Shakespeare Meme (because why not?)
Aug. 7th, 2019 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricLet us order them by genre, because I expect clusters:
COMEDIES
All's Well That Ends Well: Fairly sure I've neither read nor seen it
As You Like It: Saw a production at the Shakespeare in Glouster festival, some time between 2000 and 2002. May have read it? May not have. Invested all my cross-dressing obsesssion in 12th Night instead.
Comedy of Errors
Love's Labour's Lost I might possibly have seen this one at another Glouster festival. My brain tickles, but I can't recall anything about either the play or the possible production.
Measure for Measure
Merchant of Venice Unsure. I feel like I've read it, but it's equally possible that I've read *bits* of it, or perhaps at some point been in a class where it was being taught but I, a determined medievalist, was fudging the EM bits.
Merry Wives of Windsor: Saw this as an outdoor production by the Oxford Shakespeare Company in 2013. My first unspoiled Shakespeare since that first As You Like it, and the cause of an absolute revelation moment when I realised that while, yes, I could understand everything that had been said, normal adults don't. Yay, my degrees are worth something!
Midsummer Night's Dream: Studied it in seventh grade. Borrowed the text early to pre-read it over summer. Proceeded to spend all my prize money that year on buying a Complete Works (a truly heinous edition that didn't even have line numbers, wtf). Studied again in uni, although I can't swear that I actually re-read it then (I didn't do any assessment on it). Have probably seen at least one, maybe more movie versions.
Much Ado about Nothing: I think I read it at some point. Saw the Geneva English Drama Society production dir. Ben Crystal , in 2014.
Taming of the Shrew: Studied it in eight grade. Was assigned to write a new ending. I'm fairly sure I had her tie HIM to a chair. Saw the Bell Shakespeare all-woman touring production in Canberra (or was it Queenbeyan?) in 2009: absolutely shook. You think, going in, that they're somehow going to soften the blow by having it be all-woman, but no, it's absolutely stark, and all the more shocking because you somehow *expected* that it being all women would make it less violent.
The Tempest: Studied it in year 12. Deeply resent not having done the Othello unit instead. Saw a very weird production at the Valhalla in Glebe, very shortly before the Valhalla shut up shop entirely.
Twelfth Night: My favourite, my truest, my greatest love. Read it of my own accord at some point. Re-read it multiple times. Wrote fanfic of it for Yuletide, as you do. Saw the Bell production at the opera house, the one 'set in a bushfire refuge', with a young male ballet dancer playing both Viola and whatsisname-the-brother. Will probably see any version I can physically get to, no matter how mad or strange.
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Winter's Tale: I just want to say that I evaded seeing this (the student theatre group for my department were staging it at one point in Geneva) and I'm proud of it.
HISTORIES: I 'read' the Henriad in about 2001, if by 'read' you mean 'doggedly stared at unglossed pages and told myself I was a Serious Person Who Reads The Histories, Not Comedies'. I've 'read' the Henriad since then in the sense of dipped in and out of them looking for something, but I can never keep them straight in my head. If there was a semi-italic I'd put them in it.
Henry IV, Part I
Henry IV, Part II I've definitely read these two
Henry V: Saw it live at the Duke's theatre, Lancaster, in 2018.
Henry VI, Part I: fairly sure I haven't read these
Henry VI, Part II
Henry VI, Part III
Henry VIII
King John
Pericles: Read it, taught it, in 2018.
Richard II: Read it on the advice of someone from the LJ medieval_studies comm, back in 2009. They sent me queer theory articles to go with.
Richard III: may have read? May not have read? Honestly can't recall.
TRAGEDIES
Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus: Saw the NT Live broadcast with whatsisface. Hiddleston, I think? Another Unspoiled Shakespeare experience for me, and oof.
Cymbeline
Hamlet: Read it, taught it, can make terrible jokes about it
Julius Caesar: Saw a student production by SUDS, in the Cellar Theatre in Sydney, with the whole ensemble cross-cast. Internet tells me this was in 2013, I thought it was a few years earlier. At any rate, I don't recall having the 'gosh, unspoiled Shakespeare' moment, so either I had also read it, or it's literally impossible to exist unspoiled for this play.
King Lear: read it, around the same time I read the Henriad. Didn't understand it. Have dipped into it since then for specific bits and bobs.
Macbeth: Studied it in eleventh grade, loved it.
Othello: saw the NT Live broadcast, also mostly unspoiled (as in... I knew who died and who killed whom, but I'd missed the memo on *how*, so that was... welp). This production had an entire silent 'guantanamo-bay-esque torture of prisoners' interlude, which I think was intended to offset the gender violence (ie, they all exist in a deeply violent milleu, and that got STAGED, rather than having Ophelia the main focus of brutality), but was kind of... not successful
Romeo and Juliet: Read it, studied it, acted in it. In a deeply cliche, and now we realise super racist 'cowboys and indians' version! No, high school english teacher: NO. I think I also *saw* a production by the Young People's Theatre in Newcastle, in my teens. I distinctly recall the two leads kneeling for the hand-touching sequence, but not much else. (I have also seen a production of Bare, at the Sydney Fringe.)
Timon of Athens
Titus Andronicus: haven't read it, but HAVE acted in a reading of an English translation of an Early Modern German adaptation???
Troilus and Cressida: Genuinely can't recall if I've read this in scene by scene order, and if so how long ago, because it's a Primary Source for me so it's all tangled up with Chaucer and Dante. Re-reading it is on the agenda for... August, actually.
I've also read some of the sonnets, mostly for work, and skim-read Lucrece (and close-read particular passages, as one does). Venus and Adonis I haven't read, but I think I've heard some papers on it. The Pheonix and the Turtle I definitely haven't read, but now that I write that I can see it's a GRAVE OVERSIGHT.
I decided a while ago that, except where I need to for work, I don't want to *read* any new-to-me Shakespeare plays: I enjoy the Unspoiled Shakespeare Experience too much. That also means I somewhat regret having evaded The Winters Tale, and I will definitely have to jump at mad student productions in future, if I want to see the weirder plays.
COMEDIES
As You Like It: Saw a production at the Shakespeare in Glouster festival, some time between 2000 and 2002. May have read it? May not have. Invested all my cross-dressing obsesssion in 12th Night instead.
Merchant of Venice Unsure. I feel like I've read it, but it's equally possible that I've read *bits* of it, or perhaps at some point been in a class where it was being taught but I, a determined medievalist, was fudging the EM bits.
Merry Wives of Windsor: Saw this as an outdoor production by the Oxford Shakespeare Company in 2013. My first unspoiled Shakespeare since that first As You Like it, and the cause of an absolute revelation moment when I realised that while, yes, I could understand everything that had been said, normal adults don't. Yay, my degrees are worth something!
Midsummer Night's Dream: Studied it in seventh grade. Borrowed the text early to pre-read it over summer. Proceeded to spend all my prize money that year on buying a Complete Works (a truly heinous edition that didn't even have line numbers, wtf). Studied again in uni, although I can't swear that I actually re-read it then (I didn't do any assessment on it). Have probably seen at least one, maybe more movie versions.
Much Ado about Nothing: I think I read it at some point. Saw the Geneva English Drama Society production dir. Ben Crystal , in 2014.
Taming of the Shrew: Studied it in eight grade. Was assigned to write a new ending. I'm fairly sure I had her tie HIM to a chair. Saw the Bell Shakespeare all-woman touring production in Canberra (or was it Queenbeyan?) in 2009: absolutely shook. You think, going in, that they're somehow going to soften the blow by having it be all-woman, but no, it's absolutely stark, and all the more shocking because you somehow *expected* that it being all women would make it less violent.
The Tempest: Studied it in year 12. Deeply resent not having done the Othello unit instead. Saw a very weird production at the Valhalla in Glebe, very shortly before the Valhalla shut up shop entirely.
Twelfth Night: My favourite, my truest, my greatest love. Read it of my own accord at some point. Re-read it multiple times. Wrote fanfic of it for Yuletide, as you do. Saw the Bell production at the opera house, the one 'set in a bushfire refuge', with a young male ballet dancer playing both Viola and whatsisname-the-brother. Will probably see any version I can physically get to, no matter how mad or strange.
HISTORIES: I 'read' the Henriad in about 2001, if by 'read' you mean 'doggedly stared at unglossed pages and told myself I was a Serious Person Who Reads The Histories, Not Comedies'. I've 'read' the Henriad since then in the sense of dipped in and out of them looking for something, but I can never keep them straight in my head. If there was a semi-italic I'd put them in it.
Henry IV, Part I
Henry IV, Part II I've definitely read these two
Henry V: Saw it live at the Duke's theatre, Lancaster, in 2018.
Pericles: Read it, taught it, in 2018.
Richard II: Read it on the advice of someone from the LJ medieval_studies comm, back in 2009. They sent me queer theory articles to go with.
TRAGEDIES
Coriolanus: Saw the NT Live broadcast with whatsisface. Hiddleston, I think? Another Unspoiled Shakespeare experience for me, and oof.
Hamlet: Read it, taught it, can make terrible jokes about it
Julius Caesar: Saw a student production by SUDS, in the Cellar Theatre in Sydney, with the whole ensemble cross-cast. Internet tells me this was in 2013, I thought it was a few years earlier. At any rate, I don't recall having the 'gosh, unspoiled Shakespeare' moment, so either I had also read it, or it's literally impossible to exist unspoiled for this play.
King Lear: read it, around the same time I read the Henriad. Didn't understand it. Have dipped into it since then for specific bits and bobs.
Macbeth: Studied it in eleventh grade, loved it.
Othello: saw the NT Live broadcast, also mostly unspoiled (as in... I knew who died and who killed whom, but I'd missed the memo on *how*, so that was... welp). This production had an entire silent 'guantanamo-bay-esque torture of prisoners' interlude, which I think was intended to offset the gender violence (ie, they all exist in a deeply violent milleu, and that got STAGED, rather than having Ophelia the main focus of brutality), but was kind of... not successful
Romeo and Juliet: Read it, studied it, acted in it. In a deeply cliche, and now we realise super racist 'cowboys and indians' version! No, high school english teacher: NO. I think I also *saw* a production by the Young People's Theatre in Newcastle, in my teens. I distinctly recall the two leads kneeling for the hand-touching sequence, but not much else. (I have also seen a production of Bare, at the Sydney Fringe.)
Titus Andronicus: haven't read it, but HAVE acted in a reading of an English translation of an Early Modern German adaptation???
Troilus and Cressida: Genuinely can't recall if I've read this in scene by scene order, and if so how long ago, because it's a Primary Source for me so it's all tangled up with Chaucer and Dante. Re-reading it is on the agenda for... August, actually.
I've also read some of the sonnets, mostly for work, and skim-read Lucrece (and close-read particular passages, as one does). Venus and Adonis I haven't read, but I think I've heard some papers on it. The Pheonix and the Turtle I definitely haven't read, but now that I write that I can see it's a GRAVE OVERSIGHT.
I decided a while ago that, except where I need to for work, I don't want to *read* any new-to-me Shakespeare plays: I enjoy the Unspoiled Shakespeare Experience too much. That also means I somewhat regret having evaded The Winters Tale, and I will definitely have to jump at mad student productions in future, if I want to see the weirder plays.