TheLionHaired (handsome title, but his real name’s Derek) hates Shakespeare. He hates Chaucer too, but particularly he hates Shakespeare. Why do the characters take so long to say so little? Just look at Hamlet. Why to the characters do dumb stuff which just isn’t plausible, much like characters in horror movies? Romeo and Juliet were just idiots. All they had to do was run away to Mantua. And in Macbeth, what was the point of murdering Banquo? And Brutus killing Julius Caesar, that’s just wrong. Titus is OK, but he just held back too much. “If Lavinia had been my daughter – and what happened to her – I would have been a little more active”. In general he hates Shakespeare. Or maybe it’s just the plays. Because he quite likes the poetry…
Sorry, Derek, but I don’t believe you. This diatribe shows too much eloquence, just a little too much knowledge of the plays. I can hardly think of a better example of a video to stimulate a class discussion than what is on display here. I think Shakespeare’s has got to you more than you may know, as yet.
Well, to be completely honest, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here. I know Act 1 of Julius Caesar, of which this is an interpretation, and I recognise the characters and sort of where the action is going on, but I am too old to know what on earth is being said.
But so what? This is a lively English school project by a bunch of Philippine schoolgirls (Payatas is a slum site outside Manila), who have taken the play and presented it as a silent film with faux scratches, intertitles (Brutus: “I just feel emotional today. I have so many problems”) and cheap organ music. The action in between is just goofing around – what counts is the teenspeak dialogue with assorted in-jokes and in-slang. We’re promised anti-Caesar spraypainting tags, but then the video ends with a ‘to be continued…’ Shame. Now they’ve moved on to higher classes, and we’ll probably never know what might have happened.
Shame about the spelling mistake in the on-screen title (and the YouTube page spells ‘monologue’ wrong as well), but this is an interesting take on Mark Antony’s ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen’ speech simply by virtue of its background. Filmed at night outside a house, Antony’s words are accompanied by the incessant burr of crickets and passing traffic. The rendition is fine, the camera work uncertain (zooming in and out without much purpose) but it’s the strangeness that matters. Simpson (a drama student at Syracuse University) does not address the camera but an invisible crowd all about him – maybe the indifferent crickets and cars of American suburbia.
Date: 2005 Posted by: ElMatadore88 Credits: Created by Edward Cast: Andrew Dexter, Casey Inouye, Edward Fan, Maki Hattori, Nolan Chung
Duration: 10.43
Posted on 18 December 2005, this must be one of the earliest original Shakespeare titles on YouTube. It’s certainly not a conventional production. Describing itself as ‘all the confusing themes of Shakespeare packed into one!’ the video is tagged with such terms as ‘blood’, ‘honor’, ‘ghosts’, ‘romance’ and ‘love’. It starts with Shakespeare’s name written out in what look like cushions, with a piano is played and voices mutter in the background. The images that follow include a church, a paper boat in water having rocks dropped on it (and then the film reversed), birds by a pond, schoolroom actors (mostly Chinese-American) with masks grimacing at the camera, a boy giving birth to a rock, a young woman with a moustache (‘this is what’ll you learn in Shakespeare’), an invisible man, ghostly figures (some of whom dance in the style of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’), blood, fighting, and snatches through out of Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and the sonnets. With snatches of music, messages written on hands, and voices played backgrounds, this is a puzzle, if not quite a paradox. To a degree, it’s just a silly student jape, but it’s a creative jape for all that.
Date: 2008 Posted by:kjnwcedu Credits: Created by Keith Jones Cast: Amleto Novelli, Giovanna Terribili Gonzalès, Pina Menichelli, Ruffo Geri, Ignazio Lupi, Irene Mattadra, Bruto Castellani, Augusto Mastripietri, Sigira Geri, Orlando Ricci, Carlo Duse, Lea Orlandi Duration: 0.58
Keith Jones is an American professor of English and Literature who maintains the Shakespeare and Film Microblog. As well as gathering together information and thoughts on Shakespeare and film, Jones adds his own mashups, of which this is an uplifting example. Strictly speaking the Italian 1914 epic Cajus Julius Caesar has nothing to do with Shakespeare play, but the joyous coming together of ancient Romans milling about with an (unnamed) group singing the Gower Wassail demands its inclusion here.
Date: 2007 Posted by:thenardier1 Credits: Created by Brian Randall for Brandall Films Cast: Lego Duration: 4.25
A dynamic intepretation in Lego of the assassination scene from Julius Caesar, enhanced by some creative camera work but weakened somewhat by poor picture quality.
Posted by bardbox 
Posted by bardbox 
Posted by bardbox 
The Play’s the Thing… That I Hate
February 15, 2009Date: 2008
Posted by: TheLionHaired
Credits: Filmed by Derek
Cast: Derek
Duration: 3.57
TheLionHaired (handsome title, but his real name’s Derek) hates Shakespeare. He hates Chaucer too, but particularly he hates Shakespeare. Why do the characters take so long to say so little? Just look at Hamlet. Why to the characters do dumb stuff which just isn’t plausible, much like characters in horror movies? Romeo and Juliet were just idiots. All they had to do was run away to Mantua. And in Macbeth, what was the point of murdering Banquo? And Brutus killing Julius Caesar, that’s just wrong. Titus is OK, but he just held back too much. “If Lavinia had been my daughter – and what happened to her – I would have been a little more active”. In general he hates Shakespeare. Or maybe it’s just the plays. Because he quite likes the poetry…
Sorry, Derek, but I don’t believe you. This diatribe shows too much eloquence, just a little too much knowledge of the plays. I can hardly think of a better example of a video to stimulate a class discussion than what is on display here. I think Shakespeare’s has got to you more than you may know, as yet.
Links:
YouTube page