It’s William Shakespeare’s birthday! He’d be a likely very cranky 450 today.
What’s your favorite Shakespeare play? Or your favorite Shakespeare quote? Or your favorite movie based on something of Shakespeare? Or you favorite musical work (any genre) inspired by Shakespeare?
Favorites? Oh, I don't know… I have read too few of the plays but I have heard many many quotes, as everyone has even if they don't realize it.
In high school we had to read Macbeth and memorize and recite the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech. The whole class had great fun with that and we would throw bits of it into our ordinary daily conversation, especially, "It is a tale told by an idiot" and "Out! Out!"
I played Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream and studied Shakespeare formally for four years, and I am a staunch lover of Richard III.
Well, when you put it like THAT: West Side Story.
Of the actual works, Romeo & Juliet or Julius Caesar.
My Billy Shakes post.
And the dopiest has to be Elvis quoting Shakespeare without attribution in Are Your Lonesome Tonight.
I have an (according to my husband) irrational fondness for the movie 10 Things I Hate About You. Besides that, I love Verdi's Otello and the original Hamlet.
My favourite play, from those I've read, is Macbeth. My favourite movie is still the first Shakespeare movie I ever saw: Henry V by Kenneth Branagh. It really is masterfully done. But a close second is Richard III with Ian McKellen. Many modern adaptations are only saved by the text (it takes a lot of work to kill Shakespeare I think), but this movie works beautifully. These are the two I recommend to people unfailiar with Shakespeare's plays, along with Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing.
Movies: Forbidden Planet, which is still one of my favorite old SF movies. I didn't realize until I was in high school that it was based on The Tempest.
Prospero in The Tempest:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep
Of the ones I've read (I have a life-goal to read them all, but am not very far along with that), I'd have to say Twelfth Night. (I prefer the comedies to the tragedies).
I also like Henry V.
Favorite production seen: Twelfth Night, reset to Gilded Age Louisiana. It worked surprisingly well.