As a fan of Shakespeare, can I ask which ones you read?
Romeo and Juliet was the one I was forced to study the most. I wasn’t impressed. I saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the theatre and it wasn’t nearly as tiresome.
If it isn’t to much trouble, can I also ask how you were exposed to them?
Excessively. Reading scripts, watching movies, watching plays, writing essays, memorizing passwords, pretending things are Deep and Insightful. Unfortunately ‘English’ was the one subject that wasn’t an elective.
My favorite part is Friar Lawrence’s epic chewing out of Romeo for trying to kill himself. (It’s the single longest speech in the play.)
Hold thy desperate hand! Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art. Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote The unreasonable fury of a beast. Unseemly woman in a seeming man, And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both! Thou hast amazed me. By my holy order, I thought thy disposition better tempered. Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself?— And slay thy lady that in thy life lives, By doing damnèd hate upon thyself? Why railest thou on thy birth, the Heaven, and Earth, Since birth and Heaven and Earth all three do meet In thee at once, which thou at once wouldst lose? Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit, Which, like a usurer, aboundest in all And usest none in that true use indeed Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit. Thy noble shape is but a form in wax, Digressing from the valor of a man; Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury, Killing that love which thou hast vowed to cherish; Thy wit—that ornament to shape and love— Misshapen in the conduct of them both, Like powder in a skilless soldier’s flask Is set afire by thine own ignorance, And thou dismembered with thine own defense. What—rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead— There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee, But thou slewest Tybalt—there art thou happy. The law that threatened death becomes thy friend And turns it to exile—there art thou happy. A pack of blessings light upon thy back; Happiness courts thee in her best array; But like a misbehaved and sullen wench Thou pouts upon thy fortune and thy love. Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable. Go, get thee to thy love as was decreed, Ascend her chamber—hence and comfort her. But look thou stay not till the watch be set, For then thou canst not pass to Mantua, Where thou shalt live till we can find a time To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back With twenty hundred thousand times more joy Than thou wentst forth in lamentation. Go before, Nurse. Commend me to thy lady, And bid her hasten all the house to bed, Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto.— Romeo is coming.
I also liked Hamlet. Julius Caesar was boring, though.
Romeo and Juliet was the one I was forced to study the most. I wasn’t impressed. I saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the theatre and it wasn’t nearly as tiresome.
Excessively. Reading scripts, watching movies, watching plays, writing essays, memorizing passwords, pretending things are Deep and Insightful. Unfortunately ‘English’ was the one subject that wasn’t an elective.
Personally, I liked Romeo and Juilet.
My favorite part is Friar Lawrence’s epic chewing out of Romeo for trying to kill himself. (It’s the single longest speech in the play.)
I also liked Hamlet. Julius Caesar was boring, though.