I've been reading through Shakespeare for about a month now (finished Hamlet today) and while I feel that I've understood it pretty well, and it certainly has been enjoyable, I still feel as though there's some complexity I'm not getting by just reading it
I watched some movies when we read him in highschool, but they felt cheesy and overly Hollywooded, and certainly not like an actual play
For those of you able to afford a good performance of Shakespeare, did seeing it as it was intended have more impact than reading it or was there not much difference?
>>24541151 (OP)Bumping for interest.
I switched to audio books for anything that should be a play. Must better experience than reading.
https://youtu.be/YTpDDezeUKU?si=1M_k9SG-R7tHaCpD
A lot of the beats and comedy only come through in performance, especially scenes of back and forth repartee.
Most professional performances will involve people who have dedicated their entire careers to Shakespeare and who know and understand it much better than the casual reader.
But a lot will depend on your attitude to text. Do you see the text as a final word like a novel, or a starting point for a collaborative event? A good performance can create all kinds of meaning and depth which weren’t there in the first folio. But you might not like that if you prefer to see the text as a fixed pole.
Seeing it done in a play performed by people who have rehearsed their interpretation of their specified character's text is where you might catch more complexity desu. You can sit and read the lines and find the entendres line for line but often times a good actor who has done the work themselves will reveal it within their voice and intention, ultimately giving you a better picture.
Andrew Scott doing Hamlet I guess you could say is potentially Hollywooded and modernized... but in my opinion is genuinely is one of the best interpretations of the Danish prince. Really fucking good and funny performances from almost everyone in this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR28oIFTzNY&t=9911s
Also get the Oxford edition of Shakespeare too they footnote the fuck out the lines and will help guide you on where you might be missing complexity. The whole point of these characters is to give them a multitude of dimensions so when you perform them you can kind of attach yourself to whatever quirk works best to reveal the humanity there.
>>24541151 (OP)>Do you understand Shakespeare better watching it as a play?Shakespeare's language, with its archaic vocabulary, complex syntax, and poetic structures, can be challenging on the page. When performed by skilled actors, the emotional intent become much clearer through.
my problem is i took the OP pill and i can't go back to usual RP productions
No. Shakespeare in action is giberish to me
