S... is for Shakespeare

Tomorrow is Shakespeare's birthday. I have read a lot of him in school, most notably Julius Caesar and Tempest. This time, I'm having to read Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. He was the reason I learnt to read plays, and his plays were the reason I learnt to like them. During my UK stay, I didn't get a chance to visit Stratford, unfortunately, but someday. I did go to the RSC-managed Shakespeare's Globe, built to replicate the original building at the original site. I took a guided tour and highly recommend it for the next time you're in London!
I do like the way he writes. While some of his themes are most definitely outdated and bizarre, I really enjoy the dialogues. The plotting and planning, the soliloquies, the proclamation of love - all of them, I find them entertaining and well written. Having said that, I think it is important for one to be initially 'taught' how to read Shakespeare, and then left on one's own to figure out the rest of his vast body of work. I would think it rather difficult to truly understand and enjoy his works if I weren't taught it. Anyway, Happy Birthday to him. He has already achieved immortality through his works...

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This is the nineteenth post for the April A-to-Z Blogging Challenge 2014.
Previously, Archaism, British literature, Critical Analysis, Drama, Edinburgh, Faust, Gothic Fiction, Humour, Interpretation, Journalling, Keats, Language, Metaphysical Poetry, Narration, Ode, Papillion(ed), Quatrain, Romanticism

D... is for Drama

Reading drama is very different from reading novels, you don't need me to tell you that. When I was much younger, I hated drama with a passion. I could never understand why dialogues have to be so difficult to understand (that's what I thought at the time). In fact, I'm not good with a lot of dialogues at length, I get muddled, that's a reason why I never read too many of Agatha Christie's novels. They tend to have long conversations and I get confused about who's saying what!
This was until I had to read 'Julius Caesar' in school, when I was 13 followed by 'Tempest' when I was 15. We had Oxford University Press annotated Shakespeare editions. And we had a very meticulous teach, who wasn't life changing or brilliant, but disciplined. The combination of the two meant that we were taught to read Shakespeare and understand him using the annotations on the side. We were required to enact them too, and I was Cassius. I have enjoyed drama ever since! It is always different and they is so much fun in imagining oneself in a character's shoes. This time around, for MA, I need to read a variety of playwrights, and they're all exciting, moving, and brilliant in their own right. Have you read any of these? What have you thought of it (them)?

The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Hamlet
Alchemist by Ben Jonson
The Playboy of the Western World
Pygmalion
Murder in the Cathedral
Waiting for Godot
Look Back in Anger

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This is the fourth post for the April A-to-Z Blogging Challenge 2014.
Previously, Archaism, British literature, Critical Analysis

C

C is for ‘Cassius’.

Gaius Cassius Longinus, known as Cassius, was mourned as ‘the last of the Romans’. He was well-made and well-read, intelligent and brave. He was the prime conspirator in the assassination plot of Julius Caesar. Shakespeare turned him into an immortal hero; his speeches strong and impressive, his stance confident. He was a true Roman.

Caesar was brilliant, no doubt. It was no mean feat to have defeated one as great a as Pompey. But Cassius fought for his belief, he truly believed that Caesar was a bully. He was defeated in the end by Caesar’s primary avenger and a man I think better than he – Marcus Antonius. He did not allow himself to be captured, rather asked one of his men to kill him; only because he believed his good friend Brutus dead as well.

Of course, C could be for Cleopatra too, for she was Caesar’s lover and Mark Antony’s seductress. But then, I didn’t play Cleopatra in school, I played Cassius J