You are so very right, Alison. I recall one elderly gentleman telling me that
he learned "Friends comma, Romans comma Lend me your ears Period" !
Shakespeare understood is Shakespeare to be read and re-read but interpretation
and re-interpretation is not an exercise for the younger teens.
[log in to unmask] wrote:
> >Which is precisely why the earlier comment by LS209[?] about Shakespeare not
> >'speaking' etc was so bizzarre. I'd be interested to hear clarification of
> >how Shakespeare doesn't speak.
>
> Shakespeare speaks, for sure, but sometimes he gets throttled: by bad
> productions, by bad teaching, by anything which simply places him as the
> lofty genius of English and squeezes the life out of him. I was taught
> The Merchant of Venice at school very badly, and it nearly put me off
> him: but then at the tender age of 14 we were taken to see Polanski's
> film of Macbeth, in which Francesca Annis wandering around only clothed
> by her red hair. I remember it was a shock, because the language which
> looked so forbidding written down was so clear when it was _said_. And
> then I read Lear, and I was hooked.
>
> There was a radio broadcast of Kenneth Branagh's version of Hamlet some
> years ago, of which I recorded the first episode. It wasn't that good,
> but it had John Geilgud as Hamlet's father shuddering "the horror, the
> horror", as only he could... and my kids, then about 4 and 6, crept out
> of bed to listen. After that I had to put the tape on every night at
> bedtime in lieu of a story. They loved it. I've no idea what they loved
> about it, they certainly didn't understand much of the play, unless it
> was simply the sheer pleasure of the language - all those wonderful
> words, and the wind whistling around the ramparts - they called it the
> Ghost Play. But it says something for Shakespeare's visceral attraction.
>
> Best
>
> Alison
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