a_t_rain

Two for the price of one, today:

Day 29: Your favorite sonnet

Um. I have to admit that I have never been all that filled with sonnet-tude. I shall have to go with #130, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," since it's fun to teach (the moment when students figure out that it's not quite the putdown it seems is always nice), and it always reminds me of my beloved Much Ado.

Day 30: Your favorite single line

"Stones have been known to move and trees to speak" (Macbeth, III. iv. 123).

There's something awesomely creepy about this line -- I think it's the combo of the long, low vowel sounds and the ponderous monosyllables, which make it drag out sloooowly. It's the moment when Macbeth finally realizes there's no covering up or going back after a murder, and just before he decides he may as well wade up to his boots in blood. (And there's a nice bit of sorta-foreshadowing: in fact, it's the trees that are going to move.)

( All the questions )

Well, more of a series of jokes, actually.

( The Hamlet Comedy Routine )

( All the questions )

And to begin, wench, so God help me -- la!
My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.
-- Love's Labour's Lost, 5.2.414-15

All right, so that one doesn't make a lot of sense out of context. In the speech which this couplet concludes, Berowne has renounced all the fancy language of love poetry ("Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, / Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, / Figures pedantical"). Instead, he promises, "Henceforth my wooing mind shall be expressed / In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes." And so the last couplet consists of blunt, one-syllable words of Anglo-Saxon orig- -- oh crap, was that French in there?

And because in LLL, as in most of Shakespeare, Girls Always Know Better, Rosaline points out that there is a crack and flaw in his vows: "Sans 'sans,' I pray you."

( More rambling about LLL )

( All the questions )

Benedick / Beatrice, natch. Why is this even a question?

In an effort to say something vaguely different from what everyone else will say, I will note that Antony and Cleopatra are a close second; I have a soft spot for Viola and Orsino, even though nobody else seems to like Orsino very much, because the guy-bonding scenes and all the stuff he inadvertently reveals during them are adorable; an equally soft spot for Florizel and Perdita, who are prepared to give up the world for each other and charmingly unconscious of all the weighty thematic stuff that's riding on their union; and having just (finally!) watched the Globe production of Love's Labour's Lost, I'm prepared to get equally giddy over Berowne / Rosaline and Ferdinand / Princess. (There will be more LLL-love tomorrow, because really, how can you talk about couplets WITHOUT talking about that play?)

But yeah, B&B will always be my first choice, because they're so sharp and witty and relentlessly skeptical, and because they both want to see Hero vindicated even if it costs them their own shot at happiness. And because part of me will always be eighteen years old with a mad crush on Kenneth Branagh, and absurdly excited about watching the movie in the basement of the English building and hanging out with other people who felt exactly the same way. (OK, I think this is the play that reminds me of the good parts of my freshman year of college, in the same way that Troilus and Cressida reminds me of the more difficult parts, and all of this is thoroughly idiosyncratic and doesn't have anything to do with the couple at all.) But anyway. How can you not love "Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably"?

( All the questions )

Well, that sort of depends on what I'm choosing between them for, doesn't it? I mean, Hal if they're both running for public office, Falstaff to have a beer with. (N.B. This is probably the perfect example of why democracy only works when the general public can tell the difference between these two situations.)

But assuming we're talking about the big emotional break points in the cycle -- "I do, I will"; "I know thee not, old man"; "The king hath killed his heart": Falstaff. Always.

( All the questions )

OK. I found this surprisingly hard, but I'm going to say Lynn Collins (Portia in the 2004 Merchant of Venice) as Isabella. This is kind of speculative, since I haven't actually seen her in anything other than Merchant, and I'm not really wedded to it. But I'd like to see more of her; she seems like she would be a good Isabella; and she is from Texas. And yes, this last point is relevant.

( rambling about my ideal film version of Measure for Measure, which is not, of course, the question actually asked )

( All the questions )

This is easy, as there is only one role in the canon that requires NO ACTING TALENT WHATSOEVER. I intend to do the socially responsible thing and leave all my other organs and tissues to medical science, but the local Shakespeare festival can totally have my skull.

( All the questions )

I'm sure you all knew I was going to pick The Merry Wives of Windsor for this (though I will confess to being tempted by both Love's Labor's and 2 Henry IV).

( Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out )

( All the questions )

OK, I had a bit of trouble with this one. There are some Shakespeare plays that I don't think are very good, but they're mostly the ones that nobody else thinks are very good either. And there are a few super-famous ones that I've never entirely warmed up to (Richard II, Julius Caesar, and to a lesser extent As You Like It, in case you're wondering), but I would never say they're overrated, exactly, just that they're not personal favorites of mine.

But there is one play that I rather like, but that I think gets way more attention from my fellow lit-crit types than it deserves, and generally gets taken far too seriously, so I guess that counts as being "overrated."

( But sun it is not when you say it is not / And the moon changes even as your mind )

( All the questions )

I feel slightly guilty for stealing

angevin2's probable answer to this question, especially since she introduced me to the movie in question, but hey -- there cannot be too many posts about this film.

( if sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! )

( All the questions )

Choices, choices. OK, "movie" to me implies "full-on Hollywood cinematic treatment," so I assume we're not supposed to pick, say, filmed stage productions (although I have a huge soft spot for these, particularly if you can see the audience reactions) or made-for-TV versions. That narrows the field.

Somewhat to my own surprise, my final pick is not Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing.

( for the rain it raineth every day )

( All the questions )

I was tempted by the "willow song" scene with Desdemona and Emilia, but I think I've got to go with the future Richard III seducing Lady Anne (and the audience).

Ian McKellen as Richard.

Andrew Jarvis as Richard (continued here).

( Was ever woman in this humor wooed? )

( All the questions )

You all know what pushes my buttons by now, I'm sure: reflections on the brevity and transience of life, metatheater, moments when the great and powerful reveal themselves to be merely human. So.

( You do look, my son, in a moved sort )

( All the questions )

Twelfth Night. A free street-Shakespeare production in DC. I think I was about eleven. I'm afraid that's pretty much all I remember.

The first movie version I saw was Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, when I was in the ninth grade. I do remember that very well, because it was one of the few really beautiful things in the otherwise unrelenting ugliness of ninth grade, and I fell in love with it, uneven acting and dated hairstyles and all.

( All the questions )

This will be a very short post, because I don't actually know. I think it was almost certainly either Hamlet, or Macbeth, or Twelfth Night, or Romeo and Juliet, or A Midsummer Night's Dream, since those were the five plays in the "Stories from Shakespeare" book that my dad brought us as a gift when he went to England on a business trip, and it makes more sense that I would have decided to read a play that I was already familiar with, rather than dipping into the Complete Works at random. But I can't narrow it down any further than that.

Anyway, I know for sure that I had read MND by the end of the fifth grade, because my teacher absolutely refused to believe that I had read it, and started asking me a bunch of questions about the plot that were, I suppose, meant to trip me up. (She seemed to take it as a personal triumph that I mispronounced "Demetrius," although surely, not knowing how to pronounce all the names is the mark of a kid who actually HAS read the book, rather than seeing a film version or being told what the story is about. So I have no idea what that was supposed to prove.)

( All the questions )

I think everybody else has got the battle of Shrewsbury covered, so I'll put in a word for Romeo and Juliet 3.1.

( Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk? )

( All the questions )

Technically only part of a scene: the last bit of Much Ado About Nothing 4.1.

Following

angevin2's example, I went searching for YouTube links. Alas, the Branagh / Thompson version of this scene seems to have been taken down, but here's the BBC TV version and a Stratford Festival stage production.

( Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while? )

( All the questions )

Merchant of Venice 1.3. I like this scene because it's an awesome study in manipulation and hidden agendas, as well as being totally audacious. I mean, stripped down to its essence, the scene basically goes like this:

Antonio: Shylock, lend me some money.
Shylock: Maybe I don't feel like lending you any money. I hate you.
Antonio: That's OK. I hate you too.
Shylock: Fine, you can have the money. And just to show there aren't any hard feelings between us, I get a pound of your flesh if you don't pay me back. Ha, it's a joke, get it? Deal?
Bassanio: Dude. Maybe this isn't such a great idea.
Antonio: Nope, it'll be fine! Deal!

There shouldn't be any way to make this plausible. But somehow, it works all the same.

( Three thousand ducats; well )

( All the questions )

Is it insane to admit that I read a play just for this meme? I felt like I couldn't make any Grand Pronouncements about my Favorite Play, Favorite Scene, and so on, if I hadn't actually read or seen all of Shakespeare, and there was one play left. I had been avoiding it because I didn't think I would like it at all. I was right.

( nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'm gonna go eat roots )

( All the questions )

This, I am sure, will come as a surprise to NO ONE WHATSOEVER.

( For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings )

( All the questions )

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Entries tagged with thirty day meme

Days 29 & 30

Day 28: Your favorite joke

Day 27: Your favorite couplet

Day 26: Your favorite couple

Day 25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?

Day 24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role

Day 23: A role you've never played but would love to play

Day 22: An underrated play

Day 21: An overrated play (for a slightly unusual value of "overrated")

Day 20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play

Day 19: Your favorite movie version of a play

Day 18: Your Favorite Dialogue

Day 17: Your Favorite Speech

Day 16: The First Play You Saw

Day 15: The First Play You Read

Day 14: Your Favorite Fight Scene

Day 13: Your Favorite Romantic Scene

Day 12: Your Favorite Scene

Day 11: Your Least Favorite Play

Day 10: Your Favorite History