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Romeo + Juliet (1996) dir. Baz Luhrmann

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The Scottish Play, but all the murders are carried out via Stabby the Roomba

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Please sign the petition!!!

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This is so scollace....Or maybe I'm crazy..

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not really any memorable context he just said that

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So there's this AU,

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Was thinking about this production of Macbeth that my mom was telling me about that I think more Shakespeare nerds need to know about because it's makes me laugh every damn time. So my mom and dad were seeing a Shakespeare in the Park production of Macbeth, and according to my mom, it was pretty bad for the first 3 acts. Just not a very good production.

But then, during Act 4, Scene 2 (the part where Macbeth kills Macduff's family), something changed that made my mom remember this as one of her favorite productions of Macbeth.

When it wasn't busy being boring, the production as a whole was slightly over the top and even a bit campy. They also had some pretty crappy props, which made the whole thing seem even more ramshackled.

Some of you may or may not remember this, but in the scene where the family is getting murdered, Lady Macduff is either pregnant or holding a baby. In this production, they chose to go with the baby. But the fake baby they chose was made of what was likely rubber.

During the murder scene, one of the actors grabbed the baby out of Lady Macduff's arms as she was getting murdered, held it up by the leg, and slammed the doll over a rock. However, that thing was made of rubber, so instead of just flopping over or something, it bounced back.

With a full on cartoonish "BOING."

The audience burst out laughing.

So for the rest of the show, the actors slightly leaned into the goofiness, and went from a mediocre play to an absolutely hilarious comedy.

I honestly want to see comedy versions of Shakespearean tragedies. Imagine a full production of dark comedy Macbeth. Romeo and Juliet campy soap opera. I already saw a really funny one-woman-show of King Lear. Just, more comedic Shakespearean tragedies.

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is it funnier if in muppets twelfth night viola and sebastian are the only humans or if malvolio is the only human

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Hello. What are your thoughts on the Shakespeare authorship controversy? You seem like a Stratfordian (or maybe that's wishful thinking)

I think that extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof, and that the idea that Shakespeare had to be an aristocrat rather than a working playwright is founded in snobbery rather than in any kind of realistic estimate of the writing skills of the British artistocracy.

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i've come to realize there are only two kinds of tragedies: preventable and inevitable. preventable tragedies are the kind where everything could have maybe worked out if only. if only romeo had gotten the second letter. if only juliet had woken up earlier. if only creon had changed his mind about antigone sooner. if only orpheus hadn't turned around.

inevitable tragedies are the kind where everything was always going to end terribly. of course macbeth gets deposed, he murdered his way to the throne. of course oedipus goes mad, he married his own mother. of course achilles dies in the war, he had to fulfill the prophecy in order to avenge his lover.

both kinds have their merits. the first is more emotionally impactful, letting the audience cling to hope until the very end, when it's snatched away all at once leaving nothing but a void. the second is more thematically resonant, tracking an inherent fatal flaw in its hero to a natural and understandable conclusion, making it abundantly clear why everything has to happen the way it does.

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My favorite Shakespeare thing is when he writes a major plot point but just has someone tell us about it to save on special effects.

Hamlet gets kidnapped by pirates but we don’t see that part. It’s a letter.

The Oracle of Delphi shows up in the Winter’s Tale and rather than do all the special effects required to make that adequately supernatural, two guys come on stage and go “woah that was cool”

There’s a big storm on the night that Duncan is murdered and we learn about this when half the cast of Macbeth says “sure was stormy last night”

Shakespeare, the OG low-budget director taking the easy way out.

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Some characters are consigned to a Shakespearean fate in the sense that their deaths will be tragic and poignant and illustrate fundamental truths about the human condition, and some characters are consigned to a Shakespearean fate in the sense that they're likely to suddenly and randomly be eaten by a heretofore-unmentioned bear.

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Someone today will read Shakespeare’s hamlet and say omg he’s just like me fr. Another person will read moby dick and proclaim Ishmael as an adhd king.

A person grieving for their recently deceased lover reads the iliad and they watch as Achilles rages and rages and god how righteous anger fueld by love is so devastating that it’s ramifications still affect the world several thousand years later.

We might one day settle down and read the epic of gilgamesh and watch as a king has to accept the death of the person he loved the most. One of the very first stories ever written and it was about coping with death, and how to grieve.

We don’t read classics because they’re old, we read them because they remind us that we are never alone. That a character created over 500 years ago struggled with the exact same problems we all still have today. That even a king from centuries past had to deal with death just like me. That’s what makes stories so powerful–they prove to us that we are never truly alone in what we are feeling.

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They should invent a tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow that doesn’t creep in this petty pace from day to day

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when they say shakespeare is inmortal and eternally relevant what they mean is that he was making one brain cell jokes in the 1600s

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maybe i'm just a grumpy english major but i feel like a lot of the "lol people think shakespeare is pretentious but actually his plays are just dick jokes and swordfighting" posting can verge into "lol what if the curtains are just blue" territory. yes shakespeare plays are full of those things AND they are also profound and complex and thematically rich. people spend their careers analyzing them for a reason, actually. it's not just dick jokes all the way down. and sometimes people spend their careers analyzing the dick jokes. stop trying to pick one side of the dichotomy between high and low culture. it's both. it can be both.