Everyone raves about how great Shakespeare was, and how classic his stuff was. I personally think it blows. I don't understand how most english classes read so much by him and act like he's god. His plays go way too fast. The development of the characters is rushed and unrealistic, which makes everything pathetically over done. I mean seriously, enough with the drama. Sometimes it feels like each scene was written by a different person, the characters act so differently with no warning - it's like they are schizos.

Does anyone see why english teachers make such a big fuss about him?

mine doesnt yet anyways. but i do like the 'to be or not to be' from hamlet . . . it's somewhat interesting. but i guess he is over used by them

Finally! A Clover thread!

My english teacher makes such a fuss about him because he's a giant insane jackass - my teacher I mean, I won't make any assumptions about Shakespere.
Personally, I like Shakespere. I've gone through (not read myself, becuase lord knows I can't understnad most of the language being used) A Midsummer's Night's Dream, Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth. My favourite would be Macbeth. I'm really enjoying the whole tragdey part of it. At least the little emo inside of me is.

Apparently - I have been told - that Shakspere didn't actually write most of his stuff. It came from another writer and he stole it and that other dude died so there was no fuss about it. Until historians were brought in 400 years later.

well i guess it just depends on the teacher, but i know that each teacher know gets a list of standards THEY HAVE TO TEACH to their students. maybe there is a standard about shakespeare.
the state passes these standards to the teachers. and the states get the standards from the government or something and if u trace it back far enough... it all goes back to bush passing the no child left behind law.

SO BLAME BUSH!!!!

We have to read a Shakespeare play every year for english class. I hate it. Freshman year it's Romeo & Juliet, sophomore year it's Hamlet and Julius Ceasar, and I'm not sure what it is for junior and senior year.

I don't see what the big deal about it is either. When you get right down to it, all his stories are fairly simple. The only reason they look so complex is because he wrote them in Elizabethan english which is kind of hard to understand.

I wish we could study a more contemporary author. Hell, J.K. Rowling writes just as well as Shakespeare, in my opinion.

Yeah i'm not a big fan of shakespeare either. We were watching this historical movie about him in my english class this year, and as it turns out there was a period in his life where historians believe him to be gay. Just a little fun historical fact i thought i'd throw out there.

IRONIC??
my homework was to write a dialouge of shakesperean insults.....(he was a deranged guy)
we got a sheet that had hundreds of outrageous insults such as....
~rank, half-faced, hedge-pig
~wart-necked, beef-witted, devil-monk
~roughish, knotty-pated, hugger-mugger
and of course the ever popular...
~loggerheaded, fat-kidneyed, foot-licker
all of which have apparently been used in his plays (he's one sick person)

Haha we watched a video about that too. It was like "Shakespeare was believed to have affairs with young boys." I don't really like him either.

I agree with what you have to say about Shakespere's style of writing. Rushed, over-dramatic, unrealistic. Seriously, Hamlet was the worst. About 200 pages full of an man who could not make any decisons. And somehow, it was dramatic. I thought it was rather forced.
I read Titus Andronicus for a term paper last semester. It was really ridiculous. There were probably around 20 deaths, a rape, and a few mutilations throughout the play. Amusing at times, but as you pointed out, rushed and unrealistic.
But, we have to deal with this crazy writer because he is 'classic'. Well, if you think about it, there is not that many writers that have the same style as Shakespeare did.

obviously none of us are going to understand a shakespearean play. they're from a totally different world. most people here are just going to say they suck simply because they don't like them.

hahaaa, I say 'rank'.
It's like, a normal word here.

I don't like them.
But to be fair, last year we did Shakespeare, and we got to watch three versions of one play, but in diffrent styles on video.
one was normal, one was futurist, and one was set in a coucil estate.

And to be fair, the council estate one was reet good.

Shakespeare is okay. I hate Julius Caesar with a passion and Romeo and Juliet.

OMGZ DATS SOOOO HXC!!11!


I really can't stand Shakespeare. He's boring, the words don't make any sense, and as if that wasn't bad enough, they make us analyize it. We're reading Julius Caesar right now, and I really think it's a waste of time.




Clover =

i dont like a lot of his work

BUT i AM a sucker for good ol ''romeo and juliet"

i like a lot of plays.

but not as much with him.

He was well hung, or so they say.

Because we all know that's what really matters.

I understand shakespeare plays.
I was a theatre major, I spent ALOT of time reading shakespeare.
I understand it, I enjoy it, and I think it is very unique...
and it's uniqueness is why people choose to study it alot!
It was ground breaking!

Of all the writers I've gone through, the two I love with a passion are Shakespeare and Billie Joe Armstrong.
They both inspire me with their insights into human nature, and they ovelap at times:-

What's in a name - Fashion Victim/Romeo and Juliet

Billie on Whatsername: '...trying to have that relationship between different people and yourself, surrounded by chaos'
Othello to Desdemona: 'Perdition catch my soul, but I do love thee, and when I love thee not, chaos is come again'.

I love particularly Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet , A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Macbeth. I re-read Macbeth recently - it's cut like a movie, and if Tarantino came out with it, people would fucking adore it; I'm surprised he hasn't.
The reason is may come across to you as rushed (doesn't to me) is because he wrote his scripts and handed them page by page to the actors who would perform them, all ongoing; he had his own theatre company, and worked closely with his actors.
The reason some of it seems a little broad is because of the audience whose attention he had keep for the entire length of his plays with just those words - people can't watch an episode of Scrubs and carry the concept without comic cut-ins to cartoonize the ideas for them, and we'd consider ourselves a sophisticated society.
It takes some effort to understand Shakespearean English - it's worth it; but Shakespeare should also be taught by someone who loves it enough to help you make the leap. He knows the human heart and soul.
He lived by these words - 'To speak what we feel, not what we ought to say'; that to me is how Billie writes - 'take all your vulnerabilities and put them in your music, and just try to be honest'.

Give it a chance.

Thank you Jamie311 and justcause.

There's a reason why Shakespeare's work has lasted this long and has been studied for so long--because he was a great playwright.

i love shakespeare. i've gotten good at reading his stuff since we read so many works of his. i hated the first play we read but then the more we did the more i liked him. then we read some sonnets my junior year of high school and i loved those too. yeah i'm def a billy shakes fan.

shakespeare was the premiere playwright of his time. his is the only popular elizabethan work that has come down to us almost exactly as it was written and it was poetry. i can't say i really enjoyed it anymore than any of you did when i was young, but, i'm glad i studied it. why? well, if for no other reason, that educated people are familiar with shakespeare. all his plays are redone in modern times. the subjects are timeless. modern playwrights are really writing the same themes, just not doing it in the exact language. west side story was romeo and juliet to name one. there are others and in order to be an intelligent and well read person in the western world you must be passingly familiar with shakespeare's themes. they're still happening in real life, just not as poetically. if not for shakespeare, modern plays and stories wouldn't be what they are. it's not complicated to understand that if you are in any way familiar with the his work. from the greek plays to shakespeare to modern theater it's a direct line and a wonderful one at that.

Since I'm taking an American Literature class, we aren't reading Shakespere. But I wish we were!!!!!! I absolutely love his work! I've seen some of his plays live and performed in some. Personally, I think his work is amazing!

shakespeare has really made my like miserable (at least in terms of english) i failed it last year and i see myself failing it again. its so hard and miserable and the meaning is irrelevant in present-day society

my teacher makes us read it alot and he gets really excited and enthusiastic and starts leaping around demonstrating parts. Poor guy, he doesn't own a tv so his entertainment is wearing very tight trousers and leaping about to shakespeare.

I really don't enjoy shakespeari. Sure it may have been great and advanced back in the 16 century but now... it sucks to put it straight.

I read Romeo and Juliet..It made me think,but it was really difficult to read..

I prefer Edgar Allan Poe..

We did Merchant Of Venice last year. I think I would have enjoyed it, but the teacher was completely incompetent so I didn't pay any attention.

I really enjoyed studying Shakespeare.
He is a fabulous playwright and an amazing poet.
His sonnets are said to be the best around, not only are they masterpieces in their own right, but together they make an amazing story that may or may not have been about himself.
I found it really easy to understand how it is written, which may have been the reason behind me liking him so much.
My favourite play is of course Romeo & Juliet but i love the majority of his sonnets equally, some of his sonnets are questionable in their intention and content.

clover?

I would have thought it was clever.

We are reading Romeo and Juliet in school and its okay... i understand it and everything but when it comes to testing on it... i don't do well.
I don't see whats so special either, but sometime i see it.

That sucks, cause I really loved that play. Which is suprising since I usually don't like Shakespearean plays too much.

Were doing shakespeare in English i don't understand a thing what is going on. It's so boring i nearly fall asleep every lesson. tomorrow we have actors coming in to act out Macbeth. On thursday we are going to see macbeth in theatre how exciting

my favorite is probably either macbeth or hamlet.

what about you, fellow shakespeare lovers?

were doing macbeth at the moment at first i was like WTF but i sorta used to it now but it's still boring

shaksphgere, or however you spell it is way too hard for my small brain. lol.

I read my first Shakespeare this year, Romeo and Juliet, of couse. I enjoyed it. But it was a little overdone since they met, fell in love, got married and died all within 4 days.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. But it might have been the fact we read it outloud as a class and played roles and that was fun because I had the best English class ever.

God, that sounded so incredibly dorky.

My English teacher will give you a zero if you spell Shakespeare's name wrong on an assignment.

I don't like Shakespeare much. I enjojed Macbeth but Romeo and Juliet was boring...

But I like Mickiewicz

well considering his name has been typed in each reply in this thread and you still don't know how to spell it, i guess your brain is too small for a lot of things.

macbeth! definitley. lady m was soooo creepy...i loved her. it's a great play. hamlet is good too, but personally i feel, no one can top lady m!

Argh we did about shakespeare the other week in english, so annoying.

I think you've hit on the key thing about appreciating Shakespeare - the words were meant to be said aloud, not read; when you don't sound them, you loose all his word-play and a lot of his humour.
Shakespeare had to go out there and grab the attention of his audience, and hold it however he could, maybe using broader shit , melodramatics and stuff so that people would stay around for the deeper things he wanted to say; like how a guy writes a song about masturbation when he wants to get across to you what it is to be fucking lonely.
Say it aloud - it doesn't matter if you're a great actor or not, a lot of his actors would probably have been crap - and move around in the words, get the energy of it.
Most of all, even if you don't 'get' all of it, don't just discard it; Shakespeare is for your whole life, you'll just discover more and more in his writing with time.

n00b

we done macbeth alot so i knew the plot and for key stage 3 every other class was doing macbeth but our teacher got bored of doing macbeth all the time so we had to do hamlet, which i had never done before. i could never understand the actual story, i couldn't understand the language and by the time i had worked out what he was saying i'd forget what the other bit meant and i just couldnt piece it all together. we watched videos for macbeth and one for romeo and juliet, but not for hamlet so i didn't know what it was about. i really cant remember how i done in that exam, i must have done ok because i got a level 5 in english in key stage 3 (average). i have an italian friend who has to study shakespeare, now that is cruel! i cant understand it very well and im english!

I have an overall love for his stuff - you read the poetry, too? If you're gonna make me pick my 'Insomniac', it's Hamlet; it's got this quality that every time I see the story, I hope this time he won't screw up and get killed!
I think it's the perfect portrait of an adolescent guy, and it's usually played by someone much too old for the part, because it's seen as too demanding for a young actor.
It was my big dream to see River Phoenix play Hamlet - guess that's not gonna happen!
Did you know that 'My Own Private Idaho' is partly based on Henry - umm, IV or V, not sure which - the one with alter egos in it - very St. Jimmy/Jesus stuff.
River Phoenix was amazing in it, he had this quality.. even Keanu Reeves responded with an interesting performance. You should check it out.

mhmm i loved the sonnets when we read them. and did you ever see the hamlet movie that came out a few years back? it was so weird. we watched it in class after reading the play. it was set in modern day new york and it was very strange. i couldn't get into it.

I love Shakespeare. It sounds horrible spoken in an American accent though. I love Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo & Juliet. I love the way the words and lines flow like a neverending poem and the way the plots always twist through absurdities and novelties, ever-so-subtle word play and innuendo is woven throught the text. Metaphor and Similie almost over-used, but to such effect..

I am a Shakespeare Whore.

The sonnets - I think he needed to be in love more or less all time - hey, 'that special kind of feeling' - I think it represented the highest point of existence for him, and really, no-one explored those feelings as completely and without inhibition as he did.
As for the different 'versions' - I think it's really important that they're done, regardless of how successful they are, because each generation needs to 'own' Shakespeare to fully inhabit it, even though they will probably then go back to the 'classic' version.
I didn't see the movie you mention - what's it called, I'm always interested in someone's take on Hamlet.
I saw Kenneth Branagh play him onstage years ago, in his own production - madly fucking over-the-top performance, but the love was there for all to see in his enthusiasm.
I love Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet - he got a really nice angle on it, the gangs, and the properly young leads - I like di Caprio very much as Romeo, and Claire Danes because she doesn't care how her face collapses when she cries. I loved the gaudy religious imagery - the whole thing had the sumptuous feel of Elizabethan England, and the edginess of adolescent experience in any era.

i like romeo + juliet, but then i love all romance stuff
the only reason i think i dont always enjoy shakespeare stuff is because in school we go over and over it, because the language s so difficult, so i get bored of it and lose interest

i'm reading romeo and juliet in school and the book is set over 3 days and 4 people die and 2 people fall in love it all happens so fast

I had to read The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It... all of which complete crap. To me, it feels like the teachers are just shoving a foreign language in front of us then expecting us to understand it all.

I can't believe you're slating Shakespeare... I mean, did YOU ever invent a word or two?