All through this special anniversary year in honour of Shakespeare, I have wanted to express my thoughts about his writings.
It is not, of course, because I am an expert on the subject; far from it. My knowledge, such as it is, comes from my school curriculum, which had us, from the age of 11 to 16, studying one of his plays each year, to my sixth form 'English for the science students' lessons, from radio, television and film, and, like most people who go to local theatres reasonably regularly, from seeing some of them performed live.
I have also read some of his sonnets from the 'Complete works of Shakespeare' given to me, many years ago, by son, R.
At school, we read The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar. (We did Twelfth Night for O-level so I had to put up with it for 2 more years.) In the sixth form, we read King Lear, The Tempest and one of the 'King' plays, the one that has the 'sceptred isle' speech.
I saw Macbeth at our local and excellent theatre-in-the-round (I thought it would never end, it seemed so long!), Julius Caesar at Stratford many years ago (John Nettles ('Inspector Barnaby') was the star) and Much ado about Nothing (I couldn't understand the story at all) fairly recently. I know a little something of other plays and find Polonius' speech to his son, from Hamlet, to be totally brilliant.
"Beware of entrance to a quarrel........
And this above all, to thine own self be true....."
Marvellous!!
These then are my thoughts. Much as I can see the unbelievable genius of his language, I do not feel emotionally engaged with the work at all. I enjoyed Julius Caesar because it was so clever and just like the machinations of life today and King Lear, because of its similarity to a fairy story I've written about before and because of its truthfulness.
The comedies always seemed totally silly, despite the amazing language. The power of the tragedies is there but I could never warm to any of them or care about the characters.
The very best version of Romeo and Juliet is, to my mind, 'West Side Story' which, from my perspective, has a more powerful and positive ending. I was always so annoyed that everyone seemed to end up dead because of the stupid misunderstandings. The ballet, to the music of Prokofiev, is by far the greatest way to see that play, as far as I'm concerned.
When best friend S and I saw the Royal Northern Ballet production at Manchester, some years ago now, after my amazement that no-one was speaking passed (yes, I know that's silly but you forget it in 5 minutes!), I rushed into school the next day, full of questions for my English teaching colleagues, such as "Did Juliet's mother have a thing for her nephew(?) because she seemed more upset by his death than at the (apparent) death of her own daughter! I even had to try and find out by looking at the text!!
Only in the sonnets, did I personally find any resonance with the feelings there.
The language is very deep and you often have to work hard to interpret it but I love especially,
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds.
(I still haven't figured out the meaning of the next line.)
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark........"
I love that and quite a lot more but have not had enough time or the will to read them as much as I could to find even more in them.
If I want to find real emotion, I turn again to my beloved 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen. Now there's a love story. I can read it over and over again; understated, but real. Thank goodness.
