It's Hard to be the Bard

Shakespeare scholar, Director, and Theater Artist word vomiting about the Bard.

[ricardians]

“i asked chatgpt—”

well i asked the kind old friar and he told me to fake my death. immediately

[3liza]

touching grass isn't enough we should be staging small community productions of shakespeare

[fiftysevenacademics]

I think our country sinks beneath the yoke. It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash is added to her wounds. (Macbeth)

[20thcenturystarlet]

New York City ballet production of Midsummer Nights Dream

[thepeelingrenoir]

The fact this isn't a painting is a testament to one of the greatest feats of set design and production I've ever seen.

[thepeelingrenoir]

My god just look at this! The lighting, set design, photography... I've just never seen anything like it.

[jammerific]

I think this is the first time I've ever been wowed by "this ISN'T a painting"!

[evilyisme]

I did a deeper search for more information regarding these images! I was able to find more photos, as well as videos of the production/film!!

So, these specific images are from a photoshoot with the performers/crew involved in George Balanchine’s 1966 ballet film/production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If you search up “1966 new york city ballet film photoshoot” then you will find more images from the film version. Many images are archived by the New York Public Library (NYPL Digital Collections):

New York City Ballet production of the movie version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with Suzanne Farrell as Titania and Edward Villella as O

One of hundreds of thousands of free digital items from The New York Public Library.

John Clifford (also a dancer) has posted many videos over the years of various performances, both his own and others, on his YouTube (@ jcliff26). In 2016, he posted multiple clips of the 1966 Balanchine ballet film production referenced in the above photos. John Clifford also posted the full PBS broadcast of a live Balanchine NYC Ballet production— however, this one has a different cast and does not appear to have as detailed of set designs as the film version, as seen below:

If you were curious (like me!) about what the film version looked like in action… below is the scene from the film where Titania is lying asleep and begins to wake up (“Bottom’s” Pas de Deux). The start most closely resembles the original images shared from the photoshoot!

And this next clip is “Titania’s” Pas de Deux! More beautiful scenes!!

There are additional clips of the film on John Clifford’s YouTube and more photos from the official photoshoot in the NYPL Digital Collections!

Below are some other images from the 1966 film production photoshoot that I particularly enjoyed:

[mephistopheles]

my three girlfriends. and YES they prophesy the death of the king of scotland

[shakespeare-thoughts]

The fact that the vast majority of annotated Shakespeare editions do not include information on a super obvious gay joke in As You Like It is offensive to me.

Ganymede was Elizabethan slang for a man who is penetrated in a same-sex relationship. The modern equivalent of Rosalind naming herself Ganymede is her saying: "I'm going to disguise myself as a man! Call me Faggy Bottombitch."

[shakespeare-thoughts]

Romeo and Juliet meeting and spontaneously composing a sonnet with their first words to each other is honestly legendary.

[hazellevessque]

Defending Romeo & Juliet online isn’t enough I need a gun

[striders]

[shakespeare-thoughts]

Imagining a fairy-tale version of The Taming of the Shrew where "Kate the Cursed" is explicitly monstrous. She is the dragon guarding the tower where Bianca is being kept with claws and teeth to please her father. The men around her have always been terrified of her and kept their distance until the monster hunter Petruchio sees her for who she really is. As he marries her and brings her to his home, his actions are to break her curse by reducing her choler. It culminates in her deciding not to kill him during the sun and moon and virgin scene. Instead of brainwashing, her speech at the end is thanking a loving partner for the efforts he took to save her, and Petruchio loves her personality and would only change the things she wants to be free from.

[rotary-supercollider]

Much Ado About Nothing is really funny bc it’s a Shakespeare play where one of the couples already love each other before the play begins and one of them start the show by calling each other brainless backstabbing insufferable whores and you’d think the ones that like each other would be the easier ones to get together but Here’s The Thing

[alioshakaramazov]

when they say shakespeare is inmortal and eternally relevant what they mean is that he was making one brain cell jokes in the 1600s

[withasideofshakespeare]

My favorite Shakespeare thing is when he writes a major plot point but just has someone tell us about it to save on special effects.

Hamlet gets kidnapped by pirates but we don’t see that part. It’s a letter.

The Oracle of Delphi shows up in the Winter’s Tale and rather than do all the special effects required to make that adequately supernatural, two guys come on stage and go “woah that was cool”

There’s a big storm on the night that Duncan is murdered and we learn about this when half the cast of Macbeth says “sure was stormy last night”

Shakespeare, the OG low-budget director taking the easy way out.

[selfoftheseus]

Has anyone made a Forcemasc post like this yet

[suits-of-woe]

maybe i'm just a grumpy english major but i feel like a lot of the "lol people think shakespeare is pretentious but actually his plays are just dick jokes and swordfighting" posting can verge into "lol what if the curtains are just blue" territory. yes shakespeare plays are full of those things AND they are also profound and complex and thematically rich. people spend their careers analyzing them for a reason, actually. it's not just dick jokes all the way down. and sometimes people spend their careers analyzing the dick jokes. stop trying to pick one side of the dichotomy between high and low culture. it's both. it can be both.

[bodhrancomedy]

In King Lear (III:vii) there is a man who is such a minor character that Shakespeare has not given him even a name: he is merely 'First Servant'. All the characters around him – Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund – have fine, long term plans. They think they know how the story is going to end, and they are quite wrong. The servant has no such delusions. He has no notion how the play is going to go. But he understands the present scene. He sees an abomination (the blinding of old Gloucester) taking place. He will not stand it. His sword is out and pointed as his master’s breast in a moment: then Regan stabs him dead from behind. That is his whole part: eight lines all told. But if it were real life and not a play, that is the part it would be best to have acted.

- CS Lewis on King Lear.

[mongeese]

Did Lady Macbeth successfully utilize "girl power" when she convinced her husband to murder the king thus damning them both to a slow descent into insanity and eventual death?