Overcoming Our Fear Of Shakespeare (Full Documentary)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ธ.ค. 2021
- Actors Giles Terera and Dan Poole travel around the world, interviewing thespians as they try to conquer their fear of Shakespeare.
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I was educated to man a machine on the factory floor. Shakespeare that's not for the likes of you. Shakespeare poetry What are you some kind of soft boy ? So I discovered Shakespeare at 32 years. Funny enough via American visitors. It was a shock. Shakespeare the land of my birth ? The age from superstition to scientific discovery in my 40s. With the event of the computer I can appreciate strange and wonderful things, culture from all around the world due to Shakespeare. William Tyndale, and my inheritance. I wish I was taught all this earlier. Great documentary thank you for posting.
I'm amazed that so many people agreed to participate. These two actors deserve credit for their dedication and incredibly hard work. This was a fascinating and absorbing documentary.
I despised Shakespeare growing up. When I taught 5th grade (10-11 year olds) one of my team members did “Romeo and Juliet” with some of my students. Real words, no modern translation stuff. They and I were hooked. The next year I decided to do it on my own with my own class that was made up of students who were serious juvenile offenders with long rap sheets or students who struggled to read “See Spot run.” There were only 6 “normal” kids in this entire group of 35 students. I had chosen to do “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Was I insane? After explaining the story to the class and reading through the abridged script a few times to explain the language I held auditions. The most unlikely kids tried out for the various parts, and my six boys who couldn’t read all auditioned to be the six Athenian workmen who are the funniest part of the play! They couldn’t read but they were great auditory learners, so I recorded their lines plus the lines that came before and after their parts. My class quickly transformed into something that nobody had ever expected. These kids were actors! I knew that Shakespeare’s language had worked its magic when these kids started calling each other foul suppurating pustules and scurvy knaves out at recess instead of motherf$&@“s and SOBs. During our first performance Titania the fairy Queen forgot her line about the little changeling child but she marched up to Oberon and yelled, “Touch the kid and you’re dead meat!” I wept for joy, and I wasn’t the only one. Parents who were used to being called by the police about the latest crime their kid had committed saw their child speaking Shakespeare’s amazing words with confidence and acting as if they’d been doing Shakespeare for years and not for 2 months. Our Athenian workmen stole the show at every performance and always got the loudest applause during the curtain calls. They’d been known as the stupidest kids in school and were now the heroes! After we were done with the play my class insisted that we continue to learn more about Shakespeare, and they all had different ideas about what happened after the story ended. If I could’ve added Shakespeare to math and science I would’ve. This inspired me to continue doing Shakespeare with young people. Even after I quit teaching school myself I directed Shakespeare plays at my local elementary school for 16 years. I still run into former students who tell me how Shakespeare changed their lives and how they are introducing their own children to Shakespeare.
This story makes me so happy.
You, madam, are a hero!
Amazing 🎉❤
I finally "understood" Shakespeare in a Shakespeare literature course in University and then only after hours upon hours with a Shakespeare Glossary/Dictionary, literally translating the words into modern speech. It's lovely. It's like a language that sounds like yours but in reality, hidden amongst these words, are secret messages; pornographic jokes, jabs at audience members, and even a little bit of breaking of the fourth wall. After all that, my favorite play is Henry IV part 1.
Thanks. A beautiful documentary.
I'm glad you were able, among so many greats, to capture an interview with the late Alan Rickman.
I think many of those quoted here will feel that participating in this was a rare opportunity for them to express the experience they had developed over a whole career. This is a documentary about Shakespeare, yes, but also about theater and about life itself.
T he sonnets are great way to start lovingShakespeare. Human experience distilled in 14 lines. The sonnets are poems addressed to one person, not an audience like plays, and the sonnets feel like Shakespeare is speaking directly to the reader with raw and powerful emotion. Also read the sonnets out loud to *really* enjoy them and feel the beautiful rhythms of Iambic pentameter.
Here a non native speaker, who has never been into theater and has never understood why so many people loved Shakespeare. Until I saw Branagh's "Much Ado About Nothing" (1993). Since then I am madly in love with Shakespeare. As I'm not British I did not go through studying him in school thus I have no trauma. What make me fall in love with was the rhythm and musicality of the language. It's like listening to a beautiful song which the language is alien to you. There are a few websites where you can get the translation into the modern English. So I just have to get there to understand the story line and then watch the play. I would never trade the Elizabethan English for Modern English, because it is its sound of it that I love so much. Fear not my friends, Shakespeare is fun.
What a journey! I love Shakespeare and thank you very much. All the very best to both of you!
Having a buddy to accomplish dreams and impossible goals seems to be the key. I so wish I had a buddy to accomplish my impossible dreams. xoxo
My mother introduced my sister and me to Shakespeare when we were children, so I loved it. I didn't know any better.
Then I had to study it at school, and they *butchered* it. Poetry was the same way.
Finally! A proper Shakespeare documentary. Thank you so much.
Thanks Dan and Giles, well done on a very watchable documentary. I enjoyed it immensely. Hoping yr acting careers go from strength to strength. Break a leg 😊
Simply excellent. Thank you.
Great amanzing documentary. Thank you very much.
Alas, no one gets to Shakespeare the slow, gradual, easy way anymore. I first encountered the bard in comic form, in Classics Illustrated. So when we did 5-6 plays in high school, I not only knew the plots but quite a bit of the language, which was in glossed balloons for major speeches in the comics. Kids also used to read the plots in Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. Also, in high school we had assemblies in which two guys would act out some of the most interesting dialogues (Brutus and Cassius before Phillippi, Friar Lawrence and Romeo after Tybalt's death, Prince Hal and Falstaff). A little at a time, plot first. And having taught Shakespeare now for years--SLOWLY, going over the language by paraphrasing sentences, looking up words, PRACTICING. Not blitzing past large chunks without teaching people how to read them. It's essentially the same as learning a foreign language, which it is. SO worth the effort.
And, of course, did I mention watching GOOD performances? Preferably with attractive actors in the lead. Always helps with adolescents.
Oh my Zod you guys got almost everyone from HP! It's awesome to know all these high profile actors actually came to help you guys! Btw, i still remember some of the lines from Julius Caesar. That's the only Shakespearean work that i loved. :')
Thank you for a Brilliant Documentary! Film making here you come. I am looking forward to more!
That was just splendid, thank you!
Wonderful!!!
Prithee thee I speak = Fellas, this was perfect. I am just beginning rehearsals for Twelfth Night and this is inspiring me to take a deep breath and go for it. I will screw my courage to the sticking place and not fail!!
Excellent. Thank you.
Wonderful! I alternately laughed and cried, gained insights, reveled in words (his, mine, theirs, and ours), swooned over some of my idols, and delighted in this entertaining and inspiring piece. A labor of love (not lost). Thank you so much for your perseverance. It has real value to those of us who love and/or want to love Shakespeare. And I hope you've been able to monetize it and maybe even scored some acting jobs because of it.
Bravo... And you win.
I loved this SO MUCH! As a writer, I am embarrassed to admit that I have not read a work of Shakespeare from start to finish. To my credit, however, I have been to the Shakespeare’s Globe, and I have watched plays and movies. I still forever wish to read all of his works. I can do that in installments I suppose :)
Writing this on Christmas Day. Having a blast, as I’m sure you can see :) Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!
Ian McKellen's Richard III movie adaptation was a revelation to me. While it's condensed, it is fantastic and one I feel should be shown to anyone who wants to see that Shakespeare can be understood and experienced by people today - and can tell us important things about ourselves and our society.
Great. Warm. Daring. Honest. Touching. And funny.
Brilliant doco. Thanks very much for posting this here.
Love 💕 it all 💐🌺🌝☄️🌿
I read Shakespeare in my first year of high school, so I was 12 or 13. I wasn’t a motivated student generally but I really enjoyed Shakespeare, it has so many levels of understanding and the more you read, the more you learn, the more you understand the language. I don’t know, maybe I had a good teacher and I never heard of anyone not enjoying that first introduction. I love reading and watching his work.
wow. deep gratitude for this gift
Well done, what a gift you have given us.
I enjoyed this documentary very much. It was fun, light, and quite well done! I have a question, though. Is this it? Is this, that we have just watched, what the two guys made out all the film/interviews/etc. that they have? I felt more time was taken picking up a drive-through McDonalds than that taken to share the interview of some very knowledgeable and interesting people. I want so much more! The interviews from such a mind boggling variety of actors, directors, etc., along with everyday folk were so brief - I'm sure there has to be more available to watch, somewhere!!! Please...
That's why I gave up on this halfway through.
Thanks!
Oh, that the world could experience this documentary, what a better world this would be. For the last 30 years of my career, I was a self-employed opera singer, teacher, and coach (I'm retired now). I know more than a little something of what enormous love, dedication & sacrifice you invested and went through, and oh my, how the universe rewarded you!
"The infinite variety" (a snipet of a quote from Neil Gaimen's Good Omens season two text, spoken at the Globe Theater, which Shakespeare liked and jotted down) of actors, their honesty, generosity of spirit and time is astounding. Your edits are ingenious. I especially loved the Harold Bloom seamless edits. From that segment right through to the end, I was showered with a continuous wave of goosebumps and tears.
I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended an inner city school where the goal was containing overcrowded classrooms. Being an average student with undiagnosed dyslexia, by age 15, I didn't have a 7th grade level of English comprehension. In the fall of that year, I found myself in a new school on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, a kin to a private school. I boldly registered for the college preparatory track. Since records from my previous school had not arrived with me, the school placed me at my request. On my first day in college English, I was found out by my Scottish, no nonsense teacher in front of the class.
After school, I arrived back at the English teacher's classroom to be tested. I was told that I could not continue in her class and broke down in floods of tears and imagining out loud, my doom, if I failed to go to college. After some thought, that teacher, Phoebe Rogers, offered to take me under her wing, provided that I would be on time and complete the assignments while keeping up with her and four other equally challenging subjects' coursework. She tutored me every day after school for two hours for two years until I caught up and could manage on my own. With her help, I excelled and went on to university but could never grasp Shakespeare nor warm to poetry. The irony is that I made a career singing poetry and prose that often, without the melodies, I never would have remotely understood. Like aiming to conquer speaking French one day, I kept at Shakespeare determined to one day get it. I found that performances brought many plays to life for me and I learned to love Shakespeare's sonnets but if I am honest, even after I did my "duty" to see plays and even went to Italy to see Juliet's balcony, I understood most of the acting by feel vs. from the text... until I saw 'Much Ado About Nothing' as portrayed by David Tennant, Catherine Tate, and company via Digital Theater just last year. For the first time, their use of the language and acting set off a light bulb, which illuminated the texts, and the brilliance of the texts, rhythm and meanings shone through as if a whole new universe had opened up to me...at this late stage in my life.
Since then, I've devoured Tennant's Richard II and his Hamlet and as much history about Shakespeare as I can, which is how the TH-cam algorithm suggested this documentary to me. Hearing great actors humbly admitting that they didn't really understand Shakespeare felt like a healing, enabling me to let go of my early life deficiencies and acknowledge my achievements and realize that I've not been alone in my struggles.
In an interview with Tennant, he argued that Julian Fellows, who proclaimed that in order to understand Shakespeare one needed an elite education, was wrong pointing to himself as an example of having had a modest education, yet he loves and performs Shakespeare.
To say thank you for this labor of love is truly an understatement for my gratitude to you for having committed your journey and discoveries to film.
The best way to understand Shakespeare is to jump in head first as an actor in a play. Yes. I did it to encourage my high functioning autistic child to do it and never regretted it. Now I am no longer afraid and realize we do not have to understand every word. No, the meaning is still there if you just relax and listen and watch the actors. I am so happy I took on this role in this little community theater and so happy for the doors it opened for me.
Loved this
I don’t think I learned anything about Shakespeare or why people are afraid of Shakespeare. That was mildly disappointing but the relationship of the friends and their endearing love for Shakespeare was charming and refreshing. What I did get insight on was how to make a documentary about anything your heart desires. Finally, I don’t think this was a slight of hands. When the two actors/directors/writers speak the lines of Shakespeare at the end of the film we feel the power those lines give them. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t what I was lead to believe.
oh my goodness, this is wonderful but what happened to all the interviews of the tiny teaser bits I saw flash up... maybe I have to watch it again. HUge work guys, thank you so much.
John Hurt is the only actor here who actually says words in iambic. Wouldn't that be a better example than just da-DUM-ing? I don't think many of us in the UK or America regularly speak in iambic, so it's easy to assume it's just something used for poetry and the theater. And of course many of us may have heard that English is generally an 'iambic language.' I think it used to be more than it is now. Still, we think of it as Shakespeare, but archaic. Want to hear some modern day iambic? Call tech support and speak to someone in India - they do a terrific job of bringing rhythm back to English. Also most really good R&B, and rock songs are in iambic or trochee (the flip side of iambic.)
We say bold things in Trochee "I am NOT goING to DO what YOU want." But It becomes more dramatic to do it in iambic, "What YOU want, I am NOT goING to DO."
(Saying this I realize I should've been rewriting everything I want to say in iambic - to give it more life and then speak like it. Most would not really notice but they might pay a bit more attention.)
If anyone asked Shakespeare what 'system' he wrote his plays and sonnets in, he'd have probably said 'pentameter,' meaning the 5 pairs of beats. Iambic and trochee are then subsets of this. I think he would say 'alternating beats' before he'd say 'iambic.'
Does anyone else remember their teachers prattling on about iambic pentameter and then writing their favorite quote from Shakespeare on the board and then trying to da-dum-da-dum - ing it out - - and it _doesn't work!_ That's because Shakespeare also uses trochee dum-da dum-da "Now is the winter of our discontent . . ". (Richard III) now IS the WINter OF ?? Doesn't work does it? I looked for examples ( I think I know what I'm writing, but I could be wrong.) And I found the mention that Nabokov thought there was only a single line in all of Shakespeare that was in trochee. Makes me wonder about Nabokov. Of course I could be completely wrong here. Anyone else read Shakespeare's Metrical Art?
Its a vibe ❤
Cool documentary. I went to a All Boys Comprehensive in the 90s. Our first introduction to Shakespeare was attempting to read Romeo and Juliet, which went down like a pair of Speedos at a public pool. Had they have chosen Macbeth or Othello it may have not taken me twenty years to try again.
I think the reason people find Shakespeare difficult is that they are afraid of not understanding. This fear mainly stems from school, an environment where not understanding could mean a bad grade. In school, it’s all about having the right answers. That’s not a proper way to approach Shakespeare, or classic literature in general. It should be more about enjoying the richness and beauty of the language. It should be about thinking critically and deeply. At the end of the day, it’s about discovering what you find meaningful in Shakespeare. Any other approach is a waste of time.
Love me, and I'll be in your heart. Hate me, and I'll be on your mind." -William Shakespeare
Please let captions be available for these great videos. Thank you.
Only 10,846 views... dose the word Shakespeare made people go away? Hey people, please don't go away it is a great documentary and I mean it!!!
Oliviers movie of Henry V got me into Shakespeare.
Actualy,for a russian/german like me it is quite easy to unterstand. Thou art great in thine attire.😊
My first and best experience with Shakespeare was in junior high. Our English teacher first had us read Romeo & Juliette alternating it with a recording so we could follow along and get used to the sound and speed. Then we watched the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli film (boobs!). Only after all that did we go to see the play. The audience consisted of other public school children and because our school was some of the best behaved, we were front & center. I’ll never forget the set. It was a metal staircase that when turned served as the balcony. Teenage me thought it was the cleverest thing. I’ve been impressed with clever staging ever since.
Cool premise here but you don’t sound like you have fear of Shakespeare, unless you got over it in the first 5 minutes of the doc! Sounds like you have excitement, adoration, happy anticipation! I love Shakespeare, just saying this doesn’t come off as you trying to learn or overcome something, since you already love it so much obviously.
God dammit. I wish I'd made that. Well done guys.Thanks
My mother named me Ariel , of course The Tempest ! I proudly reply.
The imagination required is overwhelming, once you surmount the linguistic barrier. Go to the sonnets, forget the rest.
iambic pentameter: "toBE orNOT toBE thatIS theQuestion"
how great was this? I am obsessed with Shakespeare but I don't understand half of it- great thing since I was young is now the internet has the sites that help you interpret as you read- and always try to slog through the introductions
what year was this documentary? many people interviewed are already dead.
2013
WHY can't teachers teach iambic pentameter?? It's simple. The principle is that meter is like the time signature in music. You know--march time is 4/4, waltz is 3/4, but a melody deviates from and elaborates on the basic beat. Iambic pentameter is time signature, an "ideal" underlying pattern, of five iambs/da DUMs (two-syllable units with the second stressed). Over top of it is the "melody"--the normal English pronunciation of words (each multisyllabic word has a dominant stress--SYLLable, not sylLAble--and monosyllabic words which are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs). You say it normally; you hear the contrast of the underlying "ideal" pattern underneath. Like jumping rope to some kiddie chant like "teddy bear." The rope swings are the time signature/meter. The words you chant fit that pattern irregularly.
I agree, and truthfully - it's like good rap and poetry - firmly in the oral tradition, meant to be *heard* not * read*.
The worst way to introduce someone to Shakespeare is to get them to read it. They’re *plays* and meant to be watched. I understood them far more by watching than reading.
Bravo gents, bravo. So happy you enjoyed America and that she was good to you by and large. Come back again any time. Only one quibble with Luhrman: guys come in many flavors, a few of them come in genius. Maybe one day in the distant future, you will be recognized as one of those guys. (I tire of feminists.)
Is it because people always hear he's gonna be in the park? Parks are scary.
It was 'Zeffirelli's Romeo & Juliet' for me, but I'm older
this ;ppls htrat he awaits us all
What’s so ironic is the way the right-wing press and politicians in the U.K. slam “loony left” teachers for wanting to pull back on teaching Shakespeare in our schools, yet want to starve the RSC of government subsidy. Without that subsidy (roughly 17% of the RSC’s annual turnover), the block bookings from the less well-off schools would be almost impossible, and young people’s experience of the Bard would be confined to the classroom.
Not a recent documentary - Alan Rickman died 14 January 2016
Here's a suggestion for middle school students and high school students in America- don't use the Folger editions . They're awful. spend a little extra money if you can and buy the oxford university press editions. Read an entire play by Shakespeare and then go see a live performance. Youll never be the same.
This was a wonderful documentary.
I intend to fwd it to lots of my friends.
I would like to acknowledge Ms. lila figueredo my seventh grade honors English teacher at JHS 141 in the Bronx RIP who turned me into a life long Bard-oholic in 1973.
Is there any laws that says Shakespear can't be translated to the language we use today?
To "translate" Shakespeare is akin to making a cartoon of Mozart.
Should we translate the Quran into rap to sell it on the streets?
That ends in calling Michael Angelo a house painter and Miles Davis a bugler.
Mr. Tom, Buggs Bunny and Elmer Fudd did a great job of bringing Wagner to the children of America. Woody Woodpecker did the same with Liszt and Mickey Mouse introduced us to the concept of opera. I’ve read most of these comments and the ones that seem the most joyous are the ones where the adults brought Shakespeare to the children in ways the children could most easily grasp, then brought the Bard to them up to speed. You don’t make mathematicians by teaching calculus before addition and subtraction.
The next point, translating the Koran to rap, isn’t far-fetched. Why do you think there are so many songs taught in Sunday School? If you teach the messages with music, you not only learn the message but you get the beauty of the rhythm of the verses. The same applies to most songs - poetry put to music. Calling Miles Davis a bugler might not be the insult you think it is. In orchestra, the violins and violas where I played were referred to as the fiddles by my conductor. He had colloquial names for the other sections, too. Bugler, fiddler, house painter - A rose by any other name…
No, and sometimes they are, but these versions aren't as good because they're not written by genius writers. By translating them in ways that collapse ambiguity and impose the most basic surface-level meaning on the text, they make Shakespeare seem superficial, which does both Shakespeare and his readers a disservice.
Was getting a little boring till Ewan showed up 6:30
If you want to truly appreciate Shakespeare you will have to obliterate every sound and frame you have taken in from that abomination of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet! His cynical, overblown, sensationalist, Hollywood sideshow travesty of The Bard is an insult to all earnest and HONEST theatre and film!
I too was very moved by that movie. I felt when I first saw it that it would and should be shown in every high school and university in the English speaking world. Not as the definitive final interpretation of Shakespeare, but as the accessible introduction that can open the door for normal people (like me) to understand and appreciate a play, so that I can see other productions of R&J and get more out of them.
When they brought Luhrmann in is when I gave up watching this programme.
apparently Shakespeare is elitist and and frivoulosus and not to infect our youth?!
Leave the annoying driving and explaining what "hassle" if was getting everything together, time after time, it gets boring. The narrator should been given a much shorter script. Focus on the actors, people, etc. Not your "journey" cause that is put mildly tiresome. I have to jump between clips.
30min in and still no idea what you're about to try to say
That's when I gave up watching this.
Musical background- horrible distraction.
This was unbearable to watch. Messy, chaotic editing. Two guys tick off their list of celebrities they want to meet, each repeating what the previous one has said.
Abysmal.
Um.. I have no fear at all of the late Mr. Shakespeare.. or whomever wrote them nice plays. Oh yeah, poems too, eh? Right. No fear. In fact, there's tons of good stuff in his stuff. Really. Fear? Totally optional. Get a damn dictionary and away you go!
I don't think Shakespeare wrote at all. I do believe it was Duke Edward. It's portrayed in Anonymous, the movie.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
thanks for the laugh!
@@amhellbent seriously William Shakespeare couldn't write, nor read well. He worked with a scribe. No more plays after Edward passed. William just faded into regular peasant life. Do I know if it's true? Heck no but it makes sense. Who really knows? What do you know? No sarcasm intended.
Samuel Beckett's work says more in a paragraph than all of Shakespeare's verbose shite put together.
So what you're saying is Beckett does verbose shite more efficiently than Shakespeare! 🥳
@@tomobedlam297 I'm saying what I say and now I'll go on.
Beckett's Waiting for Godot is two gobshites jabbering on a park bench. Godot is only the hero of the play because he has the good sense to never show up. It's hardly Shakespeare!
@@tomobedlam297 the old questions. The old answers
I can't seem to put my finger on it, but there's something off kilter about the people in the video. Something doesn't make sense since I a woke.
Only in English speaking world, and alongside The Beatles, Sheakspire is overrated.
Shakespeare is God talking. He is the Holy Logos!
Simply excellent. Thank you.