Sophie Okonedo in The Hollow Crown

[images via]

Apparently I should be checking out this miniseries adaptation of Shakespeare’s history plays, immediate-style. 

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG! A black woman playing a white English queen? And I’m not even talking about the armour nonsense. What’s next a native american roman emperor wearing a grass skirt? A white Ghandi wearing ripped jeans and psychedelic shirts?  

If you throw reality and historical accuracy out of the window for being PC you’re movie isn’t worth watching because it can have no real message. 

Oh quit bullshitting like this isn’t about your racism. Anthony Hopkins did Titus Andronicus as a half-dream half art piece with Saturnius and Bassanius using podiums and 1950′s style microphones to argue which one of them should be king. Kenneth Branagh did Hamlet in the Victorian Era. David Tennant did Hamlet in a fucking t-shirt. “Sons of Anarchy” was based on the story of Hamlet and it was about a motorcycle club running guns to the IRA. Don’t give me any shit about fucking ‘historical accuracy’ you fucking ponce, it’s SHAKESPEARE- it’s literally been done by a dog dressed in little hats and jackets (Wishbone, I never forgot you) and Wednesday and Pugsley Adams. If you have a problem with this you are not only a racist asshat, but you are so damn ignorant of Shakespeare I don’t even fucking know why you bothered to have an opinion except to let people KNOW you are a racist asshat. 

And I mean, all good Shakespeare companies blind cast. Shakespeare companies pretty much invented that. An African-American actor was playing King Lear in the 1820s in London, yet yt people still get bent out of shape over actors of color in Shakespeare in the 2010s. It’s a long tradition, unlike the movie and TV tradition of casting people of color mostly in small roles and only “when there’s a reason for it.”

I love you for bringing up Ira Aldridge because now I have an excuse to post portraits of him starring in Shakespeare plays in London:

[Ira Aldridge as Othello; portrait by William Mulready c. 1840]

[Taras Shevchenko. (Ira Aldridge, as himself) 1858]

And 30k notes later, people are acting as if Black actors in Shakespeare plays are brand new. Nice to see we’ve progressed since the frigging 1800s….oh, wait. :|

These responses are beautiful. And I didn’t know about Ira Aldridge!

Ok, I absolutely love all of this, but come on, no pictures of the dog dressed in little hats and jackets? What character did he play?

But we can all agree that THIS take on Shakespeare is trash, right? Like... the absolute worst?

ANDY SAMBERG GQ Magazine / ph. Annabel Mehran (2020)

In order:

Much Ado

Twelfth Night

Midsummer

Romeo and Juliet

I AM CACKLING

Baby It’s Cold Outside discourse is the same as Macbeth discourse. 

Explain?

OK, so one of the big debates in Macbeth involves the scene in which Lady Macbeth talks Macbeth into killing King Duncan.  People debate strenuously over whether it’s a scene of Lady M pressuring her reluctant husband into it, or whether it’s a scene of her sensing, due to their emotional intimacy, that this murder is something her husband secretly wants and has partially internally decided to do, and is arguing him into it in order to help him give himself permission to do it, in the same way that people see their loved ones wavering over the dessert menu and jump in with things like, “Go on, get the cheesecake, it’s your birthday!”  Readers and scholars disagree strenuously about this - we even studied an incident in college in which two 18th century illustrators attended the same performance and happened to draw the scene the day after, producing two images that advanced opposite interpretations even though they’d seen the exact same actors do the exact same performance.  It’s a big deal.

In the same way, the Baby, It’s Cold Outside discourse is about whether this is a song about sexual harassment, or whether it’s a woman singing about how she wishes she could spend the night with the guy she just had an excellent date with if only the neighbors wouldn’t talk, and him responding, “Stay, baby, it’s cold out!  No one could expect you to go home in this!”

I really don’t know (baby stab his side) King Duncan’s a bro (baby cut through his hide) I like him a lot (That decrepit old sot?) This plan ain’t so great (But what a king you’d make!)

The guards might worry (Darling, do it in a hurry!) His sons will rush the door (So knock them on the floor.)

I’m not such a knave (Bash his head with a stave) But I’d be a good king (Now you’re starting to think)

The dukes might all talk (But their chatter means naught) Say, love, what do you mean (You’d make such a king)

I simply must go (baby cut through his hide) There’s a war on you know (baby cut through his hide)

But what of his wife? (And what of his life?) It feels like bad luck (But that don’t mean much)

I’ve got a bad premonition (And I’ve got a mission) But that’s just superstition (My love, you’re a vision)

The witches said I’d rule (If they lied they were cruel) So baby let’s stab Stab his siiiiide!

@taakobean

uhhh shakespeare people reblog this with your three favorite couples (can be canon or not)… i want to see if there are any overwhelming favorites

Beat-rice and Goodpenis

Cesario/Viola and Olivia

Sebastian and Super Gay Antonio

Mercutio and his own reflection, but only sometimes.

me: hamlets gay ophelias feral laertes is off his shits polonius has the tea and rosencrantz and guildenstern said two braincell rights

my english teachers, sobbing: give us actual literary analysis please

I'm sorry, is that not literary analysis because that's lowkey my entire style of teaching.

Can you guess which Shakespeare play this is from?

(Don’t answer if you actually saw us doing this)

So much of me wants this to be some weird take on Hamlet where this is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...

But my actual guess is maybe Much Ado? Toby and Andrew?

A production of MacBeth but everyone calls the characters The Scottish Play and Lady The Scottish Play

in an ideal world the AP literature exam would’ve consisted of 18 yr old me being invited into an empty room with a single proctor in it and that proctor would ask me “why do you think holden caulfield is Like That?” and 10 minutes into my rant about complex grief and toxic masculinity and CSA they just would quietly write “5” on their little clipboard and have me removed by security

Especially because AP classes are supposed to be college-lite, I agree.

My favorite college story is from my Shakespeare course midterm: all short answer questions, including "to what extent is Polonius to blame for his own death?"

I wrote a full paragraph and got a 4. My best friend wrote "ugh, this question is beat" and got a 5 and a note from our 75 year-old professor that said "you're right, this question IS beat."

College be like that, y'all.

Also I'd protor that exam.

Concept:

The Scottish Play, but it’s set in a fast food restaurant and everyone’s killing each other over who gets to be the manager and its played completely straight

McBeth

so i just learned that this is already a thing that exists and christopher walken plays macduff, and i desperately need to watch this movie

Holy shit. I remember that one. The witches are portrayed by 3 garbagemen and instead of saying “when Birnham Wood to Dunsinane comes”, they say he’ll be defeated “when pigs fly”. This is fulfilled when a police helicopter lands on the roof.

H O L Y    S H I T

I assigned Scotland, PA to one of my students last year for her final essay...

She procrastinated SO MUCH that I ended up getting a paper full of memes about how she was VERY gay for Pat.

A+ paper, 10/10.

A drunk German is urinating on a bush

An American walks by, sees what the German is doing and says, “Gross!”

The German says, “Danke!”

All I could think of is Hamlet returning from school in Germany thinking this is a great joke and everyone just ignoring it.

I drew a picture.

I need this distance teaching thing to end because this is what I do.

me: 

you:

Is this Macbeth?

Ok so I now have a huge crush on sir Andrew from twelfth night, despite him being an atrocious dumbass and the most useless knight

Someone please save me from myself

Okay, fun story time:

Last year we decided to do Twelfth Night for our spring production, and of all the things to forget, my ASM comes over the headset on opening night and says "we never made a bloody rag for Sir Andrew!"

I asked the AD to come to the booth and I asked if the cafeteria had ketchup, and to smear some on a napkin and we would deal with the prop issue later.

There was no time. The girl playing Sir Sir Andrew ran in screaming through the audience about her bloody coxcomb, got to the front, turned dramatically to face them, opened a KETCHUP PACKET and squeezed it all over her forehead.

Sir Toby ate some.

Also we set our show in the 1980s so Toby had a mullet and Andrew was basically androgynous wearing an oversized purple blazer and ridiculous jeans.

This line in hamlet:

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

Is the Shakespeare equivalent of this post:

act V, scene I