penfairy:

oh! I have to tell you guys a great story one of my professors told me. So he has a friend who is involved in these Shakespeare outreach programs where they try to bring Shakespeare and live theatre to poor and underprivileged groups and teach them about English literature and performing arts and such. On one of their tours they stopped at a young offenders institute for women and they put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet for a group of 16-17 year old girls. It was all going really well and the girls were enjoying and laughing through the first half – because really, the first half is pretty much a comedy – but as the play went on, things started to get quiet. Real quiet. Then it got up to the suicide scene and mutterings broke out and all the girls were nudging each other and looking distressed, and as this teacher observed them, he realised – they didn’t know how the play ended. These girls had never been exposed to the story of Romeo and Juliet before, something which he thought was impossible given how ubiquitous it is in our culture. I mean, the prologue even gives the ending away, but of course it doesn’t specify exactly how the whole “take their life” thing goes down, so these poor girls had no idea what to expect and were sitting there clinging to hope that Romeo would maybe sit down for a damn minute instead of murdering Paris and chugging poison – but BAM he died and they all cried out – and then Juliet WOKE UP and they SCREAMED and by the end of the play they were so upset that a brawl nearly broke out, and that’s the story of how Shakespeare nearly started a riot at a juvenile detention centre

The signs as Shakespearean stage directions

Aries: He wrings him by the ears
Taurus: Re-enter PUCK, and BOTTOM with an ass’s head
Gemini: All put on their masks
Cancer: Leaps into the grave
Leo: Exit pursued by a bear
Virgo: Scattering flowers
Libra: Wall holds up his fingers
Scorpio: Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches
Sagittarius: Throws up another skull
Capricorn: The Fairies sing
Aquarius: Enter a messenger with two heads and a hand
Pisces: Enter the Ghosts of the two young Princes

harmonicakind:

i have finally compiled my top 5 shakespearean stage directions

  1. leaps into the grave (hamlet)
  2. enter titus as a chef (titus andronicus)
  3. storm still (king lear)
  4. falstaff riseth up (henry iv part 1)
  5. exit pursued by a bear (the winter’s tale)

thegestianpoet:

soulpants:

the funniest and best thing i’ve learned while doing research for this shakespeare project is that in the late 19th century, there was this group called the american acclimatization society and their thing was bringing european plants and animals to the u.s. so one member was this guy named eugene schieffelin and he was like obsessed with shakespeare, so he went, “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we tracked down EVERY SPECIES OF BIRD SHAKESPEARE EVER MENTIONED and brought them ALL to America” so he rounded up like a hundred European starlings and released them in central park, and now there are upwards of 200 million starlings in North America and they cause around $1 billion worth of damage to crops every year, all because shakespeare mentioned them exactly ONCE in Henry IV part 1

#the shakespeare fandom is wild

tonnaree:

shakespearean-spunk:

“you make my heart beat in iambic pentameter.”

no you don’t understand shakespeare literally writes to the beat of your heart

  • that’s why shakespearean actors will sometimes pound their chests in time to the words during readings
  • that’s why you use fluctuations in the rhythm to track your character’s emotional state – any irregularities in the scansion are like the character’s heart stuttering or jumping or skipping a beat
  • that’s why when characters share the rhythm – switching off in the middle of a foot – those characters inevitably have an extraordinarily intimate connection

shakespeare fucking writes viscerally, he is literally in your body, and that, my friend, that is why the best shakespearean actors don’t posture and emote

you have to be fucking alive and passionate and electric – it can’t be intellectual, in the end, it has to be about connection and the sweating, cheering, jeering, bleeding masses you’re performing to, because make no mistake, shakespeare may go to lofty heights, but he only works if you’re just as grounded in the earth. he has to be in your body. he has to be in your body.

holy motherfucking shit i love shakespeare so much, get him in your bones, breathe him in, stomp and rage and pine, dadum dadum dadum dadum dadum, it is literally to the beat of your heart

And yet still some people think Shakespeare is only for the upper class.

oh god are you one of those people who reads romeo and juliet as a romance rather than a tragedy

macklesufficient:

macklesufficient:

I thought I was gonna go to bed early tonight but I guess not

hey friend you just unleashed my nerdy wrath buckle up

short answer: no, I know r&j is a tragedy and I read it as such. Shakespeare didn’t write “romances”, at least not in the sense you mean (some people call his later stuff that’s harder to put into a genre ‘romances’, such as the winter’s tale and the tempest)

so no I’m not a moron thanks

here’s the long answer:

I presume you’re “one of those people” who likes to count themselves as the Specialest Snowflake In All The Land because they don’t buy into the fake cheesy idea of //romance// that everyone else so blindly believes

maybe you like to talk about how romeo and juliet were “just horny teenagers”, how they knew each other for three days, how romeo so loved rosaline thirty seconds before spotting juliet, so clearly he’s fickle and silly. they weren’t actually in love, they were just teenage idiots.
because only stupid girls buy that stuff.
you’re more mature than that.
am I right?

well, here’s the thing, sunshine- you aren’t special. I hear this same damn argument right down to the last word every time I mention my love of this play and it ENRAGES me every time because 99% of the time this is coming from /other teenagers/. other young people talking about how this isn’t a story to be taken SERIOUSLY. it’s silly and frivolous and unrealistic. they don’t realize that this play is dedicated to them.

and it’s criticizing people just like you.

while I do believe that these two young people were soul mates (I’ll get to that later), I don’t really think this is a story about love. it’s a story about /passion/- how love and hate are only a hair’s breadth apart and their overwhelming capacity for healing or for destroying. the emotion that drives mercutio to defend romeo from tybalt. what drives mercutio to be killed at his hand. what pushes formerly docile, dreamy romeo to slay his cousin in law: it all begins to seem like the same continuous passion, enflaming the same group of people on the hottest day of the year.

as a result, love isn’t a pretty thing in this play. it’s linked inextricably to death, to murder, to chaos. love is presented as the most dangerous force in the universe. it leaves five bodies in its wake, and then at the end (people forget this) it’s what finally brings the ancient feud to an end.
it’s not silly. it’s not frivolous. o brawling love, o loving hate.

and who are the conductors of this unstoppable force? who sets verona burning and then rebuilds it better in under a week?

kids.

people with a shitty understanding of this play who love to dismiss it and downplay it like to call it a “cautionary tale”- why you shouldn’t think with your dick, why you should grow up and not be so rash, be sensible.

I agree with part of this. it is a cautionary tale. but it’s directed at YOU.

you, who devalue youth. you, who underestimate teenagers and what they’re capable of, who wave off their every thought or feeling with “just a kid”. who think that love is a pretty little silly thing and that no one under the age of 25 is capable of really experiencing it. that the kids don’t MATTER.

capulet thought it- he dismissed tybalt’s rage during the party as dumb kids throwing a hissy fit. he wrote juliet off as a child who should be seen and not heard, shuffled from her father to her husband, guided by the wisdom of those older and wiser than her.

in the world presented in the play, age has NOTHING to do with wisdom. the adults range from careless (montague) to helpless (lady capulet) to blithering (the nurse). the wisest character, the most eloquent and intelligent one with the most beautiful poetry, is fourteen year old juliet.
(go back and read it. whose speeches are the most beautiful, sophisticated, complex? Juliet’s.)

okay, fine, you say. but they didn’t love each other, they just saw each other and got hot and bothered and wanted to jump the other’s bones! anyway, what about rosaline?!

I’ll address rosaline first:

shakespeare likes making fun of the poets of old (take for instance his “my mistress’ eyes” sonnet, a deliberate parody of the Petrarchan model of frilly love poetry). heres another example in romeo. when we first meet romeo he’s mooning over a girl in the frilliest, stalest, most formulaic verse imaginable. we get the feeling he’s enjoying himself, basking in his misery.

notice, though, that we never see rosaline on stage. she represents romeo’s vague infatuation with the //idea// of love, the pretty image he made up in his head from reading old poems. this not only creates an incredible arc in his character, but makes his love for juliet obviously the real deal by comparison. he meets juliet and his world goes into free fall; he’s rash and violent and impulsive, and the verse that was so stale and ingenuine before shifts into some of the most famous passionate poetry in the english language.
in his first scene, he asks “is love a tender thing?” he falls in love with juliet- REAL love, not the kind in poems- and comes to answer his own question: no. no it fucking isn’t.

but, you say. but they CANT have loved each other! you don’t fall in love just by LOOKING at someone!

yeah, I know you don’t.

but here’s the thing. if you aren’t willing to suspend some modicum of disbelief, you won’t get anything from shakespeare. period.

we’re already assuming that these people just happen to walk around speaking in blank verse and rhyming couplet. the plot of hamlet relies on the existence of a ghost, a midsummer night’s dream on fairies, macbeth on witches, the tempest on magic, measure for measure on the friggin /bed trick/- is it SUCH A HORRIBLE STRETCH FOR YOUR CYNICAL POSTMODERN MIND TO MAKE that characters can identify their soulmates with a look? have we reached that level of lazy cynicism as a society that magical love flowers and vengeful ghosts are believable, where a woman can turn into a boy by shoving a hat over her hair and statues spring to life as deceased loved ones, but love at first sight (a very very common Elizabethan plot device; it’s /everywhere/ in shakespeare) is just too much of a stretch?

no one rolls their eyes at hamlet because “ghosts aren’t real. are you one of those people who believe in ghosts?” no- they take it for the plot device that it is in order to get to the message of the play as a whole, and the truths of the human conditions it reveals, with the help of some purely theatrical elements.

but kids in love. that’s far too silly.

it’s really fucking sad.

and questions like yours, anon? those make me really, really fucking sad.

bringing this back cuz someone tried to challenge me today

People always make Juliet out to be dumb in Romeo and Juliet, but I think she at least had some sense where Romeo didn’t have much of any

Romeo: I was thinking about this chick earlier who I said I was in love with but now I love that girl over there that is very likely to either belong to my family’s enemy or be close with my family’s enemy as it is their party I am crashing
Juliet: I do not like being so young and forced into a relationship with an older man, but oh there’s a cute guy more my age over there. And since he’s here he must have been invited and is there for a reasonable love match for myself

Romeo: We should kiss right now at this party
Juliet: No that is a super dumb idea
Romeo: *kisses her anyway*
Juliet: That was dumb of you

Romeo: We should get married right now
Juliet: We don’t know each other. Shouldn’t we wait until at least a little time has passed?
Romeo: Like tomorrow?
Juliet: Sure, fine.

Juliet: We’re married now, so we have to try and make things better between our families.
Romeo: Right.
Romeo: It seems I have killed your cousin and am now exiled.

Juliet: Ok so since Romeo fucked up I’m gonna fix this shit by taking a harmless sleeping liquid. He’ll come and get me and we can go away together.
Romeo: *immediately kills himself*
Juliet: For fucks sake.

Here’s a basic rule: if you’re reading or watching a Shakespeare play, and you’re not imagining the actors standing in front of a mosh pit of jeering Londoners waiting to throw vegetables at the stage, you’re doing it wrong.

Shakespeare might have written the best works in the English language, or given us profound insight into the nature of humanity, or whatever — but his works wouldn’t have survived to our day if he hadn’t been popular when he was alive, and he wouldn’t have been popular when he was alive if he hadn’t been able to please the crowd. And that includes a lot of dirty jokes. A lot.

Sometimes in incredibly inappropriate places. We’re here to rescue a few of those for you, and retroactively embarrass the heck out of your fourteen-year-old self, who had to stand up in English class and read things that, in retrospect, are absolutely filthy.

This isn’t about the stuff that always does crack fourteen-year-olds up in English class, but is totally innocent: the “bring me my long sword, ho!” sort of thing.

But the kids who lose it every time the word “ho” is uttered are closer to the spirit of Shakespeare than the teacher who demands they treat the words like museum pieces.

Sure, it would be awkward for teachers to explain the Elizabethan double entendres to their students — but pretending they don’t exist makes Shakespeare seem unnecessarily stuffy and difficult.

So we’re going to start with the most obvious innuendoes, and move on to some seriously advanced sex punnery that is probably going to blow your mind.

Reading Shakespeare without the sex jokes is the real tragedy. (via newsweek)

one of my favourite things about stagings at The Globe is that they leave the filthy jokes and jokes at inappropriate moments in so you’re constantly being thrown back and forth between bloody murder and hysterics.

(via saxifraga-x-urbium)

I actually read Midsummer Night’s Dream with my Advanced 6th graders last year, totally uncut. And I didn’t explain ALL of the jokes to them…but I did explain some.

And let me tell you, watching those kids stammer and blush through all of “Bottom has an Ass Head” jokes was god damn priceless. 

(via fandomsandfeminism)