Although I suggested making the plays part of your daily reading, if you can afford to read them all in one go I certainly recommend that. Plays are supposed to be viewed primarily, but secondly they should, like short stories or novellas, be read in a single sitting to get their benefit as a literary unit.
There are also benefits to reading the plays bit by bit over a week. That way you really live with the play for longer, absorb its message, and it will likely have a more lasting impact. Basically, there are no hard and fast rules here. Make it work for you. Just enjoy the story for what it is! Marvel at the characters, their psychological complexity. Relish the poetry. Endlessly analysing Shakespeare is not going to help you get into Shakespeare.
Sure, when you become a connoisseur, you might want to do that stuff. But as a newcomer to anything, first and foremost just enjoy the experience for what it is.
Shakespeare uses old language. This is why you need to see his plays performed. But I understand themes of love and hate and jealousy and greed on a visceral human level. I can laugh. I can cry. I can be moved. Great art does that. Do you need to know the scientific terminology for describing a sunset in order to feel its power? To feel the sense of mortality weighing upon you when you see those yellow beams?
Do you need to understand a sunrise? Or do you feel hope and ambition in your gut as a new day dawns? When reading these plays, become at home in the world, become one of the population, befriend the characters. Try also to reserve criticising or judging the plays until you understand them.
But my rankings will differ from your rankings. The beauty of art, including literature, is all down to the pleasure we get from intimate acquaintance from it.
All that matters is whether you like it or not. When you read a play, you are not reading a complete work. The complete play the work that the author intended you to apprehend is only apprehended when it is acted on a stage.
Like music, which must be heard, a play lacks a physical dimension when we read it in a book. The reader must supply that dimension. The only way to do that is to make a pretence of seeing it acted. Therefore, once you have discovered what the play is about, as a whole and in detail, and once you have answered the other questions you must ask about any story, then try directing the play.
Imagine that you have half a dozen good actors before you, awaiting your commands. Tell them how to say this line, how to play that scene. Explain the importance of these few words, and how that action is the climax of the work.
You will have a lot of fun, and you will learn a lot about the play. This is advice I came to on my own at university thanks to my Biochemist friend.
We sat down together, divvied up the cast roles, and acted the play out! We put on different voices, jumped up and down, and had a blast. Yes, it was nerdy. There are a variety of different reading orders for the complete works of Shakespeare. Not a bad way to read the Bard. He started writing around and ended around , and his most revered plays definitely fall in the later middle of that period.
Shakespeare is difficult enough. It will be a slog. News and Interviews. Happy birthday, William Shakespeare! In his honor, try our helpful infographic to find out what celebrated play you should read next. Where did you end up—comedy, history, or tragedy? Apr 23, AM. Love's Labour's Lost - that's because I decided to read what our local Shakespeare Festival is performing. I'll never get them all read, but it's a start.
The infographic is wonderful and well done. I've always found "Midsummer" to be a great entry play, but "Much Ado about Nothing" can work wonders as well, because so much of that one just feels so modern. It's one of those that, when the theatre I work for puts it on, we get asked how much of the language we changed -- when it isn't a word! These are plays, after all -- Shakespeare wrote them for a stage and voices and bodies, not to mention that most crucial of elements: an audience.
See them if you can; you're missing out on the real delight if you don't. This is a great and quite well-thought-out flow-chart, though!
Wish I could get this poster for my English classroom. I love love love this, almost as much I love the Bard himself! I ended up with 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' - tickets for which I have unfortunately just failed to get. Apr 23, PM. Great chart. I think my first Shakespeare play was Macbeth. Very clever!
I just finished a take off on 'Taming of the Shrew'. It was Leslie Gould's 'Courting Cate'. Kind of like Shakespeare meets Amish. Very amusing! It would've been great if you could click on the book you ended up with and it took you to the review.
Okay, Titus it is, once again. Comedy of Errors for me, and this is a great chart! Apr 24, AM. Wow, Good job!!! Davies new. Any chance you might market this? I'd love to have it as a poster in my classroom. I want a copy too. Apr 24, PM. Working on my 2nd Hamlet now. When you have actors that can speak it like they're thinking it, and tragedians who don't mind also playing the foolish knave and don't 'saw the air too much like thus' it's a wonderful experience.
Also have done the ballet of Midsummer and did the play in college. My scenic design choice was a la Salvadore Dali. There are excellent books, movies, podcasts and articles on all of these themes, and exploration of them need not be at all dry like a badly-taught history lesson! Search, discover and enjoy. Consequently it does not have the set rhythmic structure of verse. The terms poetry and verse often make us think of something that rhymes, but it does not need to at all.
Blank verse is a term used specially to describe verse where there is no rhyming structure. Blank verse is what you will encounter most when reading Shakespeare. So what makes it blank verse as opposed to prose? Again so:. Getting creative as a response to your reading helps you feel more involved, and so keeps you keen on continuing.
Maybe you paint? Try making a painting inspired by the play. Love cooking? Try inventing a meal that celebrates the scene you have just read. You get the idea! We feel so strongly that creative activity can increase your enjoyment of reading Shakespeare, that we are working on a series of interactive books that encourage just that. Subscribe if you would like to hear from us as new titles are published.
You can find more details of the Arkangel Shakespeare audiobook series on amazon. Available at Amazon, or from all good bookshops worldwide. Please leave this field empty Get fun doodle tips, offers, and news of what's up at Doodle Reads HQ in our occasional newsletter. Unsubscribe easily at any time. See our Privacy page for more. Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription. Thanks for taking the time to send your feedback. It means a lot, and I really appreciate it.
Table of Contents. Watching a movie adaptation of Shakespeare can be a great way in. Have fun reading Shakespeare out loud.
0コメント