/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.640883]

Complete BBC Shakespeare /lit/

Do it, faggots.

[Anonymous No.640890]

Do... what?

[Anonymous No.640895]

>>640890
Watch all of Shakespeare's plays, and comment on those you have watched here.

[Anonymous No.640897]

>>640895

I've watched their Hamlet. It was excellent.

[Anonymous No.640904]

>>640897
Who was Hamlet?

[Anonymous No.640905]

>>640897
dagger scene was lolz

[Anonymous No.640920]

>>640904

Derek Jacobi

[Anonymous No.640926]

>>640920
superior

[Anonymous No.640940]

>>640926

Tennant played Hamlet, did he?

Not sure if want...

[Anonymous No.640967]

>>640940
It's actually really fucking good, I'd definitely recommend the film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8VOZLjQbvQ

[Anonymous No.640996]

>>640940
That production of Hamlet fucking rocked all around. David Tennant is one of the best Hamlets I've ever seen, and Patrick Stewart kicked so much ass as Claudius.

[Anonymous No.643435]

FAVOURITE HISTORY ROLL CALL.

Richard III. I like 'em evil and fascist.

[Anonymous No.643493]

Uh, what are we discussing exactly? The only things that spring to mind about the BBC Shakespeare---and I've seen a bunch of them---is that (a) casting Tim Pigott-Smith as Angelo in "Measure for Measure" changed the dynamic of the play by making Angelo kind of attractive rather than repulsive, if they had a fat greasy Angelo the play would be as "rancid" as Harold Bloom says it is; and also (b) the BBC's Julius Caesar is slightly hilarious to watch, as Julius Caesar himself is played by the Criminologist from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Charles Gray, also in "Dr No", if memory serves).

[Anonymous No.643498]

but i wantz to read shakespeare first

[Anonymous No.643529]

>>643493
Well, the point of the play is that the Duke failed to engage in religious charity, and thus Antonio was the product of the Duke's failure to deliver up a dowry to a deservingly noble but poor maiden, and Antonio's hubris is a sign of the *Duke's* own hubris. Thus while Antonio is a greasy rapist, he is the greasy rapist that the Duke himself created.

Given that Shakespeare was writing plays for an audience of law students who were forced into chastity until their mid to late 30s, it is unsurprising that he writes a play about the semen backing up into the brain.

Also: NUN RAPE! Its okay if you're a Duke and you chat her up first.

[Anonymous No.643541]

>>643529

Hmm. That's one way to see Measure for Measure, I guess. I mean, the nun rape is, well, nun rape. But what about poor Mariana? She gets screwed on the same "bed trick" that Helena uses on Bertram in "All's Well That Ends Well."

I always thought it was interesting that Tennyson (who didn't marry till he was 40) was obsessed enough with Mariana's role in M4M that he wrote a poem about what it would be like to be her....waiting for a lover who never arrives....

[Anonymous No.643551]

>>643498
If you're not a BA graduate, read text, watch play, read text.

If you did your BA, just watch, walk in and out, eat popcorn, feel up your lady friend, have a piss, get drunk. Don't worry, you'll get the play. And remember: walking in and out for the good bits is the Elizabethan way, just like bear baiting.

[Anonymous No.643561]

>>643541
The depiction of female sexuality as very much "up for it", is catering to the needs of the male audience. Women have to want to fuck, in order to make the law students feel good about cuckolding other men, and fucking whores. But women must really want to marry, and every cuckoldry to be "art" or "imagination" so that when they reach that happy and aimed for state of marriage their wives won't fuck around or be impure.

Shakespeare is writing for history's equivalent of /jp/.

[Anonymous No.643565]

>>643541
Personally I find the bed trick to be disgusting. But it does kind of count as Female on Male rape. On the other hand, in AWTEW the bed trick is conducted fully within lawful marriage. In M4M the bed trick is conducted outside marriage.

[Anonymous No.643592]

Here's what I really want to ask you Shakespearefags. I have never seen this discussed.

If you read Suetonius' Lives of the 12 Caesars, you learn that the Roman Emperor Claudius was selected to be emperor after the assassination of Caligula, because they found him hiding behind a tapestry, saw his feet sticking out, and pulled it aside, and declared "It's Uncle Claudius!"

Now Hamlet has an uncle named Claudius. In no source for the play (Saxo Grammaticus, Holinshed, Polydore Vergil) is it indicated that the usurping uncle of Amlethus, the real 13th c prince of Denmark had the name of the Roman EMperor who annexed Britannia and was deified at Colchester, and worshipped as a god.

But Shakespeare uses the name Claudius in the play, and also includes a moment of hiding behind the tapestry, except it turns out it's NOT Claudius hiding, although Hamlet thinks it is.

I was just thinking about this because Derek Jacobi plays Claudius the Emperor in the BBC's "I Claudius" but also plays Uncle Claudius in Branagh's "Hamlet" and it just struck me....Why has nobody suggested that the discovery of Polonius behind the arras is a sort of visual pun? Why does nobody mention that Claudius was the emperor of Rome who annexed Britain? Shakespeare doesn't pull his names out of thin air, and more to the point, Cymbeline and Lear show that he took a distinct interest in Roman Britain.

Yet I have never seen an edition of Hamlet which has a footnote about why he named the character "Claudius". It's like people assume he's Shakespeare, he's beyond us all. Bullshit. If a writer needs to come up with a name, he comes up with a name for a reason.

Does this sound loopy? I assure you the wind is southerly where I am, and I do know a hawk from a hernshaw.

[Anonymous No.643603]

>>643592
Nicely spotted pun. But who'd stab Uncle Claudius except for the most monstrous Caligula ever created.

That's right bitches, I just called Hamlet worse than Caligula.

[Anonymous No.643611]

>>That's right bitches, I just called Hamlet worse than Caligula.

I want to know if you think Hamlet was CRAZIER than Caligula, though.

[Anonymous No.643618]

>>643611
Nope, Hamlet's sane. Hamlet is super Antonio, a rational mind turned to sinful ends. He appears insane because he carries his own internal moral compass (as a modern existential hero), and his North is different to everyone else's.

Of course they think he's mad: he hasn't killed Claudius by act 4 and they're all shitting themselves about what the fuck he's up to. In reality he's attempting to ascertain two questions: if it be lawful to himself and his character to kill Claudius, and if his understanding of Claudius' guilt permits him to kill.

[Anonymous No.643637]

>>if it be lawful to himself and his character to kill Claudius, and if his understanding of Claudius' guilt permits him to kill.

But he has the chance when Claudius is praying, and declines, because his father's ghost emphasizes that the worst thing about the murder was that he died with all his sins on his head, and now must walk the night, purgatorially.

So Hamlet declines to kill Claudius at that moment for pretty sound theological reasons, if you're viewing it as a play which engages with Roman Catholic theology at a moment when the certainties of that theology are REALLY being questioned by the English reformation.

But also, at the moment when he sees Claudius praying, he has definitive proof of Claudius's guilt, based on his reaction to The Mousetrap / The Murder of Gonzago.

The irony of course is that after Hamlet declines to kill Claudius at prayer, we find Claudius admitting the prayers were ineffective.

FWIW TS Eliot's reading of the play is purely structural. Shakespeare is handed an ur-Hamlet or revenge tragedy in which the revenge has to wait till the big climax at the end, like a Hollywood movie. So therefore Shakespeare invents the kind of deep psychology you get in Hamlet's soliloquies purely out of necessity....he has to find SOME reason to delay the climax of the play.

Whereas Goethe's reading of Hamlet is that Hamlet thinks not too much but too well....at the moment when he might very well become his own father by killing Claudius, he DECLINES to become merely his own father. (Also named Hamlet, just like old Fortinbras and young Fortinbras share a name. And the point there is clearly that young Fortinbras is just an unthinking thug like old Fortinbras was. Whereas Hamlet is clearly NOT just his father come again, since his own father would clearly have killed Claudius somewhere early in Act 1)

[Anonymous No.643682]

>>643637
The only way to know if the prayers are ineffective is if Claudius is not in true repentance. If he isn't, they're not prayers at all.

[Anonymous No.643683]

>>640880
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[Anonymous No.643708]

>>640880
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