[Pride male]

I did some literature in high school and read some Shakespeare. I read Othello, Twelfth Night and Macbeth. My favourite was Macbeth because it dealt with the power of self prophecy and how an evil can lead to a man's downfall. What is your favourite play?

Do you consider Shakespeare red pill and the greatest man to put pen to paper? If so what makes him so timeless?

[britchard]

I like Henry V not just because of the plot and the language used, but also because of how alpha Henry V is.

[Paracelsus]

(12-13-2014 03:11 AM)Pride male Wrote:  

I did some literature in high school and read some Shakespeare. I read Othello, Twelfth Night and Macbeth. My favourite was Macbeth because it dealt with the power of self prophecy and how an evil can lead to a man's downfall. What is your favourite play?

Seconded. Macbeth. Also first ran into it in high school - coming up in an Australian education system, we were shown the BBC 1980s filmed version, with Nicol Williamson in the title role (I was pleasantly surprised when he basically ate the scenery whole as Merlin in Excalibur some years later...)

Oh, and it had Jane Laportaire basically coming her brains out while doing Lady Macbeth's first major speech--



All seriousness, though, the thing that sticks most with me about Macbeth is similar to yours, albeit about the strange mixture of free will with predestination. The whole thing is summed up in the final act, in the final confrontation of Macbeth and Macduff--

Quote:

MACDUFF
Despair thy charm;
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.

MACBETH
Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow'd my better part of man!
And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope. I'll not fight with thee.

MACDUFF
Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the show and gaze o' the time:
We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted on a pole, and underwrit,
'Here may you see the tyrant.'

MACBETH
I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'

What I find most fascinating about this short exchange is the way it makes us query where free will ends and where predestination begins. Macbeth knows he cannot be killed by any man of woman born, and we think when Macduff drops his bombshell that it's immediately game over for Macbeth, that he is predestined to die here.

But then Shakespeare twists our expectations: Macduff explicitly offers Macbeth a chance to surrender, even to live. Macbeth may -- or may not -- be predestined to die here after all.

I don't think there's much argument that Macbeth must know he's in the legal wrong here since he's personally murdered the rightful king of Scotland. It's out of pride that Macbeth fights on. But as an audience we can't work out where predestination starts and free will kicks in: is Macbeth voluntarily choosing his own death, or is he simply following the destiny he knows to be laid out for him?

The other thing is, this very same scene bounces us between objectivity and subjectivity. Macbeth's subjective view of his actions I think would probably be that he is being moral if not virtuous. He's been screwed by prophecy and now realises it -- "Accursed be the tongue that tells me so!" refers to the prophecy, not to Macduff's revelation -- and Macbeth realises his entire moral compass has been messed with hugely by his wife and the Three Witches, as well as his own feet of clay. He sees himself entrapped by evil rather than responsible for his own downfall, so therefore it is virtuous to try and rail against the fate the dark powers have wound him up in. Objectively, though, and I think this is part of Shakespeare's genius as a storyteller, the reverse can be just as strongly argued: Macbeth can be seen as acting out of sheer spite and pride.

Quote:

Do you consider Shakespeare red pill and the greatest man to put pen to paper? If so what makes him so timeless?

See the above as an example - the interpretations a single play of Shakespeare affords on multiple readings or viewings are endless. I don't really recommend anyone get into Harold Bloom's bardolatry unless you really need a cure for insomnia, but Ron Rosenbaum's book The Shakespeare Wars give a hint of the Bard's greatness: because the real worth of a piece of art is in how much it repays attention, and I think you find something new in Shakespeare every time you read one of his plays. He understood human nature and he understood better than any dramatist since how to plausibly represent that nature to us. Shakespeare would always leave a key explanatory element out of his characters' actions, which always resonates with us as an audience because we can never, really, know the real motivations for a person's actions. Falstaff in Henry V is often highlighted as Shakespeare's very best creation; he leaps off the page.

[Rutting Elephant]

Richard II. So many great, great lines. All in verse.

KING RICHARD II How now! what means death in this rude assault?
Villain, thy own hand yields thy death's instrument.
[Snatching an axe from a Servant and killing him]
Go thou, and fill another room in hell.

It would have been cool to take a trip to London a few years ago just to see Kevin Spacey play Richard. Too bad it was a modernized version.
The 2012 film adaptation was pretty good, but the Arkangel audio is amazing.

[Paracelsus]

(12-13-2014 08:09 AM)Rutting Elephant Wrote:  

Richard II. So many great, great lines. All in verse.

KING RICHARD II How now! what means death in this rude assault?
Villain, thy own hand yields thy death's instrument.
[Snatching an axe from a Servant and killing him]
Go thou, and fill another room in hell.

It would have been cool to take a trip to London a few years ago just to see Kevin Spacey play Richard. Too bad it was a modernized version.
The 2012 film adaptation was pretty good, but the Arkangel audio is amazing.

Reading that Richard II quote makes it almost like a perverted anti-sonnet, given iambic pentameter tells us to put the stress on each second syllable to tell the actor where the emphasis goes--

How now! What means death in this rude assault?
Villain, thy own hand yields thy death's instrument.
Go thou, and fill another room in hell.

[Seth_Rose]

I've actually been reading some Shakespeare lately. Recently I read 'Julius Caesar' and 'King Lear'

Going back to high school I did enjoy Macbeth and Othello, and think they were much better than the ones I read recently.

[HonantheBarbarian]

Macbeth is about being alpha, and how even alphas get manipluated by a crazy enough bitch.

Othello is about being oneitised too hard and letting lesser men inside your head.

Both carry equally important lessons in my opinion.

[Goldin Boy]

Great thread topic OP.

Tragedies:

MacBeth: Great plot, excellent lines. Great character development re: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

Titus Andronicus-Criminally underrated tragedy. Characters are a bit flat the rococo violence really makes up for it.

Histories:

Henry V- Mainly because of the character Prince Hal who hides his alphaness until the very end.

The Comedies and Romances didn't really resonate with me.

Is Shakespeare red pill? No. His views on relationships, etc were commonplace in the time he lived.

[Paracelsus]

Also forgot - if anyone thinks Shakespeare didn't understand how women think or work, watch Antony and Cleopatra. Cleopatra's actions are so recognisable in women today that it's scary.

[TheFinalEpic]

Whichever one had that underage nude scene.

[iknowexactly]

I'm not a Shakepeare expert, but it seems clear he was one of the greatest geniuses in all of human history to me. Every line packed with emotion and wisdom. Stupefying.

The question about Red Pill is laughable, as SS explores the cosmos, past, future, and into eternity, with wisdom no one man can even comprehend. Any Red Pill idealogy is a speck on Shakespeare's sandal.

Here's on great quote I love from Henry the IV, to me it sounds like Shakespeare's version of a rap artist proclaiming "my rhymes are dope, " etc.

When I first read it I felt he was personally speaking through the ages to me and any listener, revealing he knew his stature as an eternal, unsurpassable great. It's something like "no one taught me this, and there is no one better."

GLENDOWER
   Cousin, of many men
I do not bear these crossings. Give me leave
To tell you once again that at my birth
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.
These signs have marked me extraordinary,
And all the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men.
Where is he living, clipped in with the sea
That chides the banks of England, Scotland, Wales,
Which calls me pupil or hath read to me?
And bring him out that is but woman’s son
Can trace me in the tedious ways of art
And hold me pace in deep experiments.

HOTSPUR
I think there’s no man speaks better Welsh.
I’ll to dinner.

[Paracelsus]

Argh, double post.

[Paracelsus]

(12-14-2014 12:54 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:  

I'm not a Shakepeare expert, but it seems clear he was one of the greatest geniuses in all of human history to me. Every line packed with emotion and wisdom. Stupefying.

The question about Red Pill is laughable, as SS explores the cosmos, past, future, and into eternity, with wisdom no one man can even comprehend. Any Red Pill idealogy is a speck on Shakespeare's sandal.

Here's on great quote I love from Henry the IV, to me it sounds like Shakespeare's version of a rap artist proclaiming "my rhymes are dope, " etc.

When I first read it I felt he was personally speaking through the ages to me and any listener, revealing he knew his stature as an eternal, unsurpassable great. It's something like "no one taught me this, and there is no one better."

That theme is repeated in what most people think as Shakespeare's swan song, The Tempest, where most people identify Prospero closely with Shakespeare at the end of his career, on the verge of retirement--

Quote:

PROSPERO
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.

The admission of Prospero to raising the dead is scandalous - either taking on the role of the Almighty, or admitting to the foulest witchcraft that particular era could conceive of. Those who think this speech is Shakespeare using Prospero as a sock puppet point to his historical plays - Julius Caesar, the Henriad, Richard II, etc, etc - as being Shakespeare "raising the dead" and parading them before us on the stage.

This accounting of Prospero/Shakespeare's powers as an artist, then, makes what follows more melancholy: Prospero intends to drown his (spell)books, break and bury his (wizard's) staff, end his ways, recede into obscurity.*

Shakespeare, as we know, did not die in harness: after completing his plays, he retired to Stratford-upon-Avon and died a good 6-10 years later if I remember right, never writing another play at all.



*(A recent production of The Tempest which starred Patrick Stewart in the title role played on this: while for most of the play Prospero's speeches were amplified by Stewart being miked, Prospero's last speech in the play - begging freedom by the audience's applause or perhaps their prayers - was unmiked, unamplified, just Stewart projecting his voice as best he could. The intended effect was to turn Prospero back into a mortal man in the eyes of the audience, and it worked well.)

[iknowexactly]

(12-14-2014 02:07 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

Shakespeare, as we know, did not die in harness: after completing his plays, he retired to Stratford-upon-Avon and died a good 6-10 years later if I remember right, never writing another play at all.

One thing I've noticed in creative endeavors is that it's difficult and sometimes discouraging to learn from geniuses, you can't see the seems, can't see into the deep wells where the ideas came from.

I find it the opposite with Shakespear- as an epochal rather than a generational genius (Coltrane, Hendrix) he is so overwhelmingly superior to anything I could ever hope to do that I am happy just to be a mouse in the same palace he dwelt in, singing little mouse folk songs hidden in the kitchen.

[Paracelsus]

Put it this way, Ben Johnson's line probably caps him better than any other: "Not of an age, but for all time."

[Hardy Daytona]

On a personal level, I'd have to say Much Ado About Nothing.
Whenever I'm introduced by mutual friends to a 3rd party, I always describe myself as something of a Don John due to his first line in the play: "I thank you: I am not of many words, but I thank you."
Makes a good litmus test to discern their cultural awareness.

Hamlet also rings a chord of resonance.
Without a doubt the most profound line was in Act 1 Scene 3: "This above all, to thine own self be true."

[Bacchus]

Hamlet. The 'my thoughts be bloody or nothing worth' speech is my favorite:

[fokker]

I only did Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet in Year 10, but out of the two I preferred Macbeth. I have a copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare and must get around to reading it one day.

[godfather dust]

(12-13-2014 03:11 AM)Pride male Wrote:  

I did some literature in high school and read some Shakespeare.

You're doing it wrong, go see a quality crew perform them.

I like Hamlet.

[Pride male]

^^Even my lecturer said the same thing.

[Hades]

My English teacher in high school really brought King Lear to life for me.

[Paracelsus]

I realise this is a bit random and a case of raising a dead thread, but I thought this might be appropriate to add. Basically I was doing a little self-exercise in identifying beats (packets of action/reaction that make up scenes - it's a Robert McKee idea) and decided to apply it to one of Shakespeare's plays.

McKee holds (as does most Hollywood) that there's always a subtext lurking beneath the text of a play, that "when the scene is about what the scene is about, you're in deep shit" -- because a work with no subtext has no complexity and is therefore boring. Basically, you go through a scene and break it up into pairs of actions and reactions by the characters, and then analyse those beats by what is actually happening.

I picked up Act 1, Scene 1 of Antony and Cleopatra, which on its first reading seems to be demonstrating Antony as completely cuntstruck by Cleopatra and a fallen man ... but when you analyse what seems to be really going on in the scene, it actually is a masterful display of frame control by Antony.

So for interest, I thought I'd break the scene down by action and reaction, to explore what's happening.

Quote:

SCENE I. Alexandria. A room in CLEOPATRA's palace.

Enter DEMETRIUS and PHILO

PHILO
Nay, but this dotage of our general's
O'erflows the measure: those his goodly eyes,
That o'er the files and musters of the war
Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn,
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front: his captain's heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gipsy's lust.

Flourish. Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, her Ladies, the Train, with Eunuchs fanning her

Look, where they come:
Take but good note, and you shall see in him.
The triple pillar of the world transform'd
Into a strumpet's fool: behold and see.

(1) "Tawny front" is double entendre. It's referring to Cleopatra's tits. Shakespeare was fond of innuendo, he had to keep the crowd interested. "Tawny" is basically the colour you'd expect an Egyptian's skin to have - a light brown. Philo's basically saying here "He used to stare at battlefields, now he only has eyes for boobs."

(2) This first speech I think is a giant fake-out by Shakespeare: he sets up the whole mood of the scene as making Antony out to be cuntstruck by Cleopatra, and the deception works because Philo the first guy to speak and so the first reference point for the audience, the guy from whom we naturally expect some objective fact. But he's an unreliable narrator, because we can see from the first word he's disagreeing with Demetrius - "Nay, but..." So presumably Demetrius has offered a different point of view. Philo is expressing an opinion, he's not a prologue.

Moving on...

Quote:

CLEOPATRA
If it be love indeed, tell me how much.

MARK ANTONY
There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.

On its face, simple enough: Cleopatra seems to be doubting Antony's expression of love, Antony seems to be grovelling - at least that's how I've seen the scene played. But I think the subtext on reading it, what these people are really feeling and acting/reacting:

Cleopatra: Do you love me? I really need you to tell me so.
Antony: Hmmmm. I don't know if I do love you. And love is endless, so I can spread my love around.

It's dread game!

Quote:

CLEOPATRA
I'll set a bourn how far to be beloved.

MARK ANTONY
Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.

Cleopatra: Don't you even think of cheating on me, you asshole.
Antony: It's not like you could stop me; women are practically throwing themselves at me. There is literally no way in heaven or earth you could stop me because I've got options. I have an abundance mentality.

How do we get to this subtext? Because Cleopatra uses the word bourn, i.e. a limit. She's saying "I say how much you can "be loved" ... by other women." i.e. none.

Quote:

Attendant
News, my good lord, from Rome.

MARK ANTONY
Grates me: the sum.

CLEOPATRA
Nay, hear them, Antony:
Fulvia perchance is angry; or, who knows
If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent
His powerful mandate to you, 'Do this, or this;
Take in that kingdom, and enfranchise that;
Perform 't, or else we damn thee.'

The messenger breaks the tension.
Antony's subtext: "I must do my duty, which I don't like, but hey, that's the job when you run half the world and you're already married." Again, raising dread game one more time - the threat of leaving.
Cleopatra's subtext: She mocks Rome by mocking Caesar, and mocks duty by mocking Fulvia's wedding vows. Also, Antony, you're hundreds of miles from Rome, where that duty doesn't mean anything.

Quote:

MARK ANTONY
How, my love!

CLEOPATRA
Perchance! nay, and most like:
You must not stay here longer, your dismission
Is come from Caesar; therefore hear it, Antony.
Where's Fulvia's process? Caesar's I would say? both?
Call in the messengers. As I am Egypt's queen,
Thou blushest, Antony; and that blood of thine
Is Caesar's homager: else so thy cheek pays shame
When shrill-tongued Fulvia scolds. The messengers!

Antony's subtext: Huh, you might be right. I'll just open the door a crack to make it look like you've got a chance to keep me.
Cleopatra: I'll try and push the crack open more by reverse psychology: make him want to stay by encouraging him to go.

Quote:

MARK ANTONY
Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life
Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair

Embracing

And such a twain can do't, in which I bind,
On pain of punishment, the world to weet
We stand up peerless.

CLEOPATRA
Excellent falsehood!
Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her?
I'll seem the fool I am not; Antony
Will be himself.

Antony: Don't play stupid push-pull games with me. I've already got you and I'm already here because I choose to stay and because I've got you wrapped round my finger.
Cleopatra: Oh really? Then why don't you marry me?

Quote:

MARK ANTONY
But stirr'd by Cleopatra.
Now, for the love of Love and her soft hours,
Let's not confound the time with conference harsh:
There's not a minute of our lives should stretch
Without some pleasure now. What sport tonight?

CLEOPATRA
Hear the ambassadors.

It's here we have the turning point of the scene, because this is the first time Antony's frame is shaken. But he artfully dodges the marriage question by basically saying: you're sexy, let's fuck.
Cleopatra: I'll make one more token effort to resist you. Asshole. Don't think I've forgotten about marriage.

Quote:

MARK ANTONY
Fie, wrangling queen!
Whom every thing becomes, to chide, to laugh,
To weep; whose every passion fully strives
To make itself, in thee, fair and admired!
No messenger, but thine; and all alone
To-night we'll wander through the streets and note
The qualities of people. Come, my queen;
Last night you did desire it: (to messenger) speak not to us.

Antony: I promise I'll think about marrying you later. Let's fuck. (And he's so concerned to get the bang and the marriage question off her mind he brushes off the messenger entirely and moves to relocation ASAP.)
Cleopatra: does not protest, and therefore accedes.

Quote:

Exeunt MARK ANTONY and CLEOPATRA with their train

DEMETRIUS
Is Caesar with Antonius prized so slight?

PHILO
Sir, sometimes, when he is not Antony,
He comes too short of that great property
Which still should go with Antony.

DEMETRIUS
I am full sorry
That he approves the common liar, who
Thus speaks of him at Rome: but I will hope
Of better deeds to-morrow. Rest you happy!

Demetrius's line, "Is Caesar with Antonius prized so slight?", depending on which words you stress, takes on an entirely different meaning. If you stress the 'so', it takes on the expected conventional meaning - that Antonius doesn't give a shit about what Caesar has to say.

But: if you stress the word Caesar -- as an actor would, this is iambic pentameter and the second syllable of the line is meant to be stressed -- it takes on a different meaning. (In addition, as an iambic pentameter, the word so is not stressed at all.) With the word Caesar stressed, it becomes a comparison -- that Demetrius is observing that Antony seems to value Cleopatra very, very little: "Does Antony value Caesar as lowly as he does her?" That would be consistent with the guys seeing Antony using dread game on Cleopatra and going to an assured fuck in the space of two minutes.

I go on to read Philo and Demetrius's observations as somewhat awestruck by Antony's control of a pussy that the whole world wants to fuck. Philo seems a bit shaken compared to his speech at the start of the scene, and Demetrius's last line speaks to me of jealousy, even grudging admiration: "I'm sorry that he's got that pussy so strongly under control, but tomorrow is another day, I guess."

[TooFineAPoint]

Hamlet.

"I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw."