The play’s the thing...
Don’t write off Shakespeare as being boring
Shakespeare. Does that name make you shudder? Does it conjure up images of dusty, thick books, filled with unpronounceable words and sentences that are seemingly impossible to make sense of?
Perhaps it made you think of endless late nights trying to put together an essay on unravelling the allure of power and ambition in Macbeth, or early mornings trying to memorise just some of the 30,557 words that make up Hamlet , in readiness for a pop quiz on the subject.
Or perhaps you are reminded of a particularly traumatic English lesson some years ago where your 15-year-old self had to say the word “nipple” out loud in front of your peers when reading the part of Lady Macbeth in class. Or maybe that’s just me.
Whatever the reason, chances are a fair few of you reading this are shuddering because “I hate Shakespeare”. A statement I’ve heard many people say over the years, and no matter the level of conviction with which the statement is uttered, without fail I always want to turn to them and ask — are you sure you do?
Because, perhaps, it’s not the bard himself you hate, but rather those memories — time spent struggling to understand made-up words, lines written in iambic pentameter, and pages upon pages of language that while it’s called English, is very, very different to the English we speak today.
Those endless hours we spent in the classroom reading Shakespeare may well have helped us get a certain grade in English literature, but I don’t believe they helped us get Shakespeare himself.
Shakespeare was a playwright — not an author. He wrote plays to be performed, not stories to be read.
Instead of thinking of those dusty tomes, or painful hours spent in the classroom trying to understand exactly why some poor lad ends up with a donkey’s head (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) or a king invades a country over a gift of tennis balls (Henry V), think about the times you have seen Shakespeare’s plays performed.
Do you immediately think of what is unarguably the most romantic fish tank in history — through which Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Juliet (Claire Danes) make eye contact in Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Fun fact — the part of Juliet was originally set to be played by Natalie Portman but it was determined that her actual age of 13, against DiCaprio’s 21, created an age difference that would be uncomfortable for viewers — a lesson perhaps DiCaprio should apply to his real life love life nowadays?
Or perhaps it is the Gil Jungerdirected movie version of The Taming of the Shrew — known to movie fans as 10 Things I Hate About You starring Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles.
Maybe it’s one of the two versions of West Side Story, based on Romeo and Juliet, that you think of, or maybe you’ve seen a Shakespearean play performed on stage, not screen. Thanks to the efforts of the Stratford Shakespeare Trust in recent years, Taranaki audiences have been able to see some excellent Shakespearean live theatre, including this year’s lineup playing now.
Seeing Shakespeare’s works performed, be it on stage or screen, is seeing it as Shakespeare himself imagined. Whether it’s a faithful retelling of one of his plays, or a completely modern screenplay loosely based on a Shakespearean tale, you are getting the spirit of Shakespeare — tellings of stories that may be as old as time, but are also still relevant in this, and any time.
Tales of love won and love lost, ambition, power and man’s pursuit of those things, wars, fate, free will, tragedy, comedy and all the bits in between.
So don’t write off Shakespeare as being irrelevant or boring, but instead take some time to go see some Shakespeare on stage or screen, and immerse yourself in all the feelings his plays capture when you see them, rather than read them.