From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!utah-cs!sask!firby
Newsgroups: net.books
Title: Shakespeare
Article-I.D.: sask.235
Posted: Fri Apr 29 19:48:02 1983
Received: Mon May  2 01:54:55 1983


 Are there only 2 people out there who are brave enough to admit to having
experienced Shakespeare?  And with all this posturing about literature going
on here, too!
 I must admit that I love SF in most of its forms, but that doesn't keep
me from enjoying the bard to the fullest.  Or from being appalled at some
of the comments made about the plays.  I want details!!!  Which plots are
"dull"? Which speeches?
 Certainly, the best way to enjoy a play is to see it staged, but there is
just so much in Shakespeare that merely watching isn't enough.  Often he 
must be read to be appreciated fully.  The language is truly beautiful.
 As for my faves, well, Richard the Second has to be the most beautiful and
touching of all the plays, Lear the most tragic, and the Tempest the most
fun.  It is interesting to see Elizabethan philosophy in action in Hamlet,
Caesar, Coriolanus and Macbeth, and to see Shakespeare meet Machiavelli in
Richard the Third.
 However, I suppose that to get the most from Shakespeare one must have
a full appreciation of both Elizabethan England and the English language, 
and that may be expecting too much from Americans.

                         Not afraid to rekindle the fires of 1812
                          (we won that one, you know)
                                          
                                        joanne