![]() ![]() Its language is vivid, its music forceful, its metaphor appropriately theatrical, and its sense, ultimately, ironic: In spite of its nihilism, the line’s poetry does have meaning. It’s dark, I know, but it’s very dramatic. But the top prize has to go to Macbeth: “It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing” (5.5.25-26). Prospero in The Tempest: “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep” (4.1.156-58). Hamlet: “That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once” (5.1.70). Edmund in King Lear: “The wheel is come full circle! I am here” (5.3.173). Lord Hastings in 2 Henry IV: “We are time’s subjects” (1.3.110). I certainly linger longest on Shakespeare’s expressions of the fleeting nature of our lives. I know The Tempest is the more canonical choice, but Cymbeline, in all of its odd plots twists, I found more transportive.įavorite line/passage: An impossible question, but here goes. It’s a time machine back to Merrie England and Shakespeare at his bawdy best, but not without darker undertones.īest romance: Another underdog, Cymbeline. Once I found my personal connection to the play, I’ve been haunted by the idea of Lear witnessing himself lose his own mind ever since.īest history: Henry IV Part I. The twins/mistaken identity plot is at once hilarious and disturbing.īest tragedy: King Lear. That I’m still shaken by the passage over 400 years after Shakespeare wrote it – that’s powerful.īest comedy: This goes to an underdog, The Comedy of Errors. ![]() He’s a remarkable literary creation, for one, and his lines always yield, no matter how many times I revisit them, profound and difficult Truths About The Human Condition. ![]() Not that I want to be friends with them, but there’s so much to Iago, Macbeth, and Lear’s tortured and torturing psyches. I feel some sort of spiritual affinity with melancholy Jaques in As You Like It and would love to drink some sack with Falstaff. Portia’s intelligence and selflessness amaze me in The Merchant of Venice, as does Helena’s in All’s Well That Ends Well. Boy, girl, parents, hormones, yadda yadda yadda, double suicide.įavorite character: This is a tough one. Most overrated play: It’s still a masterpiece, but Romeo and Juliet. Plus intrigue, given new evidence that Christopher Marlowe helped write the plays. Most underrated play: The three parts of Henry VI. ![]() One’s likes and dislikes shift with time and experience, of course, so I’m basing these winners and losers specifically on how I feel at the other end of reading the complete works. I think I’m qualified to pass a little judgment at this point. So? What did I learn? How am I different now? How has the experience changed me?īefore I tackle the big to be or not to be’s, though, some Shakespeare superlatives are in order. (But would I turn it down?) I mean: Why not read all of Shakespeare’s works in one year and see what I can learn from it? That’s what I wrote when I started out on Shakespeare Confidential. No, no, I know my writing will never inspire my own section in bookstores and change Western literature as we know it. What did I learn? How am I different now? How has the experience changed me? I even read you, singling out a copy of Cymbeline I was surprised, and impressed, to see stocked. Top to bottom, shelf by shelf, I eyed all the Macbeth’s and Much Ado About Nothing’s, all the Romeo and Juliet’s and Richard III’s. Not long after I finished the complete works, I popped into a bookstore. ![]()
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