PC425 Some Shakespeare Stuff :

The Shakespeare on Film series is back at KLPAC ..here are a couple of reviews ... Shakespeare reviews all one one page

1935 Midsummer Nights Dream @ Shakespeare Films@ KLPAC

- Film - 1935 Midsummer Nights Dream - OK it failed to bring out the full depth and magic of Shakespeare, nor was it that entertaining, but it was worth watching from a cultural historical perspective on film making.

- It must of been mega- production in it's time a huge huge performance, many ways technically brilliant from the titles to special effects and clever camerawork.

Kenneth Branagh's "As You Like It" (2006) @ Shakespeare Films@ KLPAC

- The end film is not horrible, but it is like a recipe where you start with great ingredients and end up with a mediocre results.

- set it in medieval Japan.
- Some bad acting. One ploy Shakespeare uses is the princess disguised as a youth meets her lover and since he doesn't recognize her, she uses this to question him and persuades him to test his wooing on her (the youth), but in this movie the disguise is so crap it's implausible to believe that he doesn't recognize her.

As usual going for Hollywood type things like adding a mission impossible beginning squeezes out the magic of the Shakespeare dialogue.

I analysed the text for interesting phrases and ideas

Arden was Shakespeares mother's father's name and so his uncle's also

Orlando feels he is just kept at home by his brother Oliver
- seems he strikes his brother
- Oliver agrees to send him off with money and old Adam maybe cos Adam didn't defend him

- Robin Hood referenced - Old duke said to be like Robin Hood !!

- Oliver tells wrestler Charles be tough against Orlando or he'll seek deadly revenge
- "ah it'll good to get rid off him"

Rosa & Celia talk about unfairness of fortune against nature
-joke about fools only being amusing cos they are so dull one can sharpen ones own wit on them
- debate about swearing

- wrestle - Charles falks to O
- "I would thou hadst told me of another father."
- O says he's "knocked out" by R
- she by him also

- R - "how full of briers is this working-day world!", life is full of little problems

- "Sweet are the uses of adversity," -good things come from bad

- DS talks about man upsetting nature - Jaques cried with wounded deer

- Adam warns O "Their graces serve them but as enemies?"

"For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,"

- "Live a little"

- O basically says don't you dare die while I out searching for food

- Jaques says he met a "motley fool"
- mentions Chantecleer (the cock from Chaucer)

- complicated speech

- "better days"

- don't think only of self as other people are worse off "This wide and universal theatre Presents more woeful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in"

- "All the world's a stage", speech

- I guess the play was put on in winter as songs complain about the winter - says it's not as bitter as man forgetting his friends

-Touchstone has an answer to all the shepherds plain sense talk ..talk about manners : country and court.
- I am simple man etc .."to get your living by the copulation of cattle !" is that moral ?

- T anyone can write e.g. "Sweetest nut hath sourest rind, Such a nut is Rosalind."

- "mountains may be removed with earthquakes" - extraordinary things can happen.

- "Neither rhyme nor reason "

- "many a man has good horns, and knows no end of them. Well, that is the dowry of his wife" -phallic ?

- seems T wants to be married informally so he can escape out of it, then changes his mind

- R to P "Sell when you can: you are not for all markets"

- O turns up late -

- "I am falser than vows made in wine"

- 'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?'

- Jaques has been made sad by travel experience

- "The poor world is almost six thousand years old" - introduces the idea Earth is only 6000

- "can one desire too much of a good thing?"

- "maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives."

- romanticsm about love- noble etc

- T's long speech about lying in court

- I don't understand the epilogue whuch says to women kiss as many men as you want.
- maybe means - men should decline ?

Overall meaning

- love is good, good conquers evil, all works out well, love at first sight is strong, some have to compromise. Everyone ends up happy except the character I most indentify with Jaques the traveller ends up with no love, but abandons the party to be a miserable hermit. Unless this is also Shakespeare aswell.

- Shakespeare reviews all one one page

27/3/2008 a Stew Green Opinion
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