I love Shakespear

[Anne Bonny]

Shakespeare is ripe with cross dressing and it's implications on it's characters...Viola in the twelfth night, and Rosalind in As you like it, here is something fun in Much ado abut nothing from Beatrice...

BEATRICE
Too curst is more than curst. I shall lessen God’s sending
that way, for it is said, “God sends a curst cow short horns,”
but to a cow too curst, he sends none.

LEONATO
So, by being too curst, God will send you no horns.

BEATRICE
Just, if he send me no husband, for the which blessing I am
at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I
could not endure a husband with a beard on his face! I had
rather lie in the woolen.

LEONATO
You may light on a husband that hath no beard.

BEATRICE
What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and
make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard
is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than
a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and
he that is less than a man, I am not for him. Therefore I will
even take sixpence in earnest of the bearherd, and lead his
apes into hell.
LEONATO
Well then, go you into hell?

BEATRICE
No, but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me like an
old cuckold with horns on his head, and say, “Get you to
heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here’s no place for you
maids.” So deliver I up my apes and away to Saint Peter. For
the heavens, he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there
live we as merry as the day is long.

Oh to be dressed in her apparel and be her attending gentlewoman...hum but then I would be curst because I would not be for her!

[DonnaT]

I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening

Erotica

[Anne Bonny]

The script is FULL of undiscovered treasures which I suppose is what makes great literature. Oh...If I were just her attending gentlewoman!!! think of it....

[Ralitsa]

Yes, I agree. As You Like It was the first one I read, about a thousand years ago when I was a kid. And it's probably still my favorite.
My daughter was complaining a while back about having to read Romeo and Juliet, which I don't like all that much either, and I told her she should read As You Like It. I don't know why English teachers always have kids read stuff they are practically guaranteed to not like, when there is plenty of stuff that's much more enjoyable.

[April Rose]

Hamlet was always the one that did it for me. The fact that he knew stuff that he had to keep secret, and that it was driving him crazy, yet he couldn't talk it over even with his lover, seemed to touch a bit on the CD's conundrum. Let's face it, isolation is our biggest issue, out or not.

I read, In Eric Fromme's book, that Karl Marx read all of Shakespeare every year. I decided then that I would try to read the complete works at least once before I die. That was some years ago, and I'm still only about a third of the way through. A bit embarrassing, since I spent 3 semesters as an English major.

I will be retiring soon, maybe even within the year, (FINGERS CROSSED,FINGERS CROSSED, FINGERS CROSSED) so I'm hoping to have more time for reading then.

The best way to enjoy Shakespeare is to read the play first, then then watch it. That gives a head start on the unfamiliar language. It's easier to pay attention when you're anticipating the juicy parts. In that regard, it's sort of like Rock n Roll.