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Comment by dekhn | Hacker News Reader

I remember the teacher talking up Romeo and Juliet and being fairly unimpressed. But when I read King Lear, I was electrified- that scene with the king ranging around in the field while the fool says smart things is really good IMHO. I saw the Scottish Play put on by my high school theater and it was also great.

Over time I've come to appreciate his fragments: "But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? Tis the east, and Juliet is the sun..."

It came as a big surprise after reading and parsing out whole plays that other kids in my class were just reading some short guide and talking like they understood it.

THe best movie version of the Tempest is Forbidden Planet, which can also just be viewed purely as science fiction.

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I had a similar experience. Schools seem absolutely determined to force the most boring parts of Shakespeare on us, then years later when I was almost done with school I ran across Much Ado About Nothing - and that was a good one. I liked that one. That should have been one of the ones used to introduce us to him.

I had Much Ado as one of my first introductions, and I remember it being fun, but not really getting it at the time. I think everyone's first Shakespeare play is hard going, it's not until you get the rhythm of them and start seeing them live that they make more sense.

And Much Ado is a particularly mean one because so much of it is innuendo that you need a guide for, and there's nothing the kills jokes faster than a guide explaining them. I'd love to see a modern translation of Much Ado, but done with the aim of really translating joke for joke, replacing some of the puns that don't work any more with modern versions, making the double entendre a bit more modern, etc.

> I saw the Scottish Play ...

Remind me, which one was that again? :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scottish_play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth#Superstition_and_%22Th...

It's the Scottish Play. Do you refer to it any other way?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h--HR7PWfp0

“Prosperos books” is a brilliant version of the Tempest. Forbidden Planet is a great movie in its own right, but at best “inspired by”. It uses a similar setup, but the story is entirely different.

The Tempest is one I keep coming back to.

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