In two weeks, on Tuesday September 26, I’ll be holding a contest here, at the Risky Regencies blog. To learn about the great prizes, including a biography of the Prince Regent, and an eighty-page, lavishly illustrated Pride & Prejudice “FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION” Book, and for the rules, see last Tuesday’s post.
To enter, simply read my book — MY LADY GAMESTER, by Cara King — and then enter a comment about it on my September 26 post here. Your comment will need to show you’ve read the book, and have at least a little bit of content. (It doesn’t have to be clever or flattering or anything else, it just has to make a little bit of sense.) You can respond to something someone else has said, or start a debate, or just say what you think. (The book is available through Amazon and similar outlets.)
And remember — if this contest goes well, we may have more such in the future. So win now, win later — it’s all good!
In other news — I just returned from a quick trip to England — six plays in four days. I saw Shakespeare’s King John on Thursday, Troilus & Cressida on Friday, and his three Henry VI plays all on Saturday. It was amazing, it was exhausting, it was invigorating. It made me want to be a better writer. It made me wonder why people don’t do King John more often — and why Shakespeare ever thought it was a good idea to write Troilus and Cressida.
And now I have seen performed every one of Shakespeare’s plays — if you go by the list in my college Shakespeare book. (It didn’t include things like Edward III, which some more recent editions of Shakespeare are including.) This was one of my life goals. I have actually achieved one of my life goals! (Come to think of it, I’ve also achieved the goal of never reading Clarissa. So there’s two!) 
By the way, here’s a picture of Dorothy Jordan dressed as a “boy” (a very curvy boy!) in As You Like It.
The question of the day: which is your favorite Shakespeare play? Your least favorite? Or was there one production you saw that you thought was really exceptional, or one you thought was really lacking?
All opinions welcome!
Cara
Cara King — author of MY LADY GAMESTER
Booksellers’ Best Award for Best Regency of 2005
HAMLET.
I’m addicted.
I’ve seen it by Reduced Shakespeare. I’ve seen it done in 5 minutes. I’ve seen it done by cartoon bunnies in thirty seconds. I’ve seen it as a Rock Opera (set in outer space; I was five, the guy playing Hamlet was like 7’ tall; I blame this production for my addiction). I’ve sat the through the WHOLE thing as done by Shakespeare in the Park here in San Francisco (it’s a ficken long play, and most companies cut it judiciously). I even own Stoppard’s ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD (both the written play and the brilliant film). The book I covet most on the planet is the Cranach Press 1930 edition (a cool 16K last time I looked it up).
Least favorite . . . I’m not sure I have one. I don’t reread the Henries for fun. So maybe those are my least favorites.
Ok, this is really going to date me. I saw the last performance of the RSC’s Midsummer Night’s Dream with the trapezes and white stage etc etc directed by Peter Brook. (I was fairly young then). It was amazing. I also saw Helen Mirren in Troilus and Cressida a few years later.
Favorite play? Winter’s Tale, because it has the stage direction, exit pursued by a bear and it doesn’t get better than that. Actually, Twelfth Night because of its melancholy and humor. I think. Not fair, only having to choose one.
Janet
Welcome back, Cara! Your trip sounds fun!
My most memorable Shakespeare experience is seeing Ian McKellen doing many of the monologues on Broadway–just him on the stage, with some explanations in between. Really amazing.
My favorite play is–hard to say. MacBeth? The Tempest? King Lear (I was almost named Regan, but KL was my dad’s favorite play).
Well, I’ve only ever actually seen one on the stage and that was good old R&J. Of which, I really hate. LOL It’s a fine story and all, but that’s the only play everyone seems to do in school, so I got incredibly sick of it. Oh, also hate Othello. I just really hate that whole he believed the rumors about his wife, couldn’t stand it, had to have her dead then he finally wised up too late thing. But I guess that was the idea in the end, so Shakespeare did good with it. LOL
I love Hamlet and Richard III. Hamlet, probably because of a certain Star Trek VI connection and Richard III, I love how the guy is crazy, basically. LOL
I’ve also done Taming of the Shrew, Midsummer’s Night Dream, Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Maybe Twelth Night, I just can’t remember what it was about. . . and then Tempest a couple times. The last time it was because instead of doing King Lear, we did that one because a certain British sounding French Captain of the Enterprise was on stage in NYC at the time and they went to see it. LOL
In that Shakespeare class, we also saw a BBC version of Midsummer, the usual R&J movie, act I of a ballet of R&J that, uh, I kind of fell asleep too (sorry!) and the mostly female group voted to see Mel Gibson’s Hamlet. LOL
I’ve liked some more than others, but in the end, after an incredibly looooong winded explanation, Always go back to Hamlet and Richard III.
Lois
It’s very hard to pick just one favorite! I do love Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night’s Dream, R&J, As You Like It. I can’t think of any I hate, though I do find Othello and KL painful. 🙂
Least favorite production–one I saw just a few months ago, where Taming of the Shrew was reset in the American West in the 19th century. The actors whooped and hollered and yippeed like they were at a rodeo, until I just wanted to claw my ears off so I wouldn’t have to listen anymore. 🙂 Unless it’s very cleverly done (like these new Shakespeare Re-Done movies on BBC America, which I love) I don’t like these “reimagined” versions.
Favorite production–I saw Ralph Fiennes as Hamlet on Broadway several years ago, it was amazing. And midsummer’s when I was a kid, that got me hooked on Shakespeare in the first place. 🙂
Oh, I saw Ralph Fiennes do that too, in London! Nice production. I’ve never seen a “Hamlet” (on stage or screen) I thought was perfect or even near, but it’s such a hard play that that’s no surprise…
I think my favorite of his plays would be “Twelfth Night”, “Much Ado About Nothing”, and “Hamlet”… Though at various times I would’ve had “King Lear”, “Macbeth”, and “Richard II” on that list..
At the moment, my least favorite play of his is “Troilus and Cressida”. Ouch! It’s very long, and the language is very hard. Few likable characters, and no coherent plot. Don’t know what he was drinking that month. 🙂
I think my favorite Shakespeare movie is probably either Branagh’s “Henry V”, or Ian McKellen’s “Richard III”. Though I also really loved Branagh’s “Much Ado.” And quite like Trevor Nunn’s Victorian “Twelfth Night,” (which had Imogen Stubbs as Viola, plus Helena Bonham Carter and Ben Kingsley), and the Baz Luhrman Romeo & Juliet, and the Hamlet with Ethan Hawke (believe it or not!), and Tony Richardson’s “Hamlet” — I think I’d better stop there, I’m getting carried away.)
I’m not sure what my favorite Shakespeare production I’ve seen on stage would be… I saw Twelfth Night when I was eleven or so, and loved it — and then saw Macbeth a year later, and was hooked. But I have no idea if those were good productions or not!
I saw a very impressive “Coriolanus” with Tony Stephens done by the RSC several years back… (I’m not always a fan of their productions — used to be most that I saw were sort of stodgy — but I think they’ve loosened up.) 🙂
I saw a grand production of “Much Ado” a long while back with Felicity Kendall. And very entertaining productions of Cymbeline and Pericles locally, at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum several years back… (I think anyone who can make Pericles entertaining on stage is pretty darn clever.)
And I guess, along the same lines, the productions of King John and the Henry 6s that I just saw in Stratford have to count among the best — difficult plays to do at all, and they were really fantastic…
On the down side, I’ve never seen a Lear that was as good as it should be… And I’ve never seen a Julius Caesar that held my attention.
Okay, there’s enough rambling from me! As you can see, I can talk about Shakespeare forever!
Cara
I don’t think I can narrow it down to a single favorite. I love, or at least like, all his plays, though I definitely love some a lot more than others! 🙂
Among the tragedies: Hamlet and Lear, definitely. Macbeth would probably be third.
Among the comedies: Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night.
Among the Histories: Richard III, no question, in spite its almost ahistorical depiction of that much-maligned king. 🙂 After that, probably Henry V, then Richard II.
But I’ve seen some marvelous productions of many other plays: Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Coriolanus, The Tempest, and now King John and the three Henry VI’s. And even in the least successful plays–for me, Henry VIII and yes, Troilus and Cressida–there’s still lots of good stuff.
Todd-who-is-a-bard-junky
Compared to the rest of you (though not the population in general!) I am somewhat Shakespeare-challenged.
My favorite tragedy is definitely Hamlet–a tortured prince for a hero, what could be better?
I think my favorite comedy is Twelfth Night. I’ve seen two stage versions and the movie Cara talks about and loved ’em all. I enjoyed the Branagh Much Ado a lot, too.
Least favorite is hard–it probably would be one of the ones I haven’t read, the Henry or Richard ones, but I don’t know. The least favorite I’ve seen is Othello. It sounds silly (but may be part of a modern mind-set) but I have trouble getting over the scene where he smothers Desdemona and she comes back to give a dying speech. I guess Shakespeare just couldn’t resist or maybe the audience would’ve felt cheated of that last bit of drama. It’s even sillier in the operatic version (who can sing an aria after being smothered to death?) but I actually deal with that better. I don’t watch opera expecting it to make any sense. It’s all about emotion.
For someone who is Shakespeare-challenged that was a long comment!
Elena 🙂
I read somewhere that a new Branagh movie version of As You Like It is coming out, but of course now I don’t remember who was in it or when or anything!
IMDB claims that the Branagh “As You Like It” is in production, and due out this year (though I don’t actually believe that bit — imdb is often wrong about due dates until the time nears). It has Bryce Dallas Howard (star of Shyamalan’s “The Village” and “Lady in the Water”) as Rosalind, Brian Blessed as the usurping duke, Kevin Kline as Jaques, Adrian Lester (brilliant — he was also in Branagh’s LLL) as Oliver, and Alfred Molina as Touchstone.
I’m hoping for good things. I think Branagh has often run into trouble, though, when he tries to add big name actors to his casts… I’d say about half the time it’s worked, and half the time it hasn’t…. So who knows. 🙂
Cara
Actually, it seems that “As You Like It” is already showing in Italy! So I guess it’s finished. There are lots of pics on an Italian website:
http://www.35mm.it/film/scheda.jsp?idFilm=32286
If you click on “guarda la gallery” and then click on “tutte le foto” you can see all the pics.
He seems to have set it in Japan, except with no Japanese people in it (except it looks like Charles the wrestler!) So it looks like those of us who thought he couldn’t get any weirder than Alicia Silverstone in a musical version of Loves Labours Lost are now proved wrong! 🙂
Cara
Yay “As You Like It”! Yay Adrian Lester! And I liked Bryce Dallas Howard in “The Village” (“Lady in the Water” was so weird it was hard to judge the acting) in spite of her having three men’s first names. And yay Kevin Kline, too.
Todd-who-yays