lately I keep thinking of Shakespeare's stories

and I'm not big or up on his stories. (found a leather bound set of them in the attic one summer when I was a kid and read every one)

so I'm asking Shakespeare geeks to explain how what is happening to us all makes me think of his stories? please.

Tragicomedy is drama in which the action moves towards catastrophe like a tragedy, but fortunate events or actions intervene to bring about a happy ending.

We have been living in the catastrophe part for the last 5 years...let's hope the conclusion really provides a happy ending (impeachment, anyone :evilgrin: )

And most tragedies, happily enough, in a death.

If so, that would explain it.

By the way, Shakespeare wrote plays. ;-)

nt

Of course, many of the "stories" used by Shakespeare were lifted from previous works, so they wouldn't really be Shakespeare's "stories." But I'd also argue that there is value in being a stickler on genre, and saying that yes, in the general sense, a play "tells a story," (although some plays don't really do that, think Waiting for Godot or No Exit) we should nevertheless maintain the distinction? Maybe that just makes me a stick in the mud and an asshole...:shrug:

"Maybe that just makes me a stick in the mud and an asshole..."

:hi:

called Shakespeare's Stories (I think) that was originally written as a children's book and is still very popular. I've given at as gift a few times. It puts the plays into story form and that might be what the OP is thinking of.

all I know is that a tragedy is unfolding before our eyes that is of epic proportion.

"Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs;
Make dust our papers, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth." (Richard II)

as in "King Lear."

In that one, the King was too blind to really "see" -- "seeing" is the theme of that work (i.e., seeing "deeply.") Alas, the entire kingdom had to be lost before the survivors could really "see" -- i.e., rejoin what we might call the "reality-based community" -- again...

Iago == Current presidency (insidious lies+rumours; whipping up jealousy+fear)
Othello == American people (wanting to believe the best but unable to counter the jealousy+fear whipped up by lies+rumours)
Desdemona == American Ideals (Freedom for all, Anyone can become President, Pride in President, Pride in being American)
Michael Cassio == US Constitution (http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution.html)

http://www.allshakespeare.com/othello/

icbw

nt

Hamlet-the title character, is the son of the late King of Denmark, who was also named Hamlet. He is a student at a school in Wittenburg. He is charged by the ghost of his father to avenge his murder, which he finally succeeds in doing, but only after the rest of the royal house has been wiped out and he himself has been mortally wounded with a poisoned rapier by Laertes.
A view of Hamlet, advanced by Isaac Asimov in his Guide to Shakespeare, holds that his actions are attributable not to indecision, but to multiple motivations: his desire to avenge the wrong done to his father, coupled with his own ambition to succeed to the throne. The tragic error committed by Hamlet, in Asimov's view, is his overreaching wish to see Claudius damned, and not merely dead, which prevents him from killing Claudius at the opportune moment. (The Democrats in Congress)


Claudius—brother of dead King of Denmark; now King, and new husband of Queen Gertrude, Prince Hamlet’s mother. Claudius is clearly the source of the rottenness that pervades Denmark. He is a clever "monster". (Dubya and his administration)

Gertrude—Prince Hamlet’s mother, widow of former King, now wife to Claudius, new King, a relationship considered incestuous in Shakespeare's time. (The enabler RINO's)

Polonius—King Claudius’ advisor; father to Laertes and Ophelia (Rove)

Ghost—of dead King of Denmark, Prince Hamlet’s father; brother of new King, husband of Gertrude King Hamlet appears first to a quartet of soldiers—Barnardo, Francisco, Marcellus and Horatio—before revealing himself to his son. He is a melodramatic character that asks the prince to avenge his death, revealing that he was poisoned by his brother Claudius, Prince Hamlet's uncle and the new king of Denmark. (The Constitution killed by this administration)


I'm sure if I gave this more thought, it could be better...but it's still fun.

"There's Something Rotten in the State of Denmark." Hamlet. Act I, Scene 4.

"But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left."

it will be so.

I think we've been stuck with the Dauphin..

:)

legs and arms and heads chopped off in battle

maybe it is discouragement that men, males, are still, in 2005, chopping off legs, arms and heads.

...as some sort of role model or justification for his endless war, proving that he never read and doesn't understand the play. * mastered the debaucheries of youth, but never graduated to any sort of statesmanship.

Fascinating parallels between what is happening politically now in the US and what happened then to the 400 year old Roman Republic.

After 400 years, they thought the Roman Republic could not fall.

It could and it did.

And men like George W. Bush helped kill it.

Caesar just had a better publicist.

;-)

of vaulting ambition come to mind (along with the woman 'behind the throne'--in this case not the wife, but the mother). SG :shrug:

in one of my favorite scenes:

"...by the prickling of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."

and "boil and bubble, toil and trouble"

But Shakepeare writes excellent speaking parts for them.

Bush doesn't come close. He is a stumbling, bumbling, fumbling fool.

A ludicrous, pathetic authority figure, enraptured with an overblown sense of his power. Spouting idiocies and malapropisms while generally just getting everything wrong.

Hell, Bush isn't even Dogberry; Dogberry, through no competence of his own DID manage to indict and successfully prosecute the offenders in "Much Ado."

Shakespeare would have been proud to have written such comedic gems as "Fool me once, shame on......shame on you...fool me...won't get fooled again!"

"Human beings and fish can coexist peacefully."

"If you don't stand for anything, you don't stand for anything."

"Our enemies never stop thinking of ways to destroy our country...and neither do we."

:evilgrin:

"so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him"

nt

or is he Richard III?

:-)

I love Henry V... That's one of my favorite stories...

Doug D.

The hunchback king who murders his two nephews by bricking them up in the Tower, at least in the play, along with many others.

Richard III was an able administrator and a soldier of matchless skill and courage.

Doesn't sound an awful lot like the Chimperor.

Even the villains are better characters.

doing THAT!

(I imagine some 30 years from now we'll see a small news article that says, "Former President George W. Bush keeps busy these days clearing brush, a favorite hobby of his... while his health will not permit him to go outside to clear away trees with a chainsaw, he keeps fit by clearing weeds out of Laura's potted plants...")

...and thinly-veiled ambition.

I am no orator, as Brutus is, but as you know me all a plain blunt man, that loved his friend. And that, they know who gave me public leave to speak for him. For I have neither words, nor wit, nor worth, action, nor utterance, nor the power of words to stir men's blood. I merely speak right on. I tell you that which all of you do know, show you sweet Caesar's wounds, these poor, poor dumb mouths, and bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus, and Brutus Antony, there were an Antony would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue in every wound of Caesar that should move the stones of Rome to rise and mutiny!

The "no-spin zone," as imagined by Shakespeare...;-)