edition in 2004. That just means that the main editing on the text (notes and stuff) hasn’t changed, but it has a new introduction that takes into account newer developments. I think all editions are pretty good; no great preference here.

I don’t know how much help all this is, but you can see that for the most part it’s a matter of minute personal preferences, unless it’s a text like Hamlet. If you’re a scholar you’ll probably end up with a full set of all editions and which you’ll need to update as new editions come out. If you’re a casual Shakespeare lover you might just choose a particular set and stick with it for aesthetic reasons (as good a reason as any if you’re choosing between editions which are essentially as good as each other).

#disneyinnocent-blog #asks #Shakespeare #editions #Shakespeare editions #Cambridge #Arden #Oxford #apparently this blog is 3 years old today #I'm having a busy term and have been sadly too inactive on this blog

34 notes · View notes

themalhambird · 5 years

Text

Shakespeare Tag Game

tagged by @skeleton-richard

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I HATE: The Winter’s Tale.

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I THINK IS OVERATED: Hamlet.

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I THINK IS UNDERRATED: I mean, underrated is so subjective. All my Shakespeare guys love the same plays I do, and I don’t claim to have a thorough understanding of the various levels of (un)popularity of every one of his plays. Having said that... maybe Measure for Measure?

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I LOVE: Henry IV Part 1, Much Ado about Nothing

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I CHERISH: King Lear. Mainly because I got to see it with IAN MCKELLAN IN and also it got my sister in to Shakespeare.

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I COULD SEE AGAIN AND AGAIN: Much Ado About Nothing, Henry IV Part I, Richard II, Twelfth Night...

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I STILL WANT TO DO: Do as in preform? Idk, I’d do most of them if given the chance. And also possibly a male role, I feel so much more confident in them, idk why. Plus, I want an excuse to wear hose. And Now I am getting side tracked, so I will move on to Shakespeare Play I Still Want To Do as in “get around to actually reading/watching” and say that King John is next on my reading list.

SHAKESPEARE PLAY THAT MADE ME FALL IN LOVE WITH SHAKESPEARE: Othello & Macbeth, as my year 9 and GSCE texts. I don’t love love either play (and they didn’t make me love-love Shakespeare either) , but they did pre-dispose me to have an interest in Shakespeare so that when I got to University...

SHAKESPEARE PLAY THAT CHANGED MY LIFE: Richard II. First year of university, and holy shit, this play. I don’t know where to start. I adore it. It’s the first thing that’s ever made me vaguely consider getting a tattoo. I got research published so that I could talk about the flint castle snoggage scene-- and it got me in to the Shakespeare side of tumblr, which means this play is responsible for at LEAST five new friends, all of who make my days considerably brighter.

GUILTY PLEASURE: Going to Stratford upon Avon, or The Globe, and buying Shakespeare merchandise I don’t need but really, really want....(One day, I am going to have one of those Shakespeare Rubber Ducks, because I Love Shakespeare and also Rubber Ducks it’s like the best of both worlds.)

SHAKESPEARE PLAY I SHOULD HAVE SEEN BY NOW BUT HAVE NOT: Henry V. I’ve just...never got round to watching any recording of it or anything, even though I have had Alex Hassel and Jennifer Kirby as Henry and Cate for three years now. It just doesn’t grip me the way the other three of that tetralogy does.

tagging @nuingiliath @shredsandpatches @malvoliowithin . I think a lot of people have already been tagged, but if you want to do it feel free

#shakespeare #me stuff

6 notes · View notes

ask-shakespearehigh · 5 years

Text

Q&A post with the Mods!!!!

This is going to be a long one oh boy

How strict is the delineation of creative control vis-a-vis characters/plays between the mods? (@pedanticlecturer)

We generally have the plays split up along lines of “what we know”— we have a list at the very beginning of the blog. Sometimes we’ll draw the others’ characters (mostly me drawing some of Star’s…) but even then the final say on characterization is up to the “main” mod for that play — mod aster

what aster said -- mod star

What is your favorite play? What is your favorite character in terms of how they were written in the source material? (@pedanticlecturer)

I think my favorite play overall is Macbeth, just because I like the vibes (and the fact that I too could kill Macbeth), the fact that you don’t say it’s name in theatres, and the fact that it’s a play I did a full read through and analysis of in class. Favorite character? Puck from Midsummer. — mod aster

uhhhh,, hmm. ive always had a soft spot for midsummer since i saw it with aster esp bc of how fun the costumes were. of the comedies it has the largest potential to be the most visually pleasing bc of the concept of fairies,,,and im gay and dramatic so i love that. id die if i got to costume design for midsummer,,,or be in it,,,yeah. fav character. hmm. probably mercutio?? i recently saw a version of romeo and juliet where mercutio was played by a woman and oh my god it was amazing!!! not to mention mercutio’s portrayal in baz luhrmann's INCREDIBLE version of r n j!!! (I based my mercutio design on him) he just spends the entire time making dick jokes. love that. -- mod star

How do you answer asks so fast? I mean it's great but I'm impressed 😂 (Anon)

Personally, it’s a mix of: notifications on, quick drawing speed, and using the blog to avoid my class work — mod aster

aster is fast and (as you can see from all of my answers) im lazey -- mod star

Are there any elements/characters of the plays you're covering that you would have liked to work into this blog's plot, but couldn't due to the constraints of the setting or the synthetic nature of the blog? (@pedanticlecturer)

I wanted to make everyone gay but unfortunately due to plot constraints we have to have some hets but that wont stop me from making it lgbt as possible. -- mod star

I did want to make The Tempest more of a central play, but it just didn’t translate well. Similarly, other supernatural elements like the witches in Macbeth. This isn’t so much a constraint mentioned, but my own time/energy means that I want to show the Macbeth backstory, in a specific format, but I can’t right now— mod aster

Is there a hierarchy of import when it comes to each play's individualized impact on shakespeare high's general arc? If so, what plays are crucial to the foundation of the story? Which ones did you do mostly for shits and giggles? (@pedanticlecturer)

This is phrased like an ACT question and i might not answer it right so sorry in advance but: mod aster and i only selected a few plays for each of us to do given we dont know all of shakespeare’s works, but we tend to put more emphasis on the the more well known. But it also comes down to 1. How much we have plotted out for each play and 2. What the followers ask about most. Our two most popular are hamlet and macbeth bc people are familiar w those but around march caesar always becomes relevant again. I didnt even have designs for some of the characters until someone asked about them. -- mod star

I would say the same as star— it generally comes down to what people ask about. I will say that the overall plot is sort of separated into “has happened” and “is happening”. Like, the human potion of Midsummer, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth are all in the “aftermath” portion, while Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet, among others, are happening. We’re trying to incorporate as much as we can, and I don’t think any of them were really put in without some thought.— mod aster

What personal significance does shakespeare hold in ur guys' lives? (@pedanticlecturer)

I go to a theater school rn and so ive dealt w shakespeare (although not all of them) it also helps that i was in loves labours lost last year as moth and that i read hamlet and r n j. Theres also a theater in my state that always does One Big Shakespeare per season and they always do them super well!!! My love for shakespeare probably started w seeing midsummer at that theater w mod aster!!! So. Theater kid rights!! -- mod star

To be honest, I got back into Shakespeare Because of the blog. I’ve been friends with some people that got really Pretentious about Shakespeare, and it kinda put me off of it. I did have a book of abridged plays (the plays’ plots written out in prose, basically) that I read as a kid, which is what got me into not only the plots of a lot of the plays, but also the idea of having them illustrated. And, same as star, the theater in state does the One Big Shakespeare— and they tend to do some really cool things with the costumes, setting them in diff time periods. I haven’t been able to see any lately since I’ve moved, but they still slap. — mod aster

🥰😘💙🥰🥰💜💟🥰I 😍💗💚😍😍LOVE🖤🖤 YALL ♥️♥️🧡💛💚💝❣️💕💘💖💗💓💞💝❤️💛💜 okay now i have a question i swear— how long have the two of you been doing art??? and what were your first shakespeare plays??? (@hellaghosts)

Uhh i started drawing when i was like idk 12 and i have the giant boxes of sketchbooks to prove it!!! I moved to digital art at abt 14-15 but mostly stayed traditional until this yr when i got a Neat New Tablet so some of my sketchbooks are sitting abandoned rip. My first shakespeare was either romeo and juliet or midsummer nights dream and i love both of them v much!!! I have a very old piece of art that i did for r n j for my freshman class assignment on it and it hasnt aged well alsdjfjafd circa 2016 i think??? -- mod star

Oh man. I started drawing when I was about 10, but it was Bad. I don’t think I got much into drawing again until I was about 14? Sometime around the end of middle school/beginning of high school. I would say I started getting into drawing as more than doodling/coloring edits sometime around 2015-16? I would draw on my iPad with my finger, then I got a tablet for my computer, and now I pretty much stick to my iPad with an Apple Pencil. My first Shakespeare play was….. uh…… probably Midsummer???? I have No idea. We would go to plays when I was little, so I honestly don’t remember if I saw others before. It may have been Romeo and Juliet— I had that book where it was the original and the “modernized” with the little dog that explained things— which, if you know it makes sense, but if you don’t is probably a bonkers answer. — mod aster

Do you think this blog has like? An overarching thesis (be it b/c intentionally or simply b/c ur own take on the world has bled thru to the point where u believe it’s central to the piece at this point)? (@pedanticlecturer)

Not gonna lie, I had to read that like three times AND dm you to figure out what you were asking from us and all I have is “be gay, respect women, write your own happy endings”. — mod aster

This blog started with an ides of march shitpost and you think we have enough brain energy to write a whole thesis? I projected feelings of found family onto my half of the blog but idk if that counts. Be gay do crime 420 69 -- mod star

What’s the nature/rough dynamic of ur relationship? How do y’all know each other? (@pedanticlecturer)

Met mod aster when i was like 4 and even tho we didnt live close we became like, best friends although the Best part didnt start until we were like 13-ish and eventually we talked like non stop (about anime and homestuck. Yknow. 13 year old kid things) and we didnt see each other a lot bc of Distance and now its even worse bc aster is in colleg.,e but we consider each other siblings regardless of family bc we’re adopted into our own respective families so that bled over into our friendship and it would feel weird calling him anything other than my brother now. We’ve seen each other at our best and worst and if you really want a good insight on what we’re like as siblings watch griffin and justin mcelroy’s overview video of catlateral damage wherein i am griffin and he is the long suffering justin. -- mod star

Star is basically my long distance sibling and functionally the only cousin I recognize bc like their parents are basically an aunt and uncle and like our dads look enough alike that we’ve both accidentally gotten the wrong dad for a hug or similar so like. Anyways yeah Star is the Griffin to my Justin, complete with our absent middle brother who we love dearly— mod aster

Dubiously relevant q but what kind of music do y’all listen to when u do art (if that is indeed a habit either of u partake in) (@pedanticlecturer)

It can depend on the piece? I was working on some (unrelated) oc prints that were song-focused, and for those I just listened to said song on loop. Sometimes I have playlists. Sometimes I’ll just be in a Mood and throw a song on loop. But a lot of time for the blog, I’ll listen to The Adventure Zone for the billionth time, because I have Too Much Attention. I’ve also, on request from Star, linked the most recent “loop song”.— mod aster

I tend to obsess over the same like 3 songs every few weeks so those get listened to on repeat but it also depends on the tone of what im drawing or who im drawing i might genre switch bc of that. If im drawing ophelia i stick to lana del rey and if im drawing hamlet its the neighborhood, horatio is sufjan stevens etc. i have categorized,. Most of the characters i draw into different songs/genres/energies of music but not like i ever follow that. Sometimes i just pull up a really long nonsense video and forget to draw. Essentially: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ -- mod star

How’d y’all come up with ur pseudonyms? (@pedanticlecturer)

I love space so much and my main blog is starryeydsailor space gay rights!! Im also tiny and full of energy and bright so basically i;m star -- mod star

Uhhhh i was like “hey i want to do uhhhhhh flower?” And then I google searched flower names until I found one I liked —- mod aster

How did you end up deciding the rough timeline of events in canon? (@pedanticlecturer)

It’s mostly determined by like. How we choose per story? If that makes sense. Like, we just take story by story, and decide “is it happening, has it happened, and when?” And then we fit them together in relation to each other just by dint of. All existing at once. Like, I knew I wanted Macbeth to be in aftermath, because like, even though there’s no murder, the way I’ve translated it to the AU is still kinda heavy, and it’s something that I don’t know that I could do properly if it were happening right now. Also, it’s more interesting IMO to have them at different times. Tl;dr we wing it per story and slot them together— mod aster (mod star agrees I just can word better, in theory)

If you could tell the story of shakespeare high in a different format than an ask blog, would you? Obviously y'all are making very good use of the format, but would you want to write this as a animated series or like? a comic book? or is the form inseparable from the story? (@pedanticlecturer)

I kinda wanted to do a webcomic or maybe to plot develop through like, animatics but the element of surprise comes from the asks we get and really makes us think so the blog is a good start. We didnt think we’d get this far -- mod star

Pretty much what Star said— there are certain elements where it’d be neat to do as a comic or as an animatic. Like, the fantasy dream is like, an anthology webcomic of each story, where you can like, see other characters in the background and stuff. But to be honest, we develop a lot by what we’re asked— there was a post about developing worldbuilding by being asked questions and then pretending you’ve thought about the answer, and it’s not far off. Personally, it’s hard to just lay out a story, because I have a whole WORLD and what’s relevant? What are people interested in? It’s by getting questions that I can then focus in on an area to develop. And yeah, we Super didn’t think we’d get this far lmao — mod aster

Any headcanons about your characters that you don't think will ever come up on the blog through asks or plot posts? (@pedanticlecturer)

I could make a whole separate post for this!!!!! Mostly its voice headcanons (and by mostly i mean like 1 or 2) or relationship hcs!!!! -- mod star

Honestly same. I don’t think I have voice headcanons for mine, though I bet I could find some. I’ve got a bunch of miscellaneous headcanons that just kinda float around, but like they’re scattered, too numerous for this post, and also not always things I’m sure are canon yet.— mod aster

#mod post #mod aster #mod star #q and a #birthday #we cant seem to read more AND tag so like brb gonna go kill god

5 notes · View notes

bellesdiaries · 6 years

Photo

Of Books and Blue Bloods: A Modern BATB Tale

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Hannah (@funnygirltthatbelle)! I hope that this season has been a lovely time for you. I know how much you enjoy modern BATB AUs, and so I’ve crafted a short modern story for your holiday gift. I hope you like it! [Somehow this turned kinda angsty at the end??] xo - Shelley (@bellesdiaries)

***

PRINCE PUMMELS POLICEMAN

During yesterday’s press meeting, Chief Palace Correspondent Monsieur Cogsworth revealed that Prince Adam, Duke of Villeneuve, will be serving community service during the holidays, in response to his brazen behavior towards a local Paris police officer earlier this week.

This incident marks the fourth time the prince has acted in public in an “unseemly manner,” according to Cogsworth.

The Tribune has confirmed that the prince’s sanction has been issued for a one-month duration. The nature of the community service, however, remains a mystery.

When asked whether this newest attempt to tame the wild prince was thanks to a judiciary bribery, Cogsworth was unable to comment.

***

The clipped sound of heels against old wood floors jolts him from his stupor; the incessant pounding aggravates the dull throbbing behind his eyes, thanks to his lingering hangover. He lets out a low growl.

The heels come to a halt behind him, briefly scuffing against the newly polished floor. His lips twitch. Mrs. Potts is going to have a field day about that.

A throat clears.

He turns away from his desk slowly, taking his time to study her, from that pair of small, black, closed-toed scuffing culprits that once upon a time might have been fashionable, up to the second-hand blazer that hugs her thin waist unpretentiously. He ends his steady perusal at her pretty face, a face that appears warm and inviting, with deep, brown eyes that seem to draw him in, even as they dispel anger from across the room.

He sees the fire behind her eyes. He recognizes that inner turmoil at once. No one’s ever looked at him so openly before. It both terrifies and intrigues him.

He feels himself sobering as he drinks her in.

“You’re not my new bodyguard, are you?” he asks with a tease in his voice.

She frowns, tipping her head a little, as though he’s just presented her a mathematical quandary. He likes the delicate way her eyebrows pull together.

A throat clears again, and for the first time Adam notices Lumiere standing beside her, having escorted her into the room. To be honest, he hadn’t even realized his butler/friend/mentor was there until now. She commands all his attention so effortlessly. Even in the silence, she exudes confidence and seems to fill the space. Her presence is both threatening and intoxicating.

He can’t help the treacherous way he lingers on that little pinched valley that remains between her eyes, wanting to know how it got there, wanting to find a way to unravel her.

“May I present his royal highness, Prince Adam,” Lumiere supplies.

She doesn’t courtesy.

She doesn’t waver.

His lips twitch at her boldness, as he spots the judgement in her eyes. She’s already made up her mind about him, and at least preemptive disappointment is something he’s familiar with.

“You must be my father’s newest project for me.” He raises an eyebrow, challenging her to deny it.

That seems to agitate her a little. Finally, she says, “Your highness, I am here because my students and I had the privilege of being selected for your little...community service venture.”

Something about her need to defend herself amuses him.

“And just what will this venture include?” he asks, knowing the answer from his early briefing with Cogsworth but wanting to hear it from her anyway.

Lumiere is about to jump in to her rescue, but she lifts her chin and proudly continues, “Tutoring. Classic Literature.”

He rolls his eyes. Of course.

“And who are you exactly?” he asks, sauntering just a little closer, invading her personal space the way she’s invading his lifestyle. He knows the answer to this, too, but he likes making he squirm.

She swallows but doesn’t retreat. He’s beginning to like her more and more by the moment. “My name is Belle Dupont.”

Cogsworth’s words echo in his mind.

She was ranked highest in her class at university and has a second degree in mechanical engineering. She could be tutoring you, sire.

Interesting that she doesn’t feel the need to list her qualifications. Yet she holds herself in high enough caliber not to quiver in front of royalty.

“Is it short for something?” he demands.

“No.”

“Pity. Belle is so…plain,” he lies smoothly, enjoying the taste of her name on his lips more than he would ever care to admit. Under normal circumstances, the name is plain. But for her...the name holds an uncanny sort of power.

Her eyes flare for just a second, before she reigns in her reaction. He appreciates that he’s already irritating to her. Her reaction to him is predictable and entertaining and safe. The sooner he scares her off, the sooner this miserable endeavor will end for both of them.

***

During the first week Belle spends at the palace going over lesson plans and introducing him to a few of her students, Adam does everything he can to sabotage her efforts.

Yet the more time he spends in her fierce yet somehow refreshing company--in watching how she patiently instructs both the meekest and loudest of teenagers, in half-heartedly trying to follow her example--Adam starts to feel a change inside him.

He doesn’t know when it happens exactly. Somewhere between throwing out innuendos that make her blush and the first time he unintentionally, genuinely makes her laugh. Somewhere between dreading grading assignments over afternoon tea and looking forward to political debates over late-night glasses of wine.

Turns out, Belle is even smarter than her resume boasts.

She knows three languages and is well-versed in music and art and history and political science. In some ways, she’s more equipped for royal life than he is. He’s never met someone so much his equal...and yet so incredibly not his equal. She’s definitely of a higher caliber, not him.

So what is a sweet girl from a small-town French village, who rose to success only through hardwork and merciful scholarships--something his privilege will never understand--doing wasting her talents as a secondary educator? What is she doing wasting her time with him? he wonders. She got a degree in mechanical engineering, and yet here she is teaching Shakespeare? It doesn’t make any sense. Nothing about her makes sense.

His answer comes the day he finds her sobbing in the atrium.

At first, she tries to run away from him, to bury her tears, to pretend to be stronger than she feels. And he knows exactly what that’s like.

He doesn’t let her run, though, pulling her into the safety of his arms from behind; and finally, after an eternity, she spins and lets herself sink into his embrace. He holds her for a long time as she unleashes all her pent up sorrow onto his chest. His heart breaks a little with hers that day, in the best way. The fact that she finally, tentatively, almost trusts him enough to be vulnerable like this fills him with a strange, wonderful warmth. Like maybe there is hope for him after all. Like maybe there is hope for them.

When she finally manages to calm herself down, she mumbles through a croaked voice against his soaked sweater, “My father...h-he has dementia. He doesn’t always remember me. Today was...” She sniffles. “Today was one of those days.”

So that’s it. She is here under duress, only it’s not for the blackmail or extortion reasons he suspected. She’s really here to help her father. Medicine couldn’t save his mother, but it can save her father. Or at least, give him small comforts during his final days.

She must miss him terribly. How much is she sacrificing just to make his penance a little bit easier?

Selfishly, he swallows down the lump of guilt in his throat. He likes having her here too much to let her go so soon.

***

By week two, Adam and Belle have fallen into such an easy routine, it’s almost hard to believe there was a ever a time she wasn’t here at the palace, with him. He’s helped her prepare her students for winter exams, and she’s given him something positive to focus on, something constructive.

Although, if she knew the full extent of his thoughts regarding her, she might not consider their time together so constructive.

He can’t help the way he gets distracted by that sweet, memorizing valley between in her eyebrows, by the way she nibbles at her bottom lip, by the bangs she’s trying to grow out that keep falling into her eyes.

“Which author do you want to start with for the senior’s exam?” he asks, glancing up from his stack of papers.

“Is it too predictable if I say Shakespeare?”

“That is too predictable. But it also shows taste. So do you have a favorite? And don't say--”

“Romeo and Juliet,” she answers brightly.

He groans. “That is very predictable. And one I think we must remedy.”

She tilts her head at him, playfully this time, her high ponytail bouncing behind her shoulders. She’s already so much more carefree with him that she was during their first encounter. So much has changed between them in such a short time. “What would you suggest, your highness?”

Oh, now he knows she’s teasing him. She never addresses him by his official title unless she’s trying to goad something out of him. “Mmmm.” He leans back in his chair, pretending to give it serious consideration. “Macbeth.”

She makes a face, disgusted. “Didn't care for it.”

“What about Hamlet?”

She rolls her eyes. “Of course, a prince enjoying another prince’s tale of woe is me. That's not predictable at all.”

“Twelfth Night.”

That gives her pause. “I've actually never read that one.”

That surprises him. He springs out of his seat, slipping his hands into his pockets, and moves closer to her, softly, carefully, as though she’s a doe he doesn’t want to frighten away. “Oh, I think you'll enjoy it,” he says gently. “It's about a strong, independent woman who's not afraid to speak her mind and who wins the heart of a nobleman simply by spending time with him, even as she pretends to be someone else.”

Belle finally looks up at him, and he notices the way her eyes linger on his lips. “What are you saying?” she whispers.

“Oh, I'm simply summarizing the play. What did you think I was referring to?” he teases, earning a playful swat from her in return. He likes spending time with her. He likes how passionate she gets when she recounts a story. He likes making her coffee using his “hipster vase,” as she calls it, and showing her his favorite spot in the whole palace, the small rose garden tucked away from public view, his own little sanctuary that he now shares with her.

They talk so much more than Shakespeare, conversations effortlessly bleeding into their hopes and dreams and fears and failures. He's never felt more exposed. He's never felt more free. By week three, she’s not looking at him the way other people do, like they're expecting him to be more than he is. She treats him like a real person, and it's through their time together he slowly starts to realize exactly what kind of person he is at all. He's only himself when he's with her.

He learns that she wants to travel, and he delights in enlightening her about all the corners of the world he's been to, in seeing the world through her innocent eyes. He likes the way her eyes spark as she listens to him with rapt attention, kneeling in the grass, resting her chin against her open palm, uncaring about the state of her dress or grass stains or anything superficial. He likes being the one to fuel the fire of her spirit.

***

The prince is nothing like the media makes him out to be. He’s gentle and kind and...so much more sensitive than anyone she’s ever met. She’s seen him, the real him, the man he keeps locked away from prying paparazzi eyes, the man even his father doesn’t know exists. But she knows. She’s watched the way he interacts with her shy teenage students and pulls smiles out of solemn faces, the same way he pulls smiles out of members of his staff. The same way he’s pulled her out of her own insecurities. When had she let that happen? When did she let her guard down long enough to let his goodness scale the walls of her heart and take her by surprise?

On her second-to-last night at the palace, they take a trip to the top terrace. And for the first time, Belle can understand why being a royal may not be so bad after all, not when you get to go to sleep to a view like this, soaking in a sea of city lights.

Belle swallows as she studies his profile, memorizing the shape of his rugged jaw, watching as those perfectly blue eyes flicker against the few stars they can see.

And when he takes her by the hand, she doesn’t try to stop him, doesn’t pull away, even though she knows she should. It would be better for both of them if she just left now. But she doesn’t want to leave him yet. Leaving him tomorrow is going to hurt too much as it is.

“I wish I didn’t have to be a prince,” he breathes, voicing her own trembling thoughts. His voice sounds rough, deeper than usual. Is he dreading saying goodbye too, or is it merely the cold weather? Or has she only been imaging their growing feelings for one another this whole time?

“I wish I could be just...me.”

She squeezes his hand. “You are you. You are you to me.”

He huffs. “That’s true. I don’t know how to be me without you.”

When he looks at her again, her heart freezes. For the first time, he truly lets her see...everything, all of his worries, all of his uncertainty about the future. Like a whirlpool, those eyes suck her in and send her spinning.

At the last second, a twinge of self-doubt sneaks back through the cracks of her heart. He probably looks at all the girls that way.

But then he’s leaning his head down towards her, so slowly, at first she doesn’t even notice. He stops just a breath away from her lips, letting the final step be her choice, letting her take the plunge if she so dares. And for better or worse, she does.

He kisses her gently at first, but soon their lips grow desperate, and she digs her fingers into his jacket, pulling him close. His lips are full and soft, while his beard roughly scraps against her skin, jarring her, startling her like electricity. She likes the feel of him, all of him.

When they finally break apart for air, he rests his forehead against hers, his rough breath hitting her in the face.

“Is it wrong that I’m tempted to throw another punch at a police officer, just to get you to stay?”

She laughs once, but it fades quickly.

“I don’t want to let you go.”

She shuts her eyes, willing the tears back. “Even though I’m technically a commoner?”

He runs his thumb in slow strokes over her cheek, then down her arm and over the back of her hand. “You’re anything but common to me. The palace staff loves you. I love you. France will love you, too. This isn’t the 18th century, Belle.”

She shakes her head. Everything he’s saying...it’s wonderful. But it’s not enough. “Adam, I...I can’t give up being a teacher just to be your girlfriend. I have a life. I have plans and dreams and...”

“Well, it’s not like I’m in line to a throne or something. Maybe I could...step down for a while. Be your boyfriend. Besides, the world is changing. My father, my family...we must change with it.”

She starts. “I can’t ask you to give up everything just to be with me.” It’s too much. It’s far too much.

“You’re not asking. I’m offering,” he answers, like it’s as simple as that.

“Would you even survive without a hundred people at your beck and call?”

His eyes narrow a bit, reading her question for what it really is. An easy cop out. A way for him to break her heart without breaking her in the process. He reads her so well. He smiles, undeterred and tender. “Try me.” He tucks her into his side, and she goes willingly, clinging to his warmth. “What do you say we run away?” he breathes against her hair.

His words are somber, and they strike her straight in the heart.

Right now it’s impossible, of course. But it’s nice to pretend, just for one night. Maybe one day, things could be different. Maybe when her father doesn’t need her. Maybe when she pays off all her student loans. Maybe when he’s not constantly in the public eye.

“Maybe,” is all she can say in reply; it’s all they can promise one another.

He sighs, and she can feel the weight of his disappointment. Still, he presses on, her brave prince. “Happy New Year, Belle.”

He kisses her again just as the fireworks begin, though the colors in the sky are nothing compared to the fire he stirs inside her. He kisses her through her tears. She doesn’t hide her tears from him anymore.

Thankfully, it’s not goodbye. It’s a beginning.

#batbhge #batb holiday gift exchange #beauty and the beast au #batbedit #belle x beast #belle x adam #beauty and the beast #my stuff #my fic #of books and blue bloods

120 notes · View notes

smokeybrandreviews · 3 years

Text

Smokey brand Select: Violent Delights

10. Forbidden Planet

9. Ophelia

8. She’s the Man

Listen, this is a guilty pleasure. She’s the Man ain’t great. It;s actually pretty terrible, but i love it for how earnest this film is in telling it’s story. An adaption of Shakespeare’s gender-swap farce, Twelfth Night, it’s one of the few, comedic, plays that got the big screen treatment and Amanda Bynes carries this whole goddamn movie as this version’s Viola. I actually miss when Bynes wasn’t crazy and just made funny, endearing, sh*t like this. I mean, who doesn’t love Big Fat Liar, you know?

7. Scotland, PA

6. Hamlet

I feel like this is a cheat, like there would be something different here. I actually pondered the Lion King because, technically, that’s a Hamlet adaption but, the more i thought about it, the more this one had to go on the list. It’s just that good. The 1996 version of Hamlet, directed, screenplay written by, and starring Kenneth Branagh, is a whole ass classic. It’s a straight forward interpretation of the original play only updated with a nineteenth century aesthetic, which fits the narrative surprisingly well. This version of Hamlet is high f*cking art, man. It’s gorgeous in every way. The score, the costumes, the sets, the colors; All of it is a legitimate feast for the eyes. That said, this motherf*cker is four hours long so, you know, understand that sh*t going in. It;s worth, don’t misunderstand, it’s just real long in the tooth, man.

5. My Own Private Idaho

4. 10 Things I Hate About You

3. Throne of Blood

2. Romeo + Juliet

1. Ex Machina

#Smokey brand Select #Shakespeare

0 notes

findingthebard · 7 years

Text

Best of the Bard: “Most likely to...” awards for every Shakespeare play

I’ve got a few more posts coming up in the Best of the Bard series, including my favorite plays and a post about what I learned from this experience. For today, I wanted to have a little fun by providing the list of plays and then assigning each of them a “Most likely to…” award. Let me know what you think and what awards you would give your favorite plays!

The Tempest Most likely to sing a dirge at a karaoke party

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Most likely to make you laugh if you see it on stage

Taming of the Shrew Most likely to make sexist tools guffaw stupidly

Comedy of Errors Most likely to get a cheap laugh

As You Like It Most likely to be your BFF

Twelfth Night Most likely to give you whiplash

Two Noble Kinsmen Most likely to make you fall asleep

Measure for Measure Most likely to require parental guidance

Love’s Labour Lost Most likely to love slapstick

The Two Gentlemen of Verona Most likely to send you snail mail

The Merry Wives of Windsor Most likely to be set in the 1950s

Much Ado About Nothing Most likely to be a roller coaster

The Merchant of Venice Most likely to make you uncomfortable

All’s Well That Ends Well Most likely to make you tear your hair out

The Winter’s Tale Most likely to surprise you in a good way

Titus Andronicus Most likely to surprise you in a bad way

Pericles Most likely to aspire to Greek tragedy

King John Most likely to make you grateful not to have children

Richard II Most likely to make you fall in love with language

Henry IV Part 1 Most likely to feel ALL THE FEELS

Henry IV Part 2 Most likely to make you cry unexpectedly

Henry V Most likely to swell your heart with patriotism

Henry VI Part 1, 2, and 3 Most likely to make you question patriotism

Richard III Most likely to make you grateful you are not royalty

Henry VIII Most likely to increase your gratitude of the 21st century

Macbeth Most likely to give you shivers

Romeo and Juliet Most likely to refresh feelings of teenage angst

Cymbeline Most likely to be mispronounced

Troilus and Cressida Most likely to be awkward

King Lear Most likely to lessen parental guilt

Julius Caesar Most likely to elicit unintended laughs

Othello Most likely to keep you single

Timon of Athens Most likely to be underappreciated

Coriolanus Most likely to be forgotten

Antony and Cleopatra Most likely to be a drama queen

Hamlet Most likely TO BE

About Finding the Bard

View the Playlist

Submit a question

#shakespeare #William Shakespeare #theatre #lit #literature #writing #reading #books #bookstagram #best of the bard #finding the bard

43 notes · View notes

flappyfluellen · 7 years

Text

shakespeare plays rated

inspired by @malvoliowithin wooo

tragedies

hamlet: 10/10 my fave play ever, read my screenplay if you want to know all my Thoughts about hamlet, laertes is awesome, hamlet x horatio is otp, osric is an underrated character, the dialogue in this play is hella deep and has so many layers of meaning, all the relationships are so complex, every character is really interesting, contains some of the best language ever

julius caesar: 9/10 i love this one so so much, cassius is such a deep and relatable character and everyone else is great too, THE TENT SCENE, the dialogue in general, cool political thriller, loses a point for having a weird disjointed plot, but still wow the things you can do with this play

king lear: 10/10 it made me cry, THE CLIFF SCENE, i have too many feels about edgar and gloucester, aaah no one is good or evil in this play and it’s just so fascinating, they’re all great, this is another one with complex relationships, great plot too

macbeth: 7/10 a good solid play but not my fave, idk i just thought the characters were kinda distant and stuff, that being said it’s got a good plot and some really good lines, and fun magic stuff, i think the theme of madness is very interesting

othello: 10/10 it was so awesome to study this in english class, very sad and deep and the characters are great, there’s some really interesting gender stuff here too, and race too of course, it just applies so much to the present day

romeo and juliet: 6/10 don’t know the play well enough to pass lots of judgement but it’s fun and good and has an interesting theme around violence

histories

richard ii: 8/10 beautiful play, very interesting, very slightly too political but still good, i love richard, he gives fantastic speeches

henry iv pt 1: 10/10 awesome, great characters and fantastic humor, hotspur is just fabulous and so is hal, i laughed so hard at this play ok, the politics is interesting too

henry iv pt 2: 5/10 a little too dark, falstaff is boring in this one, many boring scenes, henry iv does get some amazing speeches though

henry v: 10/10 this play gives me nostalgia, fluellen is the best character ever, it contains team france and the horses and the leek scene and the tennis balls, what beautiful language too, “once more unto the breach” is my jam, really great plot too

comedies

as you like it: 4/10 weird play, may reconsider my rating if i see an actually good production, i love celia, i like that rosalind has so many lines, interesting gender stuff, i like jaques, what the hell is up with that ending though, almost none of the marriages make sense

comedy of errors: 7/10 very very silly and that is good

measure for measure: 9/10 dark and thought-provoking, DAMN this is relevant to today, isabella is amazing and angelo is a fun villain, weird sex jokes, loses a point for the plot being weird because of the goddamn duke what the hell dude

merry wives of windsor: 8/10 very funny, the best falstaff play, badass ladies drive the plot, not too deep but that’s ok, interesting cuckoldry theme, yay for hugh evans

merchant of venice: 8/10 i’ve only seen one production but it was very good and i want to read this play because it’s super interesting (and it contains a Gay Antonio)

midsummer night’s dream: 9/10 solid comedy, actually pretty deep, very funny, has its dark character moments, i’ve seen some amazing productions, i should read it again

much ado about nothing: 9/10 very witty, beatrice and benedick are otp, claudio and hero are notp but that drama is very interesting, has some Iconic dialogue and complex relationships

pericles: 7/10 the plot is awful but damn i love those characters ok, i was in it so i’m biased, the relationship between pericles and marina is so great, i quite like leonine for reasons, interesting theme of purity/chastity, the brothel scene is really something

the tempest: 8/10 this play got me into shakespeare and i am forever grateful, interesting characters and very good language, i should read it again, prospero is a complex character, antonio’s a great villain, trincuLO’S FISH SPEECH, i like how it can be so easily turned into sci-fi

twelfth night: 10/10 the best comedy, wow this play is deep, gender and class and so many themes, all the characters are really interesting, really funny but also dark, i’ve seen some incredible productions, poor malvolio, also everyone has a sexuality crisis and it’s great

winter’s tale: 6/10 idk what to feel about this play, it’s odd and disjointed, i haven’t read it yet so i should do that, i like how it’s a different take on the “man thinks wife is cheating but she’s not” theme

#various plays #review #my post #long post

16 notes · View notes

ranthrewrising · 7 years

Text

Hello Children

So over the year, I have been collecting quotes and sayings so I could pick one for my senior quote. Now that my senior year is near, I thought I would share. Enjoy mother fuckers "Oh good, peaches at a strip bar" "There are so many churches in this town because there are so many sinners" "I'd love to see Jesus, but I'm so hungry" "I got the picture, now let's go before we get shot" "I had a crush on a guy once, then another guy went and shot up his house. Good times" "The struggle is real bitches" "This is not a clothing optional class" - Mr.Buttner "don't let me school you on trap music." "Girl, I got more guns than Jesus" "yaaaasssss" - Mr.Buttner "I'm gonna unlike Mary though" Mr.Buttner "I can't even do dumbass chemistry" Grandeddy "Wait. You actually do work in this class?" "You can't put your problems In a tiny backpack" “You’re gonna die anyway, so just set your house on fire and drink snake venom. "Pay attention to John green" "Cow boys have always been in use, I know because I've used them" "God I love madonna" "From the womb to the tomb" "Put down im strong as a mofo". "Guess what, you have a father" "WABAM" -Buttner "*drops baby*"- Cathleen "Old age is for sissys" "375 bitches" "Why not sexy elbows" "The best part is when the black chick starts singing" "Brittney spears is my jam, toxic is my anthem" "Beer pong is an art" "So, there was a little caesers pizza on the side walk" "It's like nanny McPhee but with drinking" "He's driving through sheets getting cheese curds, he's so full of shit" "It takes two to procreate" "I am a snan if you will" "Screw the patriarchy" "Speaking of spicy, do you guys have any water" "Living with regret is a bitch" "I could do keg stands in a minute" "Those kids couldn't do shit. I drove my mustang off the dock of lochmere" "Settle down my toasted wheat thins" "Oh no ive been inconvinced" "I must call my family! *bird noise* " "If I get a concussion. I will find out where Greg lives and send him the bill" "Let's go sit on the apron *giddy laughter*" "If you don't give me this god damn candy corn, I will eat your hand" "Everyone had lumps and bumps" "Cool beans, beans of cool" -You are a fishmonger -Well, here is my leg -Take you me for a sponge, my lord? -Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in the shape of a camel? -Eat my leek "Attack? More like give candy aggressively" "Oh yeah? I told you not to do something and you did it anyway? Go fuck your self" "There will be no furries in my household" "Shooty shoot shoot" LMM "Oh god there are things that are happening" "Well the thing is...I don't know" "Look lady, I was on pain meds. I don't even know what happened yesterday" "Are you just being a dick on purpose now ?" "For a second, I forgot what a leaf was" "I'm gonna punch her right in the tits" "This is some catastrophe shit" "Could y'all do me a favor and make a lot of noise to drive her crazy?" -Could you stand in front of my bus so I can run you over?" "I loved Spanish, of course I had a hot teacher. God she was smokin. Damn shame she married the gym teacher" "Pumpkin pie and jack Daniels, never again" "Of course this is a fashion show, everywhere I go is a fashion show" "Well that's just you showin that you're a racist bitch" "I had mace in highschool" "Imagine this, a hot room with sweaty contorsanists" "Hell run his smart ass mouth, and when he turns around,I'll stab him" "I....I don't even know" "And Jesus was like, boi, give this man a break" "They've been gone a long ass time my guy" "Those Scottish men are very angry" "The website said I was sexually frustrated, I am going to die a virgin, so I guess it's right" “What an ass am I!” —Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2 “I am not a slut,” —As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 3 (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) “Hell is empty and all the devils are here,” —The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2 “Commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways,” —Henry IV Part 2, Act 4, Scene 5 “This is the excellent foppery of the world,” –King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2 “Making the beast with two backs,” —mOthello, Act 1, Scene 1 “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool,” —As You Like It, Act 5, Scene 1 “To tell thee plain, I aim to lie with thee,” —Henry VI Part 3, Act 3, Scene 2 (Works great for courting hot widows.) “I would rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me,” —Much Ado About Nothing, Act 1, Scene 1 “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me,” —Richard II, Act 5, Scene 5 “Marry, sir, in her buttocks.” —A Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 5 (No judgement here.) “My horse is my mistress,” —Henry V, Act 3, Scene 7 (Uh, there might be something wrong with that.) “Thou dost infect my eyes,” —Richard III, Act 1, Scene 2 “Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit,” —Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5 (“Wit” is Shakespearean slang for penis.) “[Wine] provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance,” —Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3 “I had rather live with cheese and garlic in a windmill, far, than feed on cates and have him talk to me in any summer-house in Christendom,” —Henry IV Part 2, Act 4 Scene 1 “Now, gods, stand up for bastards!” —King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2 “Villain, I have done thy mother!” —Titus Andronicus, Act 4, Scene 2 (This means exactly what you think it does.) “And thou unfit for any place but hell,” —Richard III, Act 1, Scene 2 “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” —Henry VI Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2 “Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell.” —Othello, Act 4, Scene 2 “Out, dunghill!” —King John, Act 4, Scene 3 “This is too long.” —Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2 "That's the same guy, he's just on a different corner. *like a hooker* he's selling bonsai, not bushes" "Team thucc for the win" "no hoochie mamas on the field" "God can't help you now" "Jesus used the vostros" "Don't bring a gun to a knife fight" “Suck my dick Confucius, because you have been declined bitch.” "He's 18 years old, that's illegal" "What's a vise? Oh the clampy thing" "You can go to a website called suck it.com" "I'm throwing fire and grabbing titties" "He kept coming like an asshole" "Us being the white people in there" "I am not a smart man" "frank sinatra is a cryptid and he gave me a blow job behind an applebees" "Which one is the salad fork and which one is the one I kill myself with" "Sometimes, I have an urge to stab people who pass the ball right to the goalies stick" "Shooting high to high makes me want to kick puppies" "I stabbed a kid in the neck with a pencil when I was 11, so I'm not afraid to stab you when you shoot high to high" "Smoke god, pray to weed, and respect women, Solomon 4:20" "I'm Mary fricken poppins!" "That happened 31 years ago, you need to let it go" "The oldest wasn't any help, she would sneak out at 2 in the morning to go horse riding" "He never called me by my name, it was either slick or the n word" "Mothman is real and he offered me cocaine in a dimly lit jc penny’s" "Aw no honey, you need to try all types of flavors"-my mother on dating "Who said just said daddy, get out" "If you ain't eat at a hooters, then you ain't shit" "I want it all" -cobra command "Luckily, im a messy bitch who loves drama"- Shea coulee "Let's change shit up!" Sasha Valour "Change the motherfucking world" Sasha Valour "Oh my god, he's gonna shit his pants" "Impress them with your lovemaking, then impress them with your lawmaking" "I have some bad news, but before I tell you, keep in mind that the wright bros could only stay airborne for 12 seconds" "-you blew it -super hard -complete buffoonery" "...tampons, what the hell is that? A wad of dry fucking cotton stuffed up there?" "Benedict Cumberbatch, who the fuck is that?"

#in the void #quotes #quote list #ryan #Charlie

19 notes · View notes

silenthillmutual · 5 years

Text

hanchanarts replied to your post “there’s literally no reason for us to have to read The Merchant of...”

Learning it in yr9 (grade8) , we were forced to believe that shakespeare was ahead of his time by addressing the anti-Semitism in their society (especially with Shylock's speech). But to me it didn't feel like that seeing as the only Jewish character was the villain AND was forced to become Christian as punishment, as well as his daughter converting for the sake of marrying a Christian man. Its sad to think that the education system is trying to make this seem okay

The only time that we discussed anti-Semitism was very briefly (which is just. appalling considering that it was college) when going over the Debate (TM) between Shakespearean scholars about whether the Merchant of Venice is truly meant to be seen as a comedy (which it is automatically classified as because it ends with a wedding, which was the only qualification for the category at the time) or as a tragedy, and whether you are meant to see Shylock as the villain or the hero of the story. depending on the version of the play and the staging, it may be implied that Shylock kills himself rather than to convert to Christianity.

But i really never got the impression that you were supposed to sympathise with Shylock. Shakespeare was ahead of his time in a lot of ways - The Tempest predicting America and how the English would treat the native peoples, Othello being a condemnation of racism, much of his poetry is about his love for men - but I really don’t think this is one of them. Of his tragedies that I’ve read (Othello, Macbeth, King Lear [another horrid play but for personal reasons], Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet), all of them make it clear from the outset who the villains are. Even his comedies (Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night) do that and so does his only romance (The Tempest) (I don’t remember much of his histories tbh... I only remember Richard III). The heroes might be bitter (Hamlet and Prospero, for example) but they are bitter for really good reasons and it’s clear that the audience is meant to sympathise with their pain and watch either their descent into despair or vindication as the plot unfolds, with the villains (Iago, Claudius and Gertrude depending on the adaptation, both of the Macbeths and Richard III himself, Demetrius for a comedic example) being very clear about their motives being heinous, sometimes breaking the fourth wall to illustrate that they are doing evil and they know they are doing evil even when they are the protagonists of his work. The heroes, especially of his comedies, tend to be affable, sometimes devil-may-care (for the men) and intelligent, often eye-rolling at the antics of their friends (usually the women). All of those describe Antonio or w/e the fuck his name was (I. utterly detested that guy so i never bothered to learn anyone’s name. i just remember it started with an A and Shylock’s daughter was Jessica), and there’s a speech where Shylock talks about knowing that taking a pound of flesh will kill Antonio and he wants it done anyway, he wants Antonio to die.

If that really wasn’t supposed to be anti-Semitic sentiment... first, why the hell did it end with a marriage, making it a comedy? He didn’t have to do that. I don’t think it would have been too much for him to flat-out make Shylock the protagonist and make it a tragedy. He was fully capable of doing that, considering that you are not supposed to doubt for a second that Othello is being wronged. Every racist remark by people during the course of Othello is clearly framed as being evil even if Iago’s motives are never entirely clear (is he racist? does he think Othello has slighted him? is he in love with Othello (there is actually a substantial amount of evidence to suggest that Iago is gay, and he and Othello do technically get married)? is he just a bastard? who knows!), it is clear that how people treat Othello is wrong. It’s never clear in Merchant whether you’re supposed to view how people treat Shylock is wrong or not. His comeuppance at the end where he is told “you can have you pound of flesh as long as it doesn’t kill him, also become a christian or kill yourself” is viewed as a victory and again it ends with a wedding and his daughter states how much she hates him and it’s just......... the whole thing is nasty.

Sorry this got REALLY long. I jsut really fucking hate this play lol

Also, like, just look at how Shylock is drawn on the cover of the manga (I don’t have this but my ex-qpp does. I have the copy of Othello around somewhere):

I know everyone is drawn with elf ears but this is still really gross.

#hanchanarts #nori replies #nori talks #antisemitism cw #shakespeare //#merchant of venice //#idk what the lit side of tumblr is like but i really dont want some apologist trying to fistfight me in my inbox about this #my ex: ''they made him hot!''#me: ''they made him stereotypically evil and antisemitic but ok alex''

0 notes

hominininae · 5 years

Text

Since it’s the end of the year, I thought I’d make a list of the Shakespeare plays that I read this year, mainly for my own records. I’ve read quite a few since September, so I need to have it written down someplace.

So, in (somewhat) chronological order:

Hamlet: This was the play that got me into Shakespeare! Obviously, Hamlet is a deeply flawed character and we all love to hate him, but I couldn’t help relating to him in his deeper and more introspective moments. This was the first literary work that I have read that depicted depression and mental illness in a way that I could closely identify with. To be honest, it was kind of a surreal experience to see some of my innermost thoughts put into words in a play that was written over 400 years ago. That’s not to say I think the character of Hamlet is a good person or that all of his decisions were justified -- quite the opposite really! He’s incredibly misogynistic, self-centered, and (directly or indirectly) causes almost every death in the play. However, I am more sympathetic to his character because of my own personal experiences with mental illness. (This is the play that I’ve thought about the most, if you haven’t noticed! I could write so much more but this post is going to be too long as it is)

Macbeth: I read this play immediately after Hamlet, which made for some interesting comparisons. They are both tragedies with ghosts, kings, and murders, but the contrast between Hamlet’s inaction and Macbeth’s immediate action was super cool! Were their actions due to an inherent difference between their personalities? Is it because Macbeth has people actively encouraging his murderous tendencies? What is the role of fate/destiny in their decisions? So many things to think about! Macbeth is also just a really fun play to read. I mean, it’s got witches, misleading prophecies, full-on war, and everyone’s favorite badass, Lady Macbeth.

Julius Caesar: This was my first reread of the year. I read it about two years ago for school, but I figured I should go back to it. Obviously, this is a play that is very relevant to our current state of political uncertainty. It addresses really important questions about idealism vs. realism, revolution, and how to deal with a failing/dying system of government. I listened to an interesting podcast about it, but if I’m being honest this play didn’t stick with me as much as the others.

Romeo and Juliet: This play gets so much undeserved flack from people who think it’s showing how love is stupid and teenagers are reckless. It’s a beautiful and tragic story about how society forces young people to make bad decisions, and it’s sad to see how many people hate it because of their experiences in school. There are so many heartbreaking moments and incredible lines of poetry and this play deserves so much better than being taught to every single edgy high school kid who just rattles off whatever their teacher told them. However, to end on a more positive note, I absolutely loved it and its commentary on society/generation gaps!

Much Ado About Nothing: Just. Nonstop. Roasting. So many burns in one play! I wasn’t a fan of the constant fears from men about women being unfaithful, but that’s exactly what the play was commenting on! Beatrice and Benedick are a great couple, and basically every man in the play is an asshole.

Coriolanus: This whole play could have been fixed if Coriolanus could just keep his mouth shut for 5 minutes. Seriously though, I liked the fact that Coriolanus refuses to play political games and always speaks his mind (characteristics that we find theoretically likable) and is still an incredibly unsympathetic character. He makes it clear that he hates the common people and always “tells it like it is”...sound familiar?

King Lear: Wow this play is huge! I really need to reread it because there is so much in it that I probably missed. There are about 100000 different plots going on at the same time, which can get kind of confusing. This play really ripped my emotions to pieces. It’s so bleak and depressing, but beautiful at the same time.

Twelfth Night: Another that I need to read again. I had to read it online, so I really want a physical copy so I can annotate and have the textual notes. My main takeaway: everyone is gay and it’s great!

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Probably the play that I was most familiar with before reading, because my local ballet company did a production several years back. I learned the story then, and then I read the play in middle school. It’s a fun play, and I would love to see a production of it!

The Tempest: Reading this play from the perspective of colonialism is really interesting. I had mixed feelings about Caliban’s treatment the whole time I was reading, and seeing it as a metaphor for how the Europeans treated the native peoples of lands they were colonizing helps to clarify those emotions a little bit. I’ve also just finished it, so I need some time to sort out my thoughts.

Goals for next year: Currently, I am reading Richard II. I want to read King Lear again, and I also want to read Othello. Hopefully, I can tackle some more histories and comedies as well, since I’ve gone pretty tragedy-heavy this year! I will admit that I have found the tragedies more interesting to read (I own 6 of the plays and they’re all tragedies), but maybe I just haven’t read enough of the other genres yet.

#shakespeare #me #wow i read a lot of plays #how did this happen

0 notes