Reading and memes

[redbird]

There's this "how many of these hundred books have you read, and which of them did you love?" going around my friendslist. Looking at people's posts, I have to ask: have that many of you actually read Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, Cymbeline, and Titus Andronicus?

(I have seen Cymbeline on stage.)

Comments

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I read the first two. I told my indignant English professor (this was when I was a senior and knew him well enough to get away with things like this) that I'd been able to write better poetry than that at the age of fourteen. God, they suck.

He was acerbic - possibly because he'd assigned them - but then, he was the one (I was taking an "advanced Shakespeare" class at the time) who said someday he really, really wanted to offer a class called "Shakespeare's Turkeys." He said it could start with Two Gentlemen of Verona and go on from there. I suspect Titus Andronicus may have been on that list.

[trifles.livejournal.com]

Hee. I took a class called Shakespeare's Turkeys, by a professor who just really, really loved Shakespeare. One of the best classes I ever took.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Um...so...was this at a women's college in PA with a professor who bore a faint resemblance to a gay Sidney Greenstreet?

[trifles.livejournal.com]

...gay Buddha by this point, but yes, actually.

Anassa?

Alas, to have a lantern icon. Or an owl icon. Or pretty much anything relevant.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I figured the odds against two English professors coming up with that title had to be slim.

Isn't he fab? I took "Out and About" with him (i.e., "Fags and Dykes") which showed a depressing taste in gay male literature but was a great class, and then as well as the Shakespeare, I got him to be one of my thesis advisors.


kata, callooh! callay! kalo, kale!

[cheshyre]

I haven't bothered with the meme, but I've seen the latter two plays (5 stage productions of Titus, plus the Julie Taymor film)

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Likewise.

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

All of them except for Titus. Somehow that one never made it into any of my Shakespeare courses...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It's great fun, and has my all-time favorite quote in Shakespeare:

"You have undone our mother!"

"Villain, I have done thy mother."

(The context being that, well, the Empress has just delivered a son who is black, the second speaker being Aaron the Moor, the only black character around. . . )

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

Heh. The only Titus story I know revolves around the production in which the actress playing Lavinia dropped the stick with which she was supposedly scrawling the names of her attackers, post-mutilation in mid-scrawl. The audience held its breath...and the actor playing her father looked down, made a loud Tsk! noise, shook his head and said, 'Butterstumps...'

I suspect if I had done Shakespeare/revenge tragedy with my ex-Snoopervisor, Titus would have made the reading list as an example of just how insane revenge tragedy can get when it's allowed to. Right up there with 'The Revenger's Tragedy'.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the Chris Eccleston/Eddie Izzard "Revengers Tragedy" directed by Alex Cox?

'Cause that was just frickin' crazy awesome.

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

I've read the Revenger's Tragedy, but never seen a performance. I'd like to, though. Any play containing a character called 'Supervacuo' has to be worth seeing.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Try to track this one down. Chris Eccleston (Doctor Who #9) plays Vindici; Eddie Izzard is Lussurioso. The director, and guy behind the whole concept, is Alex Cox, the guy behind Repo Man and Sid and Nancy.

It's set in a post-holocaust Liverpool.

Have I convinced you yet that you MUST track a DVD of this down and watch it?

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

...nnnnot really. 'Fraid I'm not much of a fan of Christopher Eccleston, and I don't know a thing about the two films you mentioned.

Post-holocaust Liverpool sounds like an intriguing concept, though. I will consider it!

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD!

/me flees to DVD store

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

I was an usher for an entire run of The Revenger's Tragedy.

I've always been rather partial to Spurio's "Duke, thou didst do me wrong..." speech.

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

And you survived? Well done!

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

I've read all of Shakespeare's plays (including The Two Noble Kinsmen and Edward III), but not the poems.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I haven't been dealing with the meme because I've read almost none of the books. I always say that teaching myself let me learn about all those books without having to actually read them. But I have read Titus Andronicus.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

I've seen and read Titus Andronicus, and seen the Anthony Hopkins version; that's it.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Except for group readings aloud, I have rarely sat down and read a Shakespeare, or any other, play from end to end. Plays are for seeing on stage, I firmly believe, and reading one silently is like perusing a musical score: informative, but not the real thing.

I have, however, seen just about every Shakespeare play on stage, most of them several times.

[pameladean]

I've read them all. The only one that I have not read repeatedly is Titus Andronicus. I've also rejected opportunities to see it performed.

I was an English major and went on to get a graduate degree, so none of this is very surprising. The two I have reread for pleasure rather than to study for comps are, also unsurprisingly, "The Rape of the Lock" and Cymbeline.

P.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

I saw many many rehearsals and three performances of the production of Cymbeline that my children were in, plus watched my footage of it repeatedly while combining best scenes from different performances to make a DVD of it, so even though I never actually sat down and read the whole script, I think it should count as having listened to an audiobook version at very least!

[carbonel]

Our play-reading group did Titus Andronicus at least once and possibly twice. Also Cybeline, but not the poetry, nor Two Noble Kinsmen.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yep. For my sins.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Didn't do the meme, but I've read Cymbeline, which I'm rather fond of, and Titus Andronicus, which is the first text which I've had trouble reading for violence levels. Usually that only happens to me with film/TV.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Theatre Arts major.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

read none, seen The Rape of Lucrece on stage (go Gravy Bath) and the Julie Taymor Titus.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, no, and half. (I desperately want to see the film Titus from a few years ago.)

As another commenter pointed out, the first two are not the best of Shakespeare's works, but I figure even he is allowed some clunkers.

[redbird]

Everyone is allowed clunkers. I was just wondering how many people could actually say they had read the complete works of Shakespeare, including poems other than the sonnets.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Oh! That's different. I've read Titus and good chunks of Cymbeline and Venus and Adonis (because my parents' edition of the Complete Works was one of my favorites, growing up) -- but I have also not read some of the less marginal choices, notably Julius Caesar.

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

Read 'em all, due to an overwhelming interest in Renaissance drama while a well-meaning undergraduate, and a slightly unconventional Shakespeare survey course taken back then. Seen Titus performed, as well as the Taymor film; kept meaning to go see an outdoor Cymbeline this month but never quite made it in time.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I remember working my way through my 4 vol edition of the Complete Works during my university days, but can't remember offhand if I did continue into V&A and RofL. However, I reckoned that 90+% probably counted for the purposes of a meme list as peculiar as the one in question (which included a separate entry for Hamlet).

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

I suffered from childhood insanity. (My adult insanity takes different forms.) Yes, I read the complete works, poems and all. Titus Andronicus I saw onstage. And it was *gripping*.

[trifles.livejournal.com]

Read and loved Titus Andronicus, and for that reason really hated most of the Anthony Hopkins version (though it sure was pretty). The others I was supposed to have read, but didn't, because I was extremely foolish and thought I had better things to do.