GirlDetective has started a questionnaire/meme thing on Shakespeare, so I thought I’d join in. So here you go, and enjoy. (I know you are ecstatic, Dad:-)
1. Name the first five lines of Shakespeare that come into your head. (Don?t cheat?write the first five that you think of, then check for accuracy later.)
1) If music be the food of love, play on!
2) The evil men do lives after them while the good is oft interred with their bones; so let it be with Caesar [instead of ‘while’ there should be a ‘;’ — otherwise, I got it]
3) Oh, happy dagger!
4) Two households, both alike in dignity in fair Verona, where we lay our scene. From ancient grudge break to new mutiny; where civil blood makes civil hands run clean [unclean, ha!]. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life; whose misadventured piteous overthrows doth, with their death, end [bury] their parents’ strife. Something something [The fearful passage of their] death marked love something something I forget the rest [ And the continuance of their parents’ rage, Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend; and of course I have grammar errors].
5) what light is [be] light, if Sylvia be not seen?
2. The last Shakespeare play you went to see on stage.
-Alas, I have not yet had the privilege.
3. The last Shakespeare film homage or adaptation you watched at home or at the movies.
-William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet — Baz Luhrmann’s version
4. What Shakespeare homage/adaptation/plays are on your to be read/to be seen list?
-I have a King Lear waiting for me at home, plus I’d also like to try one of the historical Henrys.
-I would love to see Macbeth, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar on stage.
5. Name a favorite Shakespeare-inspired work.
-I do enjoy The Lion King: the story parallels Hamlet, though it wasn’t directly inspired by it.
-There is also Tom Stoppard’s Shakespeare in Love; I would like to see that in play form.
6. Why do you think Shakespeare?s plays are still popular?
-Mainly, I think it’s the language, at least for me. It is great lyrical prose that — for the most part — does not have to be translated for us English speakers to understand. We get to enjoy it in it’s original form unlike much of the great literature from pre-Revolutionary War times. You have to really think about the phrases to get what is being said, though: you have to delve in it to get the subtleties and the wry humor. I enjoy the hunt.
Maybe they are also popular because Shakespeare himself is a bit of a mystery. A lot of theories abound as to whether or not he really existed or if he really wrote all those plays. I find him interesting because of the times he lived in and the people he knew/worked with: Elizabeth I, James I, and Marlowe. He saw England change from a small island country to a naval superpower and witnessed the country’s final change into a Protestant nation. Reading some of his work pulls my mind into that timeframe and maybe even shows me a bit of what Shakespeare thought about the society and culture he was so immersed in.