Shakespeare And Me - A Beginner's Guide to Shakespeare
For anyone who has known me for any length of time, it should come as no surprise that I am a huge lover of Shakespeare. His work tends to often send me to tears, particularly his tragedies but often his comedies too, and I find it absolutely fascinating to investigate how he uses language. I think what we don’t give Shakespeare enough credit for is actually how often we use the phrases that he himself coined, for we’ve come to use them as every day phrases without any concern for what their origins were. Ever heard someone use the word “swagger” in a sentence. Thank Shakespeare for he used it in two of his plays, Henry V and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Other phrases such as to “kill with kindness” and “a sorry sight” can also be attributed to Shakespeare and their first written instances are found mostly through his work.
I’ve always loved reading Shakespeare. I find it so rich and exciting, every world created is very different from the one before. I will admit that I have not read them all, for I fear that would take a whole lot of time and dedication to really understand them all in depth to their full potential, yet from what I have read I know that I really admire Shakespeare’s work. This blog post I really wanted to act as a sort of "Starter’s Guide to Shakespeare” so here are a list of the shakespeare plays that I find most engaging and the easiest to read.
- Romeo and Juliet
If you’ve not read Romeo and Juliet I urge you to do instantly. It’s a tragic love story with some of the most well known shakespeare lines, and it has three film adaptations, all retaining the original language of the play. The first was from 1968, black and white version with a Romeo who looks strangely like a young Zac Efron (but unfortunately isn’t), then we jump to 1996 for the most famous adaptation feature Leonardo DiCaprio playing the male lead before he was then taken over by Douglas Booth for the 2013 adaptation. The story follows Romeo and Juliet who are from two feuding families in Verona, Italy. They fall in love and a whole mess ensues when Juliet is told that she will marry a man called Paris despite being desperately in love with her Romeo. Tybalt discovers Romeo’s love and duel’s him on the street and is slain by Romeo who is then exiled. Juliet is devastated not only by the death of her beloved cousin but of the exile of her love. He sends her a letter through her nurse and asks her to meet him with the priest where they are married before she can marry Paris but she is forced to return to Verona without him for he is still in exile. She knows that on her return she must marry Paris so on the eve of her wedding she takes a draught like poison which slows down her heart beat just enough to keep her alive but appear dead. She is laid to rest in the crypt where Romeo finds her, assuming that she is in fact dead. He kills himself with poison just moments before Juliet awakes from her slumber to find him dead. She kisses him, hoping to receive some of the poison from his lips but there is none left. She ends her own life with a dagger and the two are together once more, this tragedy bringing together their two families.
- Hamlet
Another tragedy from Shakespeare but this time set in Demark. Young Hamlet’s father dies and his uncle, Claudius, marries his mother. Two guards and his most trusted friend find Hamlet to tell him of a ghost that resembles the very image of his father and Hamlet agrees to take watch with them that night. It is indeed the ghost of his father and he tells Hamlet of the horror that he was in fact murdered and he believes it to be Claudius, sending Hamlet to seek revenge for his untimely death. Hamlet takes this very heavily onto his shoulders and this drives him slowly into madness as he cannot decide if he should kill his uncle who has in fact usurped his father’s throne, or not. This puts strain on his relationship with the daughter of his uncle’s advisor, Ophelia, for whom Hamlet cares about a great deal. Essentially this story, much like Romeo and Juliet, dissolves very quickly into a mess of death and the final scene is one that should be read incredibly carefully, if only to make sure you’re aware of the order of the numerous deaths that occur. This play also has many film adaptations. My personal favourite is the 2009 RSC version starring David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius. It’s stuck incredibly closely to the play in that I’m not aware of too many lines that have been eradicated or changed in any way. Another version that you should consider watching once you’ve read the play is Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 version, yet this has moved a few scenes out of sequence, although is a very good film. And if you’re looking for a happy ending, why not just re-watch The Lion King, and see just how close the two are.
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream
I bet you were all thinking, blimey Kelly when are we going to get into the lighter hearted stuff of Shakespeare’s. Well the answer is now. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s other well known plays, often taught in schools much like the two above. This play follows the story of three couples, Lysander and Hermia, Helena and Demetrius, and the king and queen of the fairies Oberon and Titania, along with their troublesome stolen changeling Puck. The story starts with Hermia being told that she should marry Demetrius, become a nun or die within the month. They run into the forest where the fairy king and queen are arguing over whether or not they should keep Puck. Titania tells Oberon she will not give him up and Oberon therefore uses the spritely Puck to play a trick on her. There is a nearby traveling theatre group, one of whom is called Bottom. Puck turns his head into that of an ass and finds a flower that is capable of making the person affected fall in love with whomever they see first. This becomes a huge problem when he uses it on both of the boys in the other two couples in the hope that they will fall in love with the correct person. This is obviously not what happens, people accuse others of killing the other, and there are plenty of duels had before the situation is all resolved as they tend to be in comedies. I’ve not yet found a film version of this that I enjoy quite as much as the other two but I’ll definitely keep an eye out.
- Much Ado About Nothing
This is probably my favourite Shakespeare comedy and one I turn to on my bad days. Set in Messina this time, Shakespeare introduces us to the house of Leonato, which he shares with his daughter Hero and his niece Beatrice. They are alerted to Don Pedro’s glorious victory in battle and that they will be arriving at his home soon. On their arrival we meet Claudio and Benedick, friends to Don Pedro who fight alongside him. From the outset of the play Claudio is instantly in love with Leonato's daughter Hero, and he announces to Benedick, who promptly tells Don Pedro that he intends to court her and hopefully marry her. Benedick swears that he will never marry which makes it even more funny when Don Pedro’s men decide that to pass they time they shall play match maker with Benedick and Beatrice, who is known to outwardly despise him. The men make sure that Benedick overhears them discussing Beatrice’s love for him whilst Hero and her nurse discuss Benedick's love for her and this somehow works. Both Benedick and Beatrice believe they are the object of the other’s affections and seek to make amends in their friendship and relationship. Meanwhile Don John, Don Pedro’s brother, plots to ruin the wedding by staging a way in which to make Hero appear unfaithful. On seeing this Claudio states that he’ll embarrass her publicly, at the wedding that will be happening the next day. The second act of the play searches to resolve this issue and therefore end happily, which it does inevitably, with both the wedding of Claudio and Hero, and Benedick and Beatrice who realise that they are, in fact, in love. There are two really good adaptations of this play. The first is the 1993 film directed by and featuring Kenneth Branagh as Benedick and Emma Thompson as Beatrice which makes for really easy watching. But if you want a more modern version there is a 2012 film directed by Joss Wheedon. I’ve not actually seen this one myself but it has some pretty good reviews. My other favourite is actually a recording of a stage production that was produced of this play, from 2011, featuring David Tennant and Catherine Tate as the two principal roles. This production has me in stitches every time. I absolutely adore it.
- Twelfth Night
I think this was the first Shakespeare play I read in full. It’s another comedy and involves one of Shakespeare’s most common tricks in this genre; a woman dressed as a man to cause confusion. Yet this is even more funny when you think that no women were allowed on stage during the time of the original production. Therefore it would be a man dressed as a woman dressed as a man. That’s not confusing at all! The story focusses on the twins Viola and Sebastian who are separated after their boat crashes. Viola dresses up as a man and makes her way to the palace where she begins to fall in love with the Duke Orsino, who is in turn in love with the Countess Olivia. She, however, is in love with Viola thinking that she is in fact a man and the whole situation gets incredibly confusing very quickly. There’s also a comic subplot wherein Countess Olivia’s steward Malvolio is lead to believe that she is in fact in love with him, which leads to him doing a whole host of embarrassing things which end up with him storming off and swearing revenge. I love this play because of how confusing yet simple it is. All of the characters are really easy to follow, for the most part, and the story is incredibly entertaining because of all of the confusion within the characters, yet there is enough that we know as an audience to really understand what’s going on. I’ve not yet seen any adaptations of Twelfth Night but I am aware that there is one from 1996 starring Helena Bonham Carter which I may have to search for.
If you know Shakespeare you know that there are so many more plays that he’s written which are equally as incredible as these five are. I just wanted to give you a very quick introduction to some of my favourites and to some of the easier ones that I’ve read over the years. I haven’t yet had a chance to delve too deep into his histories such as any of the Henry plays or Julius Caesar although I would like to. Perhaps over the summer I’ll give one or two of those a read. I’m hoping to eventually do a blog post of all of my favourite Shakespeare quotes, but that is taking a while to collate at the moment, with all their act and scene references, but hopefully that shouldn’t be too long. I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend, celebrating the bard’s 400th death day anniversary, and if there’s anything more you’d like to know about Shakespeare, any of the plays mentioned above, or anything else at all, feel free to leave a comment on this blog or find me on twitter.
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