Plays – Page 7 – Interesting Literature

10 Classic Shakespeare Plays Everyone Should Read

The best of the Bard’s plays, with some interesting facts about them

Every Shakespeare play is a classic, of course. But William Shakespeare left behind nearly forty plays, including his collaborations with John Fletcher and others, and it would be disingenuous to claim that they all have equal ‘classic’ status among the Bard’s work. What we’ve compiled here, then, is less a definitive list of ‘best Shakespeare plays’ and more a small selection of some of his most talked-about, reread, performed, and adapted plays. We’ve included some facts about them as we go. We’ve not attempted to place them in any preferential order: that would be a step too far. But what, if you had to choose, would be the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays?

Five Fascinating Facts about Romeo and Juliet

Fun facts about William Shakespeare’s timeless love story, Romeo and Juliet

1. Shakespeare makes Juliet a thirteen-year-old girl when she goes to be with Romeo.

We know that Romeo and Juliet is about young love – the ‘pair of star-cross’d lovers’, who belong to rival families in Verona – but what is odd about Shakespeare’s play is how young he makes Juliet. It’s one of the most curious facts about the character of Juliet.

Five Fascinating Facts about David Garrick

The life of actor David Garrick (1717-1779), told through five pieces of interesting trivia

1. He helped to bring a new degree of realism to acting. In his An Essay on Acting (1744), Garrick offered a new take on the art of stage-acting. Of Macbeth’s movement after the murder of Duncan, he wrote, ‘He should at that time be a moving Statue, or indeed a petrify’d Man; his Eyes must Speak, and Tongue be metaphorically Silent; his Ears must be sensible of imaginary Noises, and deaf to the present and audible Voice of his Wife; his Attitudes must be quick and permanent; his Voice articulately trembling, and confusedly intelligible; the Murderer should be seen in every Limb, and yet every Member, at that Instant, should seem separated from his Body, and his Body from his Soul.’ Garrick brought a new level of emotional investment to the role of the actor.

Five Fascinating Facts about Hamlet

A short introduction to the Shakespeare play Hamlet, in the form of five interesting facts

1. In the first printed copy, the play’s most famous line was somewhat different. Most editions of Hamlet which we read nowadays are slightly different from each other: there is no definitive text of Hamlet. This is because we have several sources for the original play-text: two quarto texts (a ‘quarto’ was a large sheet of paper folded into quarters, hence the name) published in the early 1600s, and the ‘Folio’ text, from the 1623 First Folio, the first published collection of Shakespeare’s plays. There are significant differences between, say, the first quarto (known as the ‘bad quarto’, which wasn’t rediscovered until 1823) and the Folio text, and Hamlet’s celebrated line, ‘To be or not to be: that is the question‘, which begins his famous soliloquy in which he muses on the point of life and contemplates suicide, is rendered quite differently – as ‘To be or not to be, I there’s the point’. It also appears at a different point in the play, just after Polonius – who is called ‘Corambis’ in this version – has hatched the plot to arrange a meeting between Hamlet and Polonius’ (sorry, Corambis‘) daughter, Ophelia.

Can You Solve the Sphinx’s Other Riddle?

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

One of the most celebrated tragedies of ancient Greece was Oedipus Rex, Sophocles’ play about the Theban king who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. In order to become King of Thebes, Oedipus had had to solve a famous riddle – or should that be riddles?