"Favorite Shakespearian Play" Topic

I offer this suggestion to see if there is any general consensus or discernable pattern amongst this group.

What is your ONE favorite play by William Shakespeare? Please do not start listing everything you have seen or read. This is to name "The Best of the Best" in your opinion.

Mine is "Taming of the Shrew."

There also will have to be the generic answers of:

- I have not read nor seen a Shakespearian play.
- I do not like Shakespeare's work.
- Shakespeare who?

The Scottish play.

Yep.

It's got the lot. Witches, murder, ghosts.

I like Julius Caesar. It's the most "modern".
The most chillingly modern scene has Marc Antony editing the Enemies List. "Then he dies. See, I damn him with a spot".

For pure Snidely Whiplash gloating villainy, I like Richard III. To keep from breaking the rules, I like JC better.

I have to pick only one?

A Midsummer Nights Dream, mainly as I've seen some truly magical productions of it.

MacBeth for me too. I even have a small pocket edition of it that stays in my winter coat in case I don't have something else to read.

Wow, only one?

I guess I have to go with "Hamlet".

On another day, I might choose one of the ones already posted for the same reasons.

I even have a favorite performance: the Ethan Hawke film version of "Hamlet", set in a modern corporate skyscraper. Yes, I said Ethan Hawke.

A Comedy of Errors--especially the Flying Karamazov Brothers version. Marx brothers before they were ruined by letting Karl on stage.

History--Henry V, hands down.

Troilus & Cressida

Hamlet & Henry V

Anthony & Cleopatra.

Merchant of Venice

Macbeth's the one… dark, urgent, a bit trippy.
Also, yon Lady Macbeth doth bestir my hose.

Hamlet's all very worthy and everything, and it has stand-out moments, but it can't match the pacing and intensity of Macbeth.
Also, Ophelia's a clingy, insipid nutjob who bestirreth not my hose.

Saw the RSC's 'King Lear' at the Theatre Royal last year – the production which is going to New York this summer. The production design is all interwar and great for VBCW inspiration.
Also, Goneril and Regan…

Thou art a cobbler art thou ?

Well, mine is the actor's favourite – darling your bottom was fabulous last summer !

A midsunmmer's night dream. Lends itself to magic – the memory of one outdoor production I saw 25 years ago is still vivid, a warm summer's night, a lake, a real forest (well, some trees anyway) in which faerie folk flitted. Wonderful.

Also recall fondly an outdoor Merchant of Venice, with the players strolling up from various directions to reach the stage. The Director was clearly of the opinion that Shylock was being screwed over, secretly I think shakespeare knew this too.

The Tempest.

I have to admit enjoying Titus Andronicus, even though that one is apparently Shakespeare's least popular play.

Looks like I need to put MacBeth on my to-do list.

If a negative vote can cancel a positive one, I hate Lear.

Titus Andronicus is great for the ingenious ways they find to cart various body parts off the stage. Wlll should have just called it a zombie play and been done with it.

Which begs the question: Who makes fake Roman zombies in Elizabethan dress in 28mm?

Lear is fundamentally flawed for a modern audience – it depends far too heavily on convenient episodes of madness, presented in a way that seems cliched and simplistic.

But it has two (count 'em, TWO!) really, really bad girls.

Titus is AWESOME, but it's an unrelenting, one-note pit-fight without a satisfying story arc.

Maybe if Beth Phoenix would play Goneril and Awesome Kong played Regan, I might like it better.

Much adoe about Nothing is one I always recall being most fond of. It has been a few years since I have had the pleasure of reading his work.

Hmmm, pulling up that kindle.

Much ado about nothing,

Henry V for its upbeat ending.

Henry IV, Part 1

Henry V, and Richard III.

Titus Andronicus – very dark brooding bloody with exceptional characters – everything you want in a play but needs good actors to do it

The Tempest. Virtually postmodern in its look at the art of the theater and the written word, between the writer and his creation. Plus, fantasy!

Richard III and Hamlet – great soliloquies for the protagonists. "Now is the winter of our discontent"…

A local group did, "Hamlet, the Melancoly Dane" once. Of course, the producers always like to do musicals and have happy endings, so, they did in this production too.

Henry V

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'"

Rick

Love the Tempest! The animated Shakespearean tales version from the 80s…with the stop motion marionettes…was my favorite rendition.

Oh…and Othello. I love the 1995 movie version. Kenneth Branagh steels the show as Iago.

I have never seen a showing of Julius Caesar that I enjoyed. It's not a bad play to read but all of the showings I have been left me feeling flat.

Lear.

"Now, Gods, stand up for bastards."

Richard III followed very closely by The Scottish Play.

Taming of the Shrew with Henry V very close second.

MacBeth with Othello being close. Cannot stand R&J. That one should be stricken from the English language! Everything else I've read of his was pretty good.

No votes for Twelfth Night – thank goodness. How I loath that Shakespeare's lowly pandering to the groundlings in his ritual humiliation of Malvolio. Hack work ! And cross dressing Twins ? Again ?

Tragedy – Julius Ceasar
Comedy – Much Ado About Nothing
History – Richard III

"Much adoe about Nothing", unless you want to change William Shakespeare's spelling.

Hamlet. It has murders, ghosts, sword fighting, sex, wars, lots of bodies, and pirates. What could be better?

I have always had a strange fondness for Twelfth Night.

All the best,

John.

Richard III

It's a tie -the Scottish play and Hamlet. Blood, treason and madness lurk in the plots of both. I like it!

Macbeth all the way.

Henry V, Richard III, Julius Caesar – a toss-up.

King Lear.

Just saw it Saturday night at the local college.

Love it.

"Taming of the Shrew"

R&J

The Rock Opera version of Julius Caesar: 'JC Superstar'.

…probably Twelfth Night

"If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die."

I saw it first time with a very special girl & later surfeited her socks off.

MacBeth… out out damn spot

No love for Othello or the Tempest (the source for Forbidden Planet.)?

No, Hamlet is the thing to cstch the concience of a king!

I'm a hopeless romantic (with emphasis on the hopeless) so my fav is Romeo & Juliet. Mercutio is a great supporting character:
"No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve."