Missy - Heck yeah Shakespeare or All the Worlds a Stage

 Despite Mariam’s generous description I am entirely an enthusiast and not a scholar. Case in point, our first selection provides ample evidence of the exceptions to my generalizations, that Elizabethan plays are light and fluffy. 

The list that we are following starts with Hamlet. Hamlet is anything but light and fluffy and it is Elizabethan. 

This monster of a play (clocking in at over 4 hours its Shakespeare's longest) is the uber Burbage, carpet chewing, philosophically drenched, power house that survived, and world toured, and kept on giving, up to this very day. 

Everyone gets a chance to see Hamlet if they are at all Shakespeare inclined and even, frequently, if they aren’t. It’s one of the plays you are likely to be assigned if you take a theater class in high school or college, it’s right up there with Much Ado. Its also a school and community theater staple. I've seen some very good and some really should have skipped it versions.

I love Hamlet and our guide must too as it’s first on his list. 

However, he has selected the Branagh Hamlet and that opulent spectacle really is  the FULL 4 hour chonky boi. 

Here is the Branagh trailer.

I think it’s too much for a diving off point, though I have recommended to Mariam that if she likes the Zeffirelli/ Gibson version (my recommended starter Hamlet) she should go back and watch the Branagh. 

The Hamlet Wikipedia article puts our fist selection in some context: “ In 1990 Franco Zeffirelli, whose Shakespeare films have been described as "sensual rather than cerebral",^[256] cast Mel Gibson—then famous for the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon movies—in the title role of his 1990 version; Glenn Close—then famous as the psychotic "other woman" in Fatal Attraction—played Gertrude, and Paul Scofield played Hamlet's father.^[257] “

I like this version, and I think it will give us an introduction to the plays as blockbusters rather than an intellectual exercises  

We are going to be audiences and not analyzers here. I think that people tend to forget or maybe gloss

over the fact that Shakespeare is fun, that his work has lasted not merely for his stunning command of 

the language but because his characters speak to us. 

Here is the Zeffirelli trailer (you will see quite a difference in mood).

I’m super excited about this project. I’ve roped some of my family into watching with me and I can’t wait to get into that headspace of Shakespearean language and wit. 

Onward to Denmark.