shakespeare

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 04:46 PM

There's a remedy. Stop regarding Shakespeare as an icon. Take under advisement the thought that Will the S may not be the Greatest Playwright in the History of the World. Maybe not even in the ten best.

It's refreshing to think of him that way. Just a guy that writes plays. Just another working stiff, putting words on a page. A colleague of, say, Harold Pinter and Sam Beckett who just happens to talk a weird four-centuries-old dialect.

But who, if listened to carefully, can surprise you with a lance of light into your brain.

Does wonders for me. I tackle Shakespeare from a cockeyed angle, and, given his terms of looking at the world, find him (or her -- who knows, maybe Anne Hathaway wrote the plays :) -- fresh as this morning's daisy...freed from all that Literary Worship that only gets in the way.

But then on the other hand, I'm nuts.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 04:21 PM

To thine own self be true.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 03:58 PM

Learning is learning however you view it. I believe Shaskespeare has a quantity of learning in the pages of its volumes....I learnt from it...didn't you?
Best wishes, Mike.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: alanabit
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 03:55 PM

SENTANCES?

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: GUEST,Val
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 03:38 PM

Fear not! The Bard and other fine literature are being adapted to a form far more suitable to the upcoming generation - the abbreviated communication used in Text Messaging. See this report from CNN

as an aside, this happens to touch on one of my favorite soapbox-issues: communication shapes cognition, so we are training a culture whose thoughts are all rapid response, abbreviated verbiage, and emotions that can be expressed by punctuation marks rather than people who can think in complete SENTANCES, much less in-depth paragraphs.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: sian, west wales
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 01:00 PM

Dear me. I never thought good ol' Port Colborne High School was up to much but I could well be wrong.

We did a Shakespeare in English every year but we also did Eugene O'Neil, Tennessee Williams, Bernard Shaw and a host of others and there was a school trip to Stratford (Ontario) annually as well. We also read them aloud, and a few of us even staged them (many of us ended up in drama school and creative industry careers). And then there were all the great fiction we did: Catcher in the Rye, Who Has Seen the Wind, Oliver Twist, Sunshine Sketches, ... God bless PCHS and all who sailed/sail in her!

Here's an idea: keep the great texts, ditch the bad teachers.

siân

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: treewind
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 12:54 PM

Please don't feed the trolls.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: alanabit
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 12:49 PM

You are right Paul. It can be bloody funny too. Parts of Richard III can be hilarious if they are done well.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: Paul Burke
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 12:37 PM

Shakespeare's good, but the way it's often done in schools, you'd think he was the ONLY playwright. When the Boy was doing mcB, when he got bored I introduced him to Aristophanes' Lysistrata which he found a bit more amusing. Shakespeare should be done as drama, not as hagiography.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 12:30 PM

And nothing can we call our own but death

And that small model of the barren earth

Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings.

          King Richard II. Act iii. Sc. 2.

What truths do such words hold for a world where dignity is valued less than attitude, where beauty is held trivial to sensuality? I agree. It's high time these archaic works were banished from school. Shakespeare has much he would teach us, but it is just possible we have lost the capacity to learn.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: Amos
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 11:21 AM

Oh, let's get rid of all our cultural icons and go with comic books and soap operas and "Survivor" and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Otherwise we might have to think too hard about why people are the way they are; we might have to confront issues like good and evil in the world, love and authoritarian control, and why young poeple should think twice before killing themselves.

Let's be contrarian
And turn barbarian
We'll throw the books out in the trash!
We'll be ethereal
Until venereal
Infections start a nasty rash.
Let's live like vultures,
Disown our cultures
And kick those bookworms out on their ears
Mob rule's appealing-o
Let's go with feeling-o
And turn the clock back several hundred years!

....

A

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 10:41 AM

junk is beautiful

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: Wesley S
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 10:40 AM

If you have to ask the question you'll never understand the answer.

But yes - I do believe the schools should be teaching the "Romeo and Juliet one"

Subject: shakespeare
From: wendyNY
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 10:28 AM

My daughter is learning shakespeare in school right now and its the romeo and Juliet one... I can't believe they are still learning this useless junk in school. when i was back in school in 1977 we learned the same stuff i think its time to forget about the shakespeare stories whos up for it!