So Who is this Shakespeare Guy Anyway?

To begin my dangerous delve into the world of Shakespeare, I'd like to outline what this blog is all about. I generally  have more free time than is good for me, and more opinions in my head than I should be able to cram in there, so this is where I'm going to talk about Shakespeare. I can feel you squirming with excitement.

I went to see a performance of Shakespeare a while ago and while speed-reading the program before the performance began, I saw something that reminded me that Shakespeare isn't just the name of some dead guy whose ramblings I'm being forced to decipher, whose themes I'm spewing out on paper to get the grade that will make my parents nod their head appreciatively; Shakespeare is much more than that. It's a sense you can only properly realise when you've dipped your toe into acting out his plays. I'll tell you what the director said (if my room will relinquish the program to me), "...these texts were not some archaic, scholarly documents intended to be stored on a shelf somewhere and dusted off occasionally to ram down some school-kid's throat, no. These texts were written for performance and only truly come alive when treated with irreverence, joy, and an overwhelming sense of play." Kudos to the Icarus and Kings Theatre company for being fabulous! 

Shakespeare endeavors to teach us a lesson when he puts quill to parchment, not just to engage in a rant the magnitude of Ulysses. No, he is, as my English teacher put it, 'Mr Moral'. People view Shakespeare with a great deal of hostility (probably because learning how to spell his name is the most embarrassing process in the universe), because to them he is the reams of text they have to trawl through, and subsequently write six page essays about, but Shakespeare is a PLAYWRIGHT. If you've watched Finding Neverland you'll recall what Charles Frohman said about plays, and that is, he pointed out what they are called, and I beg you to pay a little attention to that when you consider Shakespeare - "Play." That's what they are, a bit of silliness really.

So, it's time for me to go off and have a good long think about what I want to say and how I want to say it, but if you never read one of my long soliloquies (though I do promise to try and make them fun) about Shakespeare's plays (I will be starting with Othello, by the way, mostly because that's the one I'm doing for my Leaving Cert), just remember that he didn't write those plays so you could rub your noses raw against the grindstone, he wrote them to entertain you.

Why don't you just sit back and let him do that? You might be surprised.