I've read Much Ado About Nothing and The Comedy of Errors. I love his comedies, but I can't bring myself to read his tragedies. I don't like any tragedies. Because they make me feel sad and I don't like feeling sad

I LOVE Shakespear
I've read
The Comedy of Errors (my sisters and I were rolling on the floor with laughter when we read it)
Much Ado About Nothing
As you like it

now I am reading Taming of the Shrew and after that I plan to read Romeo and Juliet

I've also seen a movie Much Ado About Nothing and parts of Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet as well as a musical of Romeo and Juliet.
I've read some of his poems and sonnets too

The other was a satire on Shakespeare's plays that included half a dozen quickie performances of Hamlet -- including one backward. I don't remember the title, though.

Sounds like it would be The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)
(at http://www.reducedshakespeare.com/wp/?page_id=254 ) by the Reduced Shakespeare Company ( http://www.reducedshakespeare.com/wp/ ). I've seen it in London - it's hilarious.

I think Merchant of Venice was the first of his plays that I read - we did it as part of my English course at secondary school (English is not my first language). During that time I also saw Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet - beautiful version! Later I went to England for a year to study English Language and Literature for foreign students, and there were four Shakespeare plays on our curriculum:

Romeo and Juliet
The Winter's Tale
Macbeth
King Lear

We were shown a BBC version of Romeo and Juliet, not as beautiful as the Zeffirelli version, but with better acting. We were shown a movie of King Lear - a Russian movie, with English subtitles! And we produced our own version of Winter's Tale - I had two very small parts, but during some of the rehearsals I was substituing for Perdita, and enjoyed it immensely.

We also went to Stratford a couple of times - I don't remember what we saw other than Henry V, but we were also taken around to see some of the sights, like Shakespeare's Birthplace and Ann Hathaway's Cottage.

A few years ago I saw Shakespeare's Globe in London, but there was no play running at the time. Still, interesting to see what it looked like.

Someone mentioned not liking Romeo and Juliet - and looking at it realistically, how can we be sure about that great love of theirs? Granted it was strong enough to make them face death, but would it have been strong enough to make them face life? They never got to have their love tested. If they had survived, how long would their marriage have been a happy one - would the passion and infatuation of those first few days have grown into true, strong, lasting love?

I fear that it wouldn't. They are primarily immature teenagers who insist on having things their own way - or else ... I would have liked to see someone write a new play about them thirty years later (in an Alternative Universe where they survived) to develop what their situation might have been. Someone like Ingmar Bergman, perhaps ...

But there's some beautiful love poetry in there - sonnets, even

I've read:
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
Hamlet

and I've seen A Midnight Summer's dream played out on stage...

I absolutely love Shakespearean plays... the rest of them are on my to read list.

My favorite is probably Hamlet, for many reasons. 1. its veeerrry quotable. More quotable than the rest of his plays even (at least the few I've read) 2. The characterizations are really well done. 3. You can still feel sympathy for Hamlet, even when he does something wrong, unlike Macbeth. 4. Its hard to put down.

I have probably read/studied most of the plays, over quite some years - beginning with Midsummer Night's Dream at age 12 (I remember learning Puck's epilogue). I've been fortunate enough to be in four productions including three outdoor ones - the most recent was the Dream again, in which I played Moth in a most wonderful, magical production.
While living in London I attended as much as possible at the Royal Shakespeare and elsewhere. Even got to see my favourite, Twelfth Night, at the Globe!
One I haven't yet seen is Richard II - a group is currently in rehearsal here in my city, and I'm looking forward to it. The language is quite poetic for a history play -was written about the same time as Romeo & Juliet, and is similar in style.
In NZ we have a national competition for Shakespeare for high schools - this has brought Shakespeare back into vogue and there have been some very interesting adaptations and settings.

Curiously, the only one of Shakespeare's works that I have watched on stage in its entirety was The Tempest. I watched it once during my junior year of college. A girl from Biochemistry class ran into me there and asked me for assistance with it, since she was watching it for one of her classes.

The Merchant of Venice has me curious- that one I never read.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) ... thanks, Varnafinde. It is hilarious!

Favorite comedy: Much Ado about Nothing ... I've read the play and seen the Kenneth Branagh version a few times. I didn't care for the plot of Midsummer at all. But I did like As you like it.

Favorite tragedy: this is hard, since I don't care for tragedies. I would have to say Hamlet. MacBeth seemed more realistic to me, though. The psychological depth of the scene where Lady MacBeth is sleepwalking, with an imaginary blood spot on her clothes, is amazing. I thought King Lear was rather boring. It felt like a denoument in Act 3. I like the plot of Romeo and Juliet, but not the play itself. I've seen both the Zeffirelli version and the DiCaprio one. I actually liked the latter better for one thing: the passion between him and Claire Danes.

Favorite history: 1 Henry IV, mostly because of its biblical allusions. Henry V is epic, esp. Branagh's movie version, but I just couldn't get into it plot-wise.

@Mehinen: try Shakespeare in modern English. My students liked it.

@coracle & Varnafinde: so you've been to the Globe and Stratford-on-Avon. Nice!

Ooh, I forgot that I've also seen Romeo and Juliet in Stratford-on-Avon. I was not impressed. But we had terrible seats and had to use binoculars, so maybe that's why. I also saw As You Like IT as a young teen with my dad and I can't remember what happened. I remember lots of forests and several mix-ups. I don't really like it when productions are taken out of the usual time and setting. I like it even less when they are "set" in a nonexistant setting, like no distinguishable time period. Such was the fault of the R&J I saw in Stratford.

I used to be the treasurer for a small amateur theatre group in Oslo, with mostly students performing (it's closed down now, unfortunately). We used English as our language, and produced several plays by Shakespeare, including The Tempest, King Lear (in a modified version), A Midsummer Night's Dream, a modified version of Hamlet called Ophelia, and Romeo and Juliet (modified to something very close to a comedy). (We also produced plays by other writers.)

Oh, I think we did Hamlet in a slightly more standard way as well.

And we produced "Friends with Shakespeare" in 1999 - a collage of several scenes from several plays, all showing different kinds of friendship. Friends-at-arms, friends who are close family, true friends, false friends, friends who fall out and make up. All centered around a large sofa, and with the song from the sitcom "Friends" as our theme song (with a Shakespearified text).

I didn't act, but I worked as the prompter, both in The Tempest and in Friends with Shakespeare. It was very interesting!

I've only ever seen Hamlet performed on stage. It certainly is different seeing the play than reading the play. I'd love to see more sometime.

Please note that this SF will be closing Thursday evening, March 11. For further discussion, please see the Spare Oom's Books, Movies, or Theatre topics.
Thanks!

I have never actually read a Shakespeare play yet.. *watches as people booo her out of the thread* but I once read this book ages ago and found it quite fasinating, about what Shakespeare looked like:
http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeares-Face ... 067697483X
Also, interestingly, a few years ago I got to see the painting the book is written about! Sadly I don't recall much of the book as I think I read it when I was 14? 13? but if you're into Shakespearian stuff, you might be interested in it.
Some other books, these YA fiction, which revolve around Elizabethan times and Shakespeare, are trilogy by Gary Blackwood, including The Shakespeare Stealer, Shakespeare's Scribe, and Shakespeare's Spy.
http://www.amazon.com/Gary-Blackwood/e/ ... r_dp_pel_1

Annd...my last reccomendation is two other YA novels in the same time period, the first called The Playmaker, and the second The True Prince, by J. B. Cheaney. http://www.amazon.com/J.-B.-Cheaney/e/B ... 467&sr=1-1

The plays that I eventually want to get around to reading would be Hamlet and MacBeth *worries about the spelling of McBeth...or Macbeth?* I tried Romeo and Juliet once but the understanding the writing was a struggle.

@Valiant

1. Thanks for the book suggestions!
2. So you've never read any of his plays, eh? My first was 9th grade, an abridged version of Romeo and Juliet. And I didn't really enjoy it. Except for Much ado about nothing [which I saw on Masterpiece Theatre], I didn't even like Shakespeare before my senior year. And I didn't really appreciate his stuff until grad school. So don't worry about it. I didn't even like poetry until my senior year. Now I love it!
3. Spelling: it's Macbeth. [It has the best lines!]
4. Understanding Shakespeare's writing: try reading one of his "easier" plays [at least plot-wise] in a modern English version.

@Avra: I prefer film to books. Seeing a play really is different.

Favorite play: how did I forget The Merchant of Venice? Portia's speech on mercy in Act 4 is beautiful!

Shakespeare fans: thanks for contributing to my special topic!