Shakespeare Related Things

Tomorrow my family makes its annual summer trip to Cedar City for the Utah Shakespearean Festival. In honor of this beloved event, I decided to write my five favorite Shakespeare-related books/plays/movies (with two honorable mentions). Next week, I'll write my reviews of the plays and have pictures from my subsequent trip to San Diego!

Honorable Mentions:
Shakespeare in Love
To Be or Not To Be

I've seen both movies only once and like them both. I'm sure you all know Shakespeare in Love better than I (I generally can't remember a movie plot five days after I saw it), and the other starred Carole Lombard and Jack Benny as heads of a Jewish theatrical troupe performing Hamlet while trying to escape the Nazis.

#5. 10 Things I Hate about You
Yes, the movie is somewhat cheesy, but I've seen it a number of times, and it captures the idea of Shakespeare better than most of its teenybopper counterparts (almost as well as Cluesless captures Emma). I like Julia Stiles, and it was one of the first things I had seen Heath Ledger in. And I still find myself laughing and appreciating Taming of the Shrew each time I see the movie.

#4. March Tale
This play was written by Tim Slover, originally a professor at BYU and now at the U. It tells the story of Shakespeare's troupe going to perform Merry Wives of Windsor for a dying Queen Elizabeth and getting themselves into Elizabethan plots and high hijinks. I actually saw this play in one of its first readings/writings at the Shakespeare Festival and then again at BYU after Tim rewrote it a little bit. It has since won several awards and the rights have been purchased to make a movie with Tim writing the screenplay (I hope it happens!).

#3. The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged)
This is a very fun play that manages to do at least snippets from every single play. The better you know the plays, the funnier it is, but anyone can appreciate the history plays performed as a football game or a rap version of Othello.

#2. The Eyre Affair
Actually, every novel by Jasper Fforde contains at least some allusions to the Bard of Avon, but my favorite is in this book. Thursday Next, the heroine, goes to a performance of Richard III that is much like The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The audience completely participates, shouting out things, providing props, and even getting involved in the final battle at the end. (What a fantastic idea!! It would be exciting to live in a world that loved Shakespeare that much!)

#1. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
My all-time favorite Shakespeare-related play is this one. I have seen it a number of times (including the movie version, though I wouldn't recommend it). The first time, though, probably had the greatest impact. All the tickets were sold out at BYU, but my dad happened to know the director (his wife had babysat Warren when we lived in Indiana), so he let the two of us sit up in the catwalks behind the spotlights. The stage was almost completely bare, so the characters and the words came alive. It's a great romp through existentialist thought and Hamlet, written by one of the world's finest playwrights, Tom Stoppard.