'Allo all. 
As some might know here; I am a fan of England's greatest playwright. Bill Shakespeare's works are not just majestic; they are timeless - they have value and importance whatever age they are presented in. Students today might consider the works of Shakespeare to be boring; but that, I maintain, is a regrettable artefact of our modern education systems which strip the life out of these magnificent works for the benefit of easy grades.
Shakespeare's plays - all of them - are beyond magnificent. They teach us about history, about emotions we rarely see today: Anger, revenge, love, passion, beauty, desire. No 'reality' TV program can come close to matching the emotional power of Hamlet, Othello or Coriolanus.
So my question to the forum is this: Which moment in Billy S's plays do you love the most?
For me; I've never hidden my preferences; I have always valued Hamlet as a tragedy and Twelfth Night as a comedy above all others, though having seen Taming of the Shrew live in Stratford with Jane Seymour playing Kate was wonderful beyond measure.
My single favourite moment in Shakespeare however comes from Hamlet; when the Prince of Denmark has been re-united with his fellow Wittenbourg University students, Rozencranz and Guildenstern. He describes his sadness to them in a brilliant, heartbreaking soliloquy in which he compares the Earth to a sterile crag; the air to a collection of noxious vapours. But his third verse in the sololoquy is astonishing:
HAMLET:
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving
how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel!
in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the
world! The paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is
this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no,
nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seem
to say so
What a moment for a good actor. What a beautiful statement; delivered with vitriol and bitter sarcasm. Hamlet is telling his friends to look upon the Human Being as a creation worthy of the angels; then in the same breath telling them how much he despises mere Humanity.
Thanks to Shakespeare's brilliance; we have no idea how much of this bitterness is a result of Hamlet's grief, or his supposed madness (which he is working hard to convince his supposed 'friends' of) or his honest anger at the world. Hamlet is such a complex character it is impossible to truly understand whether he is speaking honestly, slyly decieving his false friends, or telling the audience about the bitterness in his heart.
The beauty of this particular speech - much like the far more famous 'To Be or Not To Be' speech - is that it can take so many shapes; dependant upon the actor playing Hamlet and the director of that particular production. It can be delivered glibly, angrily, sullenly or with perplexity, I have seen it performed many times and I've NEVER seen it performed the same way twice.
I personally love the way Mel Gibson performed it in 1990; in Zeferrelli's film adaptation. A recording is here: What a Piece of Work Is Man? - Hamlet (4/10) Movie CLIP (1990) HD - YouTube
This is the way I always imagined the speech to go. Hamlet welcomes his friends but is well aware they are acting on behalf of the King - his enemy. He therefore plays up his grief and anger; hiding his very real hatred for King Claudius behind the fiction of madness; a fiction which ultimately proves to be tragically all too real.
This is my favourite Shakespeare moment. What's yours?
As some might know here; I am a fan of England's greatest playwright. Bill Shakespeare's works are not just majestic; they are timeless - they have value and importance whatever age they are presented in. Students today might consider the works of Shakespeare to be boring; but that, I maintain, is a regrettable artefact of our modern education systems which strip the life out of these magnificent works for the benefit of easy grades.
Shakespeare's plays - all of them - are beyond magnificent. They teach us about history, about emotions we rarely see today: Anger, revenge, love, passion, beauty, desire. No 'reality' TV program can come close to matching the emotional power of Hamlet, Othello or Coriolanus.
So my question to the forum is this: Which moment in Billy S's plays do you love the most?
For me; I've never hidden my preferences; I have always valued Hamlet as a tragedy and Twelfth Night as a comedy above all others, though having seen Taming of the Shrew live in Stratford with Jane Seymour playing Kate was wonderful beyond measure.
My single favourite moment in Shakespeare however comes from Hamlet; when the Prince of Denmark has been re-united with his fellow Wittenbourg University students, Rozencranz and Guildenstern. He describes his sadness to them in a brilliant, heartbreaking soliloquy in which he compares the Earth to a sterile crag; the air to a collection of noxious vapours. But his third verse in the sololoquy is astonishing:
HAMLET:
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving
how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel!
in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the
world! The paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is
this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no,
nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seem
to say so
What a moment for a good actor. What a beautiful statement; delivered with vitriol and bitter sarcasm. Hamlet is telling his friends to look upon the Human Being as a creation worthy of the angels; then in the same breath telling them how much he despises mere Humanity.
Thanks to Shakespeare's brilliance; we have no idea how much of this bitterness is a result of Hamlet's grief, or his supposed madness (which he is working hard to convince his supposed 'friends' of) or his honest anger at the world. Hamlet is such a complex character it is impossible to truly understand whether he is speaking honestly, slyly decieving his false friends, or telling the audience about the bitterness in his heart.
The beauty of this particular speech - much like the far more famous 'To Be or Not To Be' speech - is that it can take so many shapes; dependant upon the actor playing Hamlet and the director of that particular production. It can be delivered glibly, angrily, sullenly or with perplexity, I have seen it performed many times and I've NEVER seen it performed the same way twice.
I personally love the way Mel Gibson performed it in 1990; in Zeferrelli's film adaptation. A recording is here: What a Piece of Work Is Man? - Hamlet (4/10) Movie CLIP (1990) HD - YouTube
This is the way I always imagined the speech to go. Hamlet welcomes his friends but is well aware they are acting on behalf of the King - his enemy. He therefore plays up his grief and anger; hiding his very real hatred for King Claudius behind the fiction of madness; a fiction which ultimately proves to be tragically all too real.
This is my favourite Shakespeare moment. What's yours?
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