shakespeare week: the words matter team reveal their shakespearean favourites
This week is Shakespeare Week, a national annual celebration designed to give primary school children opportunities for enriching and engaging encounters with the bard. Tickets have also just gone on sale for The Rose Theatre, Europe’s first pop-up Shakespearean stage which arrives in York this summer. To mark this most wonderful week of Shakespearean news and celebration, our staff bloggers share their favourite works of Shakespeare…
Macbeth
“Out, out, brief candle. Life is nothing more than an illusion.”
Of all of Shakespeare’s work, my favourite would have to be Macbeth. Whilst I’m also a big fan of King Lear and Hamlet, the ‘Scottish Play’ has remained most dear to me because it was the first Shakespeare play I ever saw a performance of. When I was quite small, my family had a video cassette of Ian McKellen playing the infamous protagonist and it struck such a chord with me that I’d cite it as one of my main reasons for pursuing a literary degree.
Studying it at A level only opened up the text more and, for me, it is an example of exactly why Shakespeare remains so relevant today. Not only is this a story of the psyche and the desire to be at the top of all hierarchical power, it is also one of great grief and humanity. Much in keeping with the Gothic, though far preceding this period, it emphasises that capability of mortal cruelty and the ability we all possess to be monstrous. I particularly love the ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’Â speech for these reasons. For after all, what are the constructions made in life and even life itself but illusions?
Charlotte Stevenson
The TempestÂ
I write with my soles on slimy pebbles and tiddlers nibbling at my toes, and I press and thread and pull and throw the blues until they boil. Bin lids bang against the clatter of cutlery drawers, juddering drills growl in moaning wood. A gas canister erupts in the back of a work van. Falling walls, rolling drums. Concrete and metal and crockery and bone maul each other in a windy blender, and an exhausted mad mother bellows her child’s name from the bottom of her belly.
I drown the whooping and the wretching, the blasting and the cracking, the screaming and the weeping. A plague upon this howling! My curling fingers stir the steam on the shower door, and slow, heaving motions rock the sea up into the sky and the sky down into the sea. The seesaw sawsees. I wipe the water from my eyes and Ariel laughs a laugh only I can hear. I love the magic, and I love the mischief.
Tom Young
The Merchant of Venice
My favourite work by Shakespeare is The Merchant of Venice. The play tells the story of an abused Jewish moneylender, Shylock who demands a gruesome compensation for an unpaid loan. The most notable aspect of this comedy that I remember is just how un-funny it actually is. I would say that it is more tragic in its story line. The dramatic court scene and Shylock’s “hath not a Jew eyes?” speech, where he interrogates anti-Semitism in imploring “if you prick us do we not bleed”, in particular, disturbs.
Gilbert, John; Scene from Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant Of Venice’; Birmingham Museums Trust; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/scene-from-shakespeares-the-merchant-of-venice-33573
The Merchant of Venice’s engagement with enduring problems such as racism and prejudice, makes it a hauntingly relevant piece of literature. On a lighter note, reading this play really contextualizes and familiarizes one with popular Shakeaspeareisms that have since made it into the English-everyday language.  Popular sayings originating from this play include “love is blind” and a “pound of flesh”. In addition to this to be called a “Shylock” has come to refer to the act of lending money at an extortionate rate.
