How to appreciate Shakespeare

…right now, at this very moment, one can see more great Shakespeare, one can find more transformative Shakespearean experiences, from what is already on film even in the form of tape or DVD on a television screen than the average person, even the average critic, will see on stage in a life time.

That is from Ron Rosenbaum’s generally quite good The Shakespeare Wars.  His list:

1. Orson Welles, Chimes at Midnight [TC: also Welles’s best movie]
2. Peter Brook, King Lear
3. Richard III, with Laurence Olivier
4. Hamlet, with Richard Burton

To this list I would add Welles’s Othello and — more controversially — Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Haitian voodoo scenes and all; Rosembaum is more positive than negative about that one, but it doesn’t make his list.

Comments

Comments for this post are closed