All The World's A Stage - the Shakespeare thread

The full Shakespeare in the Shadows in 30 minutes long.

 

I love this version of Hamlet, the graveyard scene with Billy Crystal is wonderful,

 

A bit off topic.....but thought it might be of interest

 

No, I haven't seen the clip you posted. I'll have to investigate. Thanks for the reading group info (in advance)!

 

Shakespeare and The Australians


A panel of Australian noted intellectuals, playwrights writers and actors discuss Shakespeare's influence today (2016, anyway).

 

Now, I'm watching this 1975 BBC "Play of the Month" production for the first time now. A few of these actors reprised their roles in the later 1982 tv production of King Lear. But I don't particularly care for that later group of actors. In this earlier version the strength obviously lies in the strong performances of Lear's daughters. It's rarely aired. Most grateful for the upload. Recommended.

 

One of our group's readers has a Shakespeare blog https://ghostofshakespeare.com/ which this month explores openings. He notes that while Othello opens with the sub-plot of Iago exploiting Rodrigo, Wells opens with the play's unwritten aftermath -- Othello and Desdamona's funeral and Iago's imprisonment. (Wells explains on John's site, which won't let me copy and paste, basically that you write a play for people who are just getting quiet and you never want to start off a play "at the top of your bent" while that is exactly what you need to do in a movie, grab them from the get-go).
Here's Well's sequel-first opening to his Othello:

 

agreed, his sense of timing serves him so well. But Jack Lemmon is just awful. I didn't think he could ever do anything bad.

 

so glad to finally see that in a theater b4 covid. wow

 

People sometimes forget that Shakespeare was a moneylender. You certainly can't avoid his preoccupation with market value reading the plays or poetry. Here's a filmed performance of Al Pacino as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (2004, Michael Radford), one I had the luck to initially see live in Central Park many moons ago. That production was far more spare and, unfortunately, far more effective. But I like Jeremy Irons as Antonio in this one.

 

I like Pacino's Shylock a lot, as well as Irons' Antonio (probably Shakespeare's most overtly gay character).
I've always been baffled by Shylock's lengthy Bible story in I, iii -- both the meaning of the story of Jacob and the piebald sheep (Genesis 30:25) and why he is bothering to explain it to Antonio. I think I have a handle on it now (I looked into it before the plague hit, when I thought we'd be doing Merchant after Measure For Measure and Cymbeline, both of which turned out to be Zoomed.) I'll dig it out and finish it -- still plan to do Merchant after our return to real readings with The Dream.

Here's a link to a Folger article on Melancholy and Shakespeare -- I'm reading Barbara Ehrenreich's 'Dancing In The Streets,' which (in part) explores the rise and fashionability of melancholy and its relationship to the suppression of community joy and celebration in the wake of Calvinism.
Renaissance Melancholy: Shakespeare's Jaques and Robert Burton