More Shakespeare!Squee, and a *Headdesk*

[capri0mni]

20 years ago, or so, there was a fantabulous show broadcast on on of my local PBS stations, called Playing Shakespeare (Internet Movie Database listing) with John Barton, and the actors of the RSC. It was fantastic! You got to see actors experimenting with Shakespeare, playing around with quick scenes, trying different ways to play the lines, laughing, flubbing, just having fun. And I mean, just click on that link, and check out the cast list: Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, and Patrick Stewart, all being young and sexy, and laughing and loving it up with each other. What's not to love?

I love to watch experts at work, don't you?

But then, I saw the price (in comments): $385 US!

WTF?! No wonder Shakespeare is seen as only being for the "High Tide" folks. Obviously, this is priced only for Ivory Towered-Universities to buy. They should mark it down to a buck a piece, and give them out free to every high school in Britain and America, or at least make them available to the English teachers. (One thing I left out of my "The problem with Shakespeare in the culture today" list is: Most of the teachers were just as bored and confused by Shakespeare when they were in school, and they're teaching it now because they have to).

Argh. I really want to see this again. To splurge, or not to splurge?

I almost want to buy this for myself, and donate it to my local public library, at least.

*headdesk*

Comments

[gordon-r-d.livejournal.com]

I saw at least a couple of those, many years ago. Definitely remember Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. (Of course, for me the definitive Hamlet is the one with Patrick Stewart and Lalla Ward. Sad geeky SF fan in me kept recogising people. :P )

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Was that part of the old BBC series, that did every one of Shakespeare's plays, uncut, but filmed as if they were movies?

I loved that series! My main PBS station showed a play every Sunday afternoon, and that's how I taught myself to love Shakespeare, before formal education got its claws in.

(although I was lucky, I went to an alternative school, and my teacher taught the plays that he liked -- and he let us know that all the bits that sounded like sexual ineuendo probably were).

[gordon-r-d.livejournal.com]

Yep, we got shown two or three of them during my English classes, along with Roman Polanski's Macbeth. Julius Ceasar was certainly one of the others. We also did complete readthroughs of Hamlet, MacBeth and Julius Ceasar in class, I believe I had about three lines in the whole of JC. :)

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, videos in that series are in the same price range as "Playing Shakespeare" -- like $99 per play. Otherwise, I'd pick up a couple of those for my collection, too. Off the top of my head, I'd like to see "Aa You Like It" again (where the above quote comes from), and "Merry Wives of Windsor," and ... I can't remember if the "King Lear" I saw was from that series, or not (with an octogenerian Olivier, and John Hurt as the Fool) -- but I want to see that, again, too ... one of those tragedies that soaks you through, wrings you dry, and leaves you tattered 'round the edges.

:::Sigh:::

I wish our educational system was centered around the philosophy: "Pass it on because it's good," rather than "Pass it on because it's good for you." Then, maybe school wouldn't be so joy-draining...

[pedanther]

I got to be Hamlet in our class read-through. I was terribly upset - I wanted to be Horatio...

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Horatio is one of the better parts. :::Nods:::

I forget whom, but, a long while back, now (by LJ standards) I saw someone write a Hamlet-Horatio slashfic translation of a passage from Hamlet.

It was in the comments of someone I later put on my f'list, if I recall correctly...

But I probably don't.