r/shakespeare

[Just a quick disclaimer because I know Reddit can be a very sensitive. This is obviously going to be a controversial, difficult topic; so please keep it relatively light in the comments because I am genuinely interested and would prefer that the post not be taken down by moderators]

What do you think of blackface in productions?

Not out of mockery like minstrel shows, but moreso for accuracy of the character like in Sir Laurence Olivier's Othello.

Just trying to gauge what people think, so I appreciate any knowledge/opinions whatsoever.

I mean like he was alive during colonial times but he I feel like he gave complexities to characters like Shylock and Caliban even though they were like villians, even though Shakespeare gives them like stereotypical qualities. And Othello was a moor and the tragic hero. Like the british were very racist at that time (highlighted by how the other characters treat these characters), so was Shakespeare kind of like progressive for that time?

Recently purchased Othello, the penguin editition. Should I read the introduction too?

Wanna see how many I can get!

(Bonus points to whoever guesses mine, with Hanoch Levin, Lord Byron (Cain is an insane play, but so underrated), and Samuel Beckett)

Edit: Please tell me if I'm wrong and give me one clue before telling me the answer

Edit 2: my current score: out of 20 where I have confirmations, I got 5 on the first try, 9 complete misses, and 6 on the second try

I'm not very good at it, but it's also hard! No one has guessed mine yet, I'm giving y'all 3 more tries before I add a clue

Edit 3: Wow, there's a lot! Sorry if I haven't gotten to you yet, this post did make my bus ride from Rome to Florence pass really nicely:) I am trying to get to everyone:))

Since I'm guessing for all of you, I'm going to let you guess my top five:)

5. Julius Caesar ( u/LizHazZoe guessed it:)

Hello, I want to get into King Lear as I've loved watching and reading Macbeth so i've wondered which of those 2 versions is the best to watch and can i read the original play alongside watching it?

pretty much as the title states, i checked amazon prime but much like everything else on there, it's behind a paywall.

The 11th fairway of the Garrison Golf Club in the Hudson Valley is now a beauty spot dedicated to the Bard — all thanks to a wealthy benefactor

Many scholarly works mention that Laertes is returning to University in France, but there's no actual mention of him being a student in the play. Am I missing something? Is it just an assumption?

Hey everyone,

I’m a solo indie iOS developer and longtime Shakespeare fan, and I recently released an app called The Bard’s World: Shakespeare.

Please, if you dislike the app or this post, I ask only one thing:
Deliver your criticism in the form of a Shakespearean insult.

App Store link (only on iOS for now)

I originally started building it because most Shakespeare apps felt either:

• too academic,
• outdated,
• or just giant walls of text.

So I tried to create something that feels more like an interactive Shakespeare universe than a traditional study app.

Some of the things included:

• all 37 plays + 154 sonnets
• AI chats with 50 Shakespeare characters
• Shakespearean insult generator
• relationship maps
• interactive map of locations from the plays
• daily quotes and trivia
• iambic pentameter scanner
• vocabulary explorer
• study guides and scene navigation

A few things I cared about a lot:

• everything works offline
• no ads
• no tracking
• no account required
• no subscriptions

The AI character chats also run fully on-device because I really wanted the app to feel private and self-contained.

I’d genuinely love feedback from people who enjoy Shakespeare, literature, theatre, classics, or educational apps.

Some things I’m wondering:

• Which feature sounds genuinely useful vs gimmicky?
• Is the “chat with Hamlet/Lady Macbeth/etc.” idea compelling?
• What would make you actually keep an app like this installed long-term?
• Are there features students/teachers would want that I’m missing?

I’m trying to improve it based on real feedback instead of just building in isolation.

Happy to answer any questions about the app or the development process too.

So Much Ado is my favorite play- got me into Shakespeare and no play has topped it yet (though some histories did come close). Obviously, it's a very popular play too, and I've seen a lot of interesting interpretations of it (the gender dynamics in the play are always interesting to explore).

But something that I always felt was underappreciated is how well this play catches the feeling of coming home for a break from war.

The balance of nothing and everything happening all at once is just perfect for it.

I feel the play is a lot more interesting if you don't let the shadow of war leave the play after the first scene (as a lot of productions do). Seeing it as an explanation of the characters' more ridiculous actions- if the war is constantly living at the back of your mind, of course you'd busy yourself with some low stakes overly convoluted fun. If it's waiting to come out if a moment of silence goes on for too long, why would you allow it to?

Of course every emotion is heightened! Of course everything spirals so quickly.

Also, from personal experience, I find the way the characters move from the more intense part of the plot to leisure very relatable (the need to both do everything you thought about at any moment before you run out of time, and get enough rest in at the same time is so realll).

I think this reading fixed the problems I had with Claudio and Don John.

I get people connecting the military in Much Ado to macho masculinity (as I said before, I find gender based readings very interesting here), but I feel the more literal reading I'm talking about results in more likable characters, and a more unique representation of war.

Finally, I'll add that a staging detail I'd have in a dream production is Beatrice putting on her own uniforms during the start of the love confession part of 4.1.

There would need to be a scene break after Hero, Leonato, and the friar exist, which there sometimes is, anyway. But I really think it works- the tone got darker, the thin shield of fun broke, so the war came back. It would give more weight to Benedick finally blurting out that he loves her, and logistically it works, with Beatrice being gone for a little while afterwards (extra points if you switch the order of 5.2 and 5.3- especially because that way the tone gets lighter again just as she comes back.) It would also make 5.2 just that bit nicer, and would help the impression that more time passes between the first and second wedding

So, yeah :) would like to hear more thoughts

I had the amazing good fortune to have front row seats for the previews of the Tempest in Stratford Upon Avon on Friday night and wanted to share my thoughts here. If you are going to see it I'd actually recommend skipping this review as there are some very cool things in the production which are best experienced as surprises.

In short: the production was the best I've seen in nearly 10 years of going regularly to RSC productions. It was inventive, the reading was subversive, and Kenneth Branagh outdid himself. I went expecting a Kenneth Branagh who would command all the attention all the time. I always think his entrance in Chamber of Secrets as Guilderoy Lockheart is peak him: 'Can you all see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent.' But here he cleverly used that and then subverted it at the end, showing his full range. Meanwhile, the production takes a very subversive and non-standard reading of the play. If you are a traditionalist, that you think Shakespeare could only ever be upholding the values of his time, this is not the production for you. I love non-traditional readings of Shakespeare, so found this brilliant. My husband said it was like the directors had read the play but not seen any interpretations ever and just did their own thing.

The production uses stylised Jacobean era costuming: doublets, and in Miranda's wedding scene she wears a dress with a ruff. Prospero's costume is a very cool purple robe with magic symbols all over it, and the 'book' he references in the play is constantly on stage--either with him or on a stool on the corner of the stage. They very much use both of these things as Checkhov's guns.

They scrapped scene 1 with the Botswain and instead showed it, with Prospero 'conducting' the storm with a baton from the corner of the stage and big lights, big sounds, a tilting central bit. The play very much leaned into the magic of everything. When Prospero put Miranda to sleep in scene 2 they did a cool bit of stage effects where he put her shawl over her as a blanket and then she seemed to levitate. Although I was in the front row, I couldn't see what was holding her up. Meanwhile Ariel was in a flying harness literally the entire play. When she wasn't performing, she was standing on the side of the stage, and at one point was singing upside down. It was such a physical feat on Amara Okereke's part, and she did the role beautifully.

The production leaned in very hard to the Post-Colonial reading of the play: Ariel, Caliban, and the spirits were all played by Black actors, and everyone else was white. When Ferdinand first meets Miranda, he does the speaking very loud and slow with over obvious hand gestures thing that people do when they're trying to speak to someone who they think doesn't understand them. Caliban is just a regular guy with absolutely nothing scary about him, which underscores the theme. This leads to a subversive reading at the end. I loved this production for starting with an interesting thing at the start and then really paying it out at the end of the show--they did this throughout.

Overall, the production takes a very optimistic view of everyone. Caliban is angry, but not evil, and they played it more that he was in love with/ had a crush on Miranda than wanted to use her. Ashley Zhangazha also played Caliban as clever, that he sees the idiocy of Trinculo and Stefano and uses them to plot to overthrow Prospero rather than them stunning him. Signficantly, when they give him alcohol, he spits it out. And when he gives the 'Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises' speech, he actually cried and it was very moving. In things coming full circle that was the speech Kenneth Branagh read out in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.

Kenneth Branagh's take on Prospero is similarly gentle. I have seen Prosperos tower with anger and use the full volume of their voice. While Branagh's Prospero gets impatient with Miranda in 1.2 and doesn't let her speak, he doesn't get angry. Even with Ariel, he is stern and selfish but not angry. There are also productions which show many chinks in Prospero's armour of knowledge--this did the opposite. In this production, he shows Ariel a projected picture of Ferdinand (throughout he can manipulate the environment with a wave or gesture of his staff, a conductors baton). This builds the idea that he is not at all suspicious of Ferdinand, but setting him up as a match for Miranda. He is onstage with them unseen throughout their courtship, and again, when he imprisons Ferdinand doesn't handle him roughly. I got the sense it was to test both of them and keep Ferdinand there. He watches over their marriage as a tender father giving his daughter away, and breaks up the ceremony when he realises they're about to consummate their marriage and this is the part he shouldn't see. His forgiveness of Antonio is incredibly touching, and this is interestingly when Branagh's acting really shone through. I expected and loved the bluster and big gestures at the start; he is always entertaining to watch chewing scenery. But it was the forgiveness in Act 5, opening his arms to his brother that struck me and brought tears to my eyes that stayed until the end. He surrenders his magic coat and puts on a golden one to retake the duchy of Milan. Then he rips the book apart (interestingly from where I sat I could see the pages and they were mock music staves which emphasised the role of music throughout the play) and breaks his conductor's staff. And he does it so beautifully, just standing stage centre and snapping it in two as if it were no big thing. Again, a really breathtaking moment.

The play ends then with Prospero giving Ariel freedom. At that point, Ariel lands on stage and Branagh unlatches the harness and Ariel stands unsteadily on her own two feet for the first time. Trinculo and Stefano are sent back to the ship and Caliban *also* inherits the isle, which is a gesture that has so many layers I could write an essay about that alone. THEN the curtains and trappings of the stage are lifted and we can see all the way to the back wall of the stage, leaning into a reading of Shakespeare as Prospero, the magic playwright who can create worlds, determine revenge or forgiveness, have people fall in love. But also a playwright at the end of his career, for Miranda says 'O brave new world that has such people in't' and Prospero says ''Tis new to thee'. It's as though Prospero/ Shakespeare is giving this world of imagination to the next generation, and adds another layer onto the ending.

The more this cooks in my brain the more amazing the production is, and I really hope they choose to do a recording of it because it should be available to everyone. Would love to hear others' takes.

Hello!

I’ve been doing reading about the plays but I want a one more source that covers most (if not all the plays).

The books I have so far are:

- Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber. So far my favourite because she covers every play and puts her observations in a way that feel like she’s trying to teach you about the plays. A bit like a text book but more engaging.

- Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom. While fairly informative, my problem with this book is that:

1. He doesn’t cover all the plays.

2. I feel like a hypocrite for saying this but the writing feels like he’s fan girl-ing the works. Most of us already admire Shakespeare’s gifts as a writer, I don’t need to be told that. I want to learn how to interpret the play and understand the themes and characters motives.

- This is Shakespeare: How to Read the World’s Greatest Playwright by Emma Smith. Great book but only covers the better known plays.

I’m looking for books closer to Shakespeare After All. I wish Amazon would let us read samples to make sure the book is the kind I’m looking for. As it is, I’m flying blind. Since I’m not a student, my research skills are limited to Googling “Books analyzing Shakespeare plays” and “Essays on Shakespeare plays”. I’m tempted to get the Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare. There are also The Meaning of Shakespeare volumes one and two by Harold Goddard but since I can’t flip through them it’s hard to judge if it’s what I’m looking for.

Thank you so much for any suggestions you might have!

Cheers