Shakespeare - Best Tragedy

of the ones i've read king lear

i think it's Lear or Othello really, isn't it? i haven't read them all either and i have no idea what the last three are even about.

King Lear. Edmund is my favorite Shakespeare villain (is that another poll?).

macbeth

Still swear Hamlet is a tragicomedy/satire but it's probably the best play of these. I'm not voting for it on the aforesaid grounds tho. Which for me leaves Macbeth vs Julius Caesar for concision and for being the truest Tragedies according to strict definition, plus Lear which is strong on Tragedy but short on concision. Gut says vote Macbeth, but I do love Lear's hyper-floridity and misanthropic pizzazz. It's not the best stage play but I'm voting for it.

didn't we do this before?

anyway, lear's sweep can't be beat

yeah i would rank the ones i've read:

lear
othello
r and j
macbeth
caesar
hamlet

lear has these parts which are just batshit weird and dark--it has a tone that is just really unique.

i think lear is let down by goneril being a non-entity and reagan one-dimensional

othello let down by the plot being an episode of three's company

hamlet or macbeth for me

still lear, tho I love macbeth and hamlet is better than I remember every time I read it

othello let down by the plot being an episode of three's company

lol i know what you mean but this is kind of a wack dismissal of othello!

"didn't we do this before?"

we didn't although i was surprised to discover that.

i think we did best shakespearian villain before

othello for me, strongest villain by far!

It's not a bad dismissal of Othello because in a tragedy the character is supposed to be brought low by a flaw which is intrinsic to his greatness, not because he's a bit of a dick and a short-sighted employer.

king lear is stupid all the characters are lames. + ap english basically ruins it by making u right about blindness for four months and also i h8 old ppl. macbeth is aight its got witches and banqou's ghost but cmon othello is obv the best raddest characters 4 sure

lear ftw xp O RLY

i'm not dismissing it! i think othello is one of the greatest literary and dramatic achievements in all of human history! but there's stiff competition here

o no im old and i got wet in the rain it turns out my biggest flaws were pride and pneumonia!!!!

NV, sorry but I have to call you out for relying on the wack-ass Victorian definition of "tragic flaw"

lamp if you hate old ppl king lear should be yr favorite, it's like 4+ hours of torturing senior citizens

If that ain't tragedy then it's just a bunch of "OH NO YOUR MATES ARE TWATS UNLUCKY SON"

Not exactly an original observation, but it's staggering how far the influence of these things goes. I get goosebumps when I'm reading one and hit a famous bit, or what would nowadays be a cliché except that it's the guy making it up and using it for the very first time

i think othello is a pretty compelling character given that he's a total second banana, but i can't argue specifics since i haven't read the play in 5 or 6 years.

It's hardly a Victorian definition anyway, altho the Greeks did spice it up with "OH NO YOUR GODS ARE TWATS UNLUCKY SON" on occasion

Jonathan Goldberg, ‘The Anus in Coriolanus’ in Carla Mazzio and Douglas Trevor, eds., Historicism, Psychoanalysis, and Early Modern Culture (New York: Routledge, 2000)

i'm def liking "unlucky son"

The Hello in Othello

Nobody loves Antony & Cleopatra? It's always been my favourite.

lamp otm re lear

hamartia via aristotle = unspeakable crime unknowlingly committed, eg kiling your dad, fucking your moms, or else eating your children

the victorian interpretation was "tragic flaw" because hey, we need to apply morality lessons to the unexplainable suffering we all face and unforseeable consequences of our actions

unknowingly, rather

like I said the Greek spin is "your gods are twats" but isn't this usually a response to hubris anyway so relates to the general "you played yourself" tragic theme?

I'm going to use my favorite opera setting to break the tie between R&J, Hamlet and Othello.

VERDI WINS

Troilus should've been saved for a Problem Plays poll. R&J is the Comedy of Errors plus poison.

NV i suppose but it doesn't relate to character traits, it has to do with action. lesson of tragedy is that we ALL play ourselves, not that suffering can be avoided through moderating one's personality

lesson of tragedy is get money fuck witches

lol

haha

get dropped like hamlet's pops

that is really making me wish I'd voted Hamlet

Lear = Hamlet > Macbeth > Othello > the others

Antony and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet are up there with that lot^^^ probably with Caesar too but i haven't read it (for shame).

Jonathan Goldberg, ‘The Anus in Coriolanus’ in Carla Mazzio and Douglas Trevor, eds., Historicism, Psychoanalysis, and Early Modern Culture (New York: Routledge, 2000)

That's a surprisingly short title given its academic context as I guess it. Not even a colon?

king lear is amazing

i think lear is let down by goneril being a non-entity and reagan one-dimensional

regan and goneril are the characters in lear i most identify with!

another vote for lear; i've seen nothing but wack live performances of it btw, but i always end up crying.

Lear. Some seriously darked-out stuff goes on in that play.

Goneril and Regan have a couple of excellent exchanges with Cornwall and Albany; how "three-dimensional" do you want them to be? We have to be careful about applying twentieth century nomenclature to Shakespeare.

You can also argue that Edmund's one act of goodness in the last five pages is unbelievable. To me it works fine -- it's improbable but inconsistent. We have ample evidence of his cold enjoyment of toying with others.

We have to be careful about applying twentieth century nomenclature to Shakespeare.

because there was only one dimension back then, or what?

Titus is just so grisly I have to go for it.

because there was only one dimension back then, or what?

People could slip under doors under cover of night much more often.

it's a boundary-breaking tragedy
it's a boundary-breaking comedy
it's the best play listed
it has Shakespeare's best character

shakespeare: butt tragedy

it's tragic how some people don't recognize Shakespeare's greatest tragedy as a tragedy.

it doesn't have Lear raging at the storm
its lessons only apply in the abstract while like Lear everyone's gonna see himself pushed out
it can't make me grimace with dread like Lear
it doesn't have the line "child Roland to the dark tower came"
it slays completely but Lear lasts longer

it's tragic how some people don't recognize Shakespeare's greatest tragedy as a tragedy.

^^^ you can almost sing that to the chorus of "It's Tricky"

c'mon Que rep for Lear some

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport.

tragic tragic tragic tragic

I have to go to the doctor now

Lear Side Kings for life

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!

sounds like some people on this thread. . .

j/k

The most underrated play here is Romeo and Juliet: I think its impact is dulled by the fact that it has seeped into the culture far more completely than even Hamlet, Lear, etc & that might seriously be because it is the best story!

Mel Gibson as Hamlet – now that was a fuckin tragedy.

I was gonna say - Mel Gibson playing his half-loony type makes a good argument for Hamlet being funny and scary all at once.

S. has a character-type that he was very very good at, who is aware of himself being on a stage both within the world of the play and in a literal sense, talking to the audience, asking for (needing?) their confidence, and casting their manipulation of other characters in terms of directing a show. in most cases, this character is the villain: richard iii, iago, edmund. hamlet is the only quote unquote hero that's built in this way. tho you could make the argt that other characters with similar modi operandi, in the comedies, are women (viola... uh forgetting others here)

voted Lear because it's the most tragilicious, Hamlet is my favorite play. (tho i dont see it as a comedy, at all really)

and OTM about R&J being underrated now. it's a devastating play, and fits in pretty well imo with Shakespeare's overriding critique of love.

After A Midsummer's Night Dream, R&J has the best poetry.

My fave Shakespeares are the ones that go to the brink of tragedy (esp. Twelfth Night) but get resolved before the end.

Best Shakes I've seen is Adrian Lester as Hamlet in Peter Brook's, yes, The Tragedy of Hamlet.

Saw Stacy Keach play Lear a few years ago in a production set in post-glasnost Eastern Europe, with some Sopranos-style torture sequences and gaudy suits and cars.

the tragic oomph of R&J really depends on the casting imo. most productions i've seen have very pretty people in the lead roles and the most competent & charismatic ppl as mercutio and maybe the nurse. once mercutio gets his the wind always come out of the sails. i never really care what happens after that frankly. rather than the escalating logic of tragedie i'm like yeah yeah ppl gonna die.

i once overheard a dude in a coffee shop talking loudly abt a production he was in called "queer lear" -- i admit i was kinda baffled

i can't really get into lear vs hamlet because i have spent so much more time on hamlet, and the closest competitor for me would be othello

see becuase iago and hamlet are the SAME except hamlet has just enough moral sense to NOT ENJOY HIMSELF did i just blow your MIND

i was petruchio in a production of taming of the shrew that was done as a tragedy. it was a very heavy-handed disco edit of the text by charles marowitz called "the shrew" and at the time i thought it was brilliant but now i think it actually avoids the entire point of the play

i mean, no one died, but there was some serious rapin goin on

talking loudly abt a production he was in called "queer lear" -- i admit i was kinda baffled

I'm imagining a kind of laidback, chilled version of "Othello" called "Mellow Othello"

the tragic oomph of R&J really depends on the casting imo. most productions i've seen have very pretty people in the lead roles and the most competent & charismatic ppl as mercutio and maybe the nurse. once mercutio gets his the wind always come out of the sails. i never really care what happens after that frankly. rather than the escalating logic of tragedie i'm like yeah yeah ppl gonna die.

voting 4 r+j in this poll is only slightly less contemptible than voting for king lear imo

if i'm annoyed with a book, i stop reading.

u no whats good is the children's illustrated shakespaere - thats how i read all these plays during high school tbh

the last, best production of shrew I saw expoited all opportunity for physical comedy so it's hard for me to fathom it as a tragedy unless it's totally rewritten. (when petruchio steps on kate's hand at the end she grabs his foot and flips him onto his ass -- probably the best resolution of the problems of the ending i could imagine)

marowitz didn't rewrite, he just snipped it into a tragic shape - from a certain pov it is the story of an independent woman who is crushed via literal physical and mental torture

She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat;
Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not;
As with the meat, some undeserved fault
I'll find about the making of the bed;
And here I'll fling the pillow, there the bolster,
This way the coverlet, another way the sheets:
Ay, and amid this hurly I intend
That all is done in reverend care of her;
And in conclusion she shall watch all night:
And if she chance to nod I'll rail and brawl
And with the clamour keep her still awake.
This is a way to kill a wife with kindness;
And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humour.

yeah elmo - the "problems" of the ending are the entire point of the play it seems to me - and the provoke wild and interesting stagings and interpretations - marowitz just jumps over them as if he knows the story without bothering with it

on the other hand, in my production we used that bulgarian women's choir when we really wanted to drive the point home.. i shit you not.. oh the 90s

the shrew I saw dealt with the violence in the play by having petruchio get hit in the nads a lot

well he kinda deserves it

i saw an RSC prod of it once that suggested petruchio was an alcoholic, and the events of the play are him hitting rock bottom and then finally, miraculously getting on the wagon and the whole thing made perfect sense

I think a lot of the opinions here turn on whether your chief interest in Shakespeare is as a poet or as a dramatist (and maybe: on whether you perceive his interest to lie more strongly with the stage or the page)

IOW yeah I side with those who think R&J is underrated but on the other hand if your thing is theater & the movement of the drama then I would be looking harder at Othello & Macbeth

(and maybe: on whether you perceive his interest to lie more strongly with the stage or the page)

lol poet that don't know it

Saw Stacy Keach play Lear a few years ago in a production set in post-glasnost Eastern Europe, with some Sopranos-style torture sequences and gaudy suits and cars.

― Eazy, Tuesday, June 23, 2009 12:19 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Eric i saw this! at the Goodman! it was so so terrible, i thought! Stacy Keach, in particular, ate all his lines. i can imagine it's hard to say things like "nothing will come of nothing" and feel like you're making it fresh, but if you're playing Lear maybe say the amazing lines comprehensibly? i wanted to shake him. but like i said, it got me at the end.

i can't really argue with people choosing Hamlet, it's fantastic, but nothing really touches Lear.

IOW yeah I side with those who think R&J is underrated but on the other hand if your thing is theater & the movement of the drama then I would be looking harder at Othello & Macbeth

^^^ exactly why I voted Othello (that, and Verdi)

also you have to cast Edmund really really hot and i think the dude was not hot enough.

Hey, it turns out that Keach/Goodman production has reopened in D.C.. I got pulled into the design and the concept, even though the language was lost -- kind of an opera-like experience.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/104/273118981_a1bb6679d6.jpg?v=0
^^opening scene^^

http://chicagoist.com/attachments/chicagoist_justin/Leardivisionweb.jpg

^^"Who loves me the most?" scene^^

personally, I would call Tristram Shandy "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark"

― worm? lol (J0hn D.), Tuesday, 23 June 2009 15:49 (5 hours ago) Bookmark

lol visions of the diabolical splice

hamlet is the best play, timon of athens is really quite good too but i gotta go with the h-man

bleak house is a great novel que i mean dude you gotta learn to live with the whole longwinded brit thing

just imagine what literature would be like if we could have suggest banned dickens

oh shit, that would have been awesome

that did happen

yeah i was gonna say lj, i dug the book a lot but after awhile i had to pull the trigger

(Turns out the Washington Post reviewed Lear this morning.)

to be fair que, it took me like 6 weeks to read, and was never less than a slog, but totally worth it imo

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poor timon, his situation is probably the most relevant to ours and his play awesome