Thomas Ouphe

It is at least better than First Knight. While reading Twelfth Night, I discovered that the insult toss-pot is a middle-English phrase for a drunk. The etymology of which is that beer was served in ceramic pots which the "toss-pots" would throw backwards as they glugged. And not, as I have always assumed, that it was some kind of archaic vessel for the catchment of masturbatory issue. So there you have it, I have been using the insult wrong for the majority of my life. And, it is not nearly as insulting as I thought. Twelfth night is thankfully the last of Shakespeare 's comedies before the "problem plays" begin. And it's fine, there's a lot of thinly veiled knob jokes, the usual cross-dressing and a standard clown. If you plan on reading it, probably best not to read all the other comedies in a row because these tropes do get wearing. 3/5 It's fine.

I think you ought to know, I'm feeling very depressed. As You Like It is Shakespeare doing the equivalent of a clip show. The whole play is filled with the kinds of things that show up in his earlier comedies. We have: • Brothers at odds with each other. • An intelligent female cross-dresser • A clown (Touchstone) making sheep jokes. • Multiple couples in minor confusions. • A Greek god inexplicably showing up. • Lots and lots of weddings. That said, it's much more polished than his earlier plays. The main plot is slow to start and most of the comedy comes from Orlando still be attracted to the woman he loves when she's dressed as a male shepherd. This is also the root of most of the sheep jokes. As You Like It has one thing that's new to Shakespeare, and that's Jaques. Whilst all the bog-standard rom-com stuff is happening, Jaques' only role in the play is to stand back and moan about how rubbish it all is. Jaques is a mixture of Marvin the Paranoi...

Benedick and Beatrice, still work as a comedic device. If you're going to have a bad guy, why not call him Don Jon the Bastard? If he happens to be an actual bastard so much more the better. Much Ado About Nothing isn't as original or entertaining as Midsummer Night's Dream, but it is more consistent.  There's no onerous songs or tedious play within a play stuff, just two straightforward intersecting plots. One is about a rich guy (Don Pedro) who is marrying a perfect rich gal (Hero).  The big obstacle being that his bastard brother (Don John the Bastard) convinces everyone she's having an affair and the marriage falls through and she appears to have killed herself.  It's pretty good, but nowhere near as funny as the suicide gag in Romeo and Juliet.  Anyway, it all works out, and since Hero's hymen is intact she gets the green light for a quicky marriage and an expedient hymen cracking.  Btw, if you're finding all this hymen talk a little gross, you may ...

Not this clever! I wouldn't be the first person to point out that this play has some things in common with Allo Allo.  Outrageous foreign accents, a plump libidinous protagonist (Falstaff) embroiled in a farce of misunderstandings and unseen comeuppances.   Nor would I be the first person to notice that it's just God awful. There is a list of ardent bardophiles who have condemned the play.  Being a natural contrarian I had been hoping to prove them wrong, but they're right on this one.  It has all the hallmarks of bad Shakespeare comedy (animal jokes, xenophobia, flat characterisation and misogyny) without any of the clever prose. It's the worst. Allo Allo is self-aware, the Brits get as much of a roasting as the Germans and French.  That's not really the case in Merry Wives, which takes more of an It Ain't Half Hot Mum approach (though, it has to be said, nowhere near as offensive).  But, you say, Shakespeare was way ahead of his time doing funny acce...

  The Merchant of Venice The Merchant of Venice has a lot going on, so you’ll have to excuse how long this post is.   Don’t worry though, the next one up is The Merry Wives of Windsor and there’s almost nothing going on in that.    Also, given the sensitivity of the material, I did actually have to do some research into this one. There is a theory called moral self-licensing that suggests doing a good thing gives a person psychological leeway to commit future infractions.   This might explain why after having made it through a Midsummer Night's Dream without a single antisemitic comment Shakespeare then felt he had free rein to give us five full acts of hate crime. Now, it ought to be said that whilst lots of people feel TMV is antisemitic.   Some disagree and say that a few sympathetic moments redeem the play.   It is also worth noting that Hitler wasn't one of them.   He loved it and thought it was the tops. Here is a review of how TMV w...

Speculations of Faustian bargains are not without foundation.  This is a much better play. Between Love's Labour's Lost and Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare becomes a different author.  Stories have been written about sinister supernatural pacts to grant preternatural writing talent.  Conspiracy theories have drafted in Marlow, or Spenser or Queen Elizabeth to help him out.  But, I suspect he just listened to criticism and reflected on how to improve. The best writing in Love's Labour's Lost is only as good as any given line from the first four acts of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here we have a play worthy of Shakespeare's reputation.   Funny, well-phrased, populated with distinct and interesting characters and well-paced. At least until the last act, which I'll moan about later. Best of all, Shakespeare doesn't make a single antisemitic remark beginning to end. No sexy sheep stuff either. Instead, he fixates on how ugly he thinks Egyptians and Et...

Imagine this four times over but with letters instead of conversations and Elizabethan hygiene standards. I was quite excited to read Love's Labour's Lost, it starts really well.  The king and his three mates all swear off women for three years to pursue academic interests and higher purposes.  Oh, and the king makes it law that everyone else has to do the same for ease of plot development.  It's all going well until a princess / potential queen shows up with her exactly three friends. There's a lot of potential here, and we see an immediate step up in terms of the quality of writing.  You know those nut jobs who think all Shakespeare's plays were written by different people? Well, I almost thought they had a point for a minute.  Almost every phrase the king utters is profound and well-composed.  This can't be written by the same bloke that wrote Two Gentlemen of Verona, I erroneously posited. Then we get Costard (a clown).  Costard has already broken ...