Shakespeare

 

“something wicked this way comes”

Shakespeare is the greatest writer of the English language.  I’m taking that as a given.  Yet so many people are bored by his plays and even more so by the films made from them.  So what’s wrong?  If not Shakespeare, then is it the lack of sophistication of the audience?  Hardly.  Shakespeare did not write plays to be studied by intellectuals in towers; he wrote for the common man.  His stories are filled with violence, sex, adventure, slapstick, and crude jokes—the stuff we all enjoy.  It is the directors who change excitement to boredom by missing what The Bard was trying to do.  They give us slow, proper Shakespeare when rapidity and wild abandon (be it emotional expression or slapstick humor) should be the name of the game.

I’ve started with a few easy-to-find films.  I’ll be adding more as I can.

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