Now This Is What I Call An "Ehanced" Ebook!

[mrmikel]

If they have glosses with the text, that makes it more valuable, seeing as how none of us speak Shakespearean English, and most can't totally grasp the full meaning of phrases we seem to recognize.

[tompe]

Here is an interesting program about the original pronouniation of Shakespear plays and how that shows more puns and jokes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Expecting the Royal Shakespeare Company in a $9.99 book is perhaps a little optimistic .

You often get what you pay for, but why do it if you don't do it right.

Still it might be useful as an educational tool for the more serious student.

Helen

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A significant proportion of Shakespeare's plays are written in blank verse - you can't just speak them as if they were prose (or at least not if you want to get the impact of what he actually wrote).

Yet there are entire schools of Shakespearean acting that make a point of obscuring the meter. Their goal seems to be to make Shakespeare sound like spontaneous modern conversation. I've never quite seen the point of that -- performing Shakespeare as though he were Harold Pinter or Mike Leigh.

Originally Posted by kennyc

Shakespeare was not meant for reading.

Alas, that is quite often how Shakespeare is taught in schools: first the reading, then the play (usually as a video, sometimes on stage).

[melanti]

Am I the only one around here who likes reading the plays before seeing them?

I go to an outdoor Shakespeare festival every year and between the cruddy sound system and being rather far back from the stage, I don't understand the full meaning of every line if I go into the play cold. I get the general gist of what's going on, but I don't catch every little thing.

I like reading first so I can take my time and understand things, and then I go see the play live a day or two later and get to relax and appreciate the experience fully.

Plus, reading the plays first let me be properly outraged when the directors decide to change things around. That way I know what a line was supposed to mean instead of being baffled... You'd be surprised by how many puns are ruined by changing the setting of a play, yet many directors do so anyway. And don't get me started on the train wreck of this year's director made of Antony and Cleopatra... He left half of the play out!

I like this idea... a MUCH better approach than, say, No Fear Shakespeare.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by melanti

Am I the only one around here who likes reading the plays before seeing them?

I prefer to read the plays myself -- but that's after years of hearing Shakespeare recited on every occasion by a mother who taught him. No one in the family ever burned food on the stove or opened a carton of curdled milk without her telling us that something was rotten in Denmark.

[BadBilly]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

It sounds like the whole multi-media encyclopedia concept that appears to have died the dodo. Give me the book and the Web itself is filled with whatever side-commentary and other stuff I could possibly need.

All this is effectively doing is making it so I can only hold a fraction of the books I used to hold on my device. I know memory is cheap, but then why does 16GB more cost you an extra $100 ($50 some places now).

"Back in my day we didn't have all these here fancy multi-medias you kids today have. We'd just read the words while poking ourselves with sharp sticks and, gosh durnit, we LIKED it that way!"

[WillAdams]

Anyone else ever read an ``interlinear'' edition?

[melanti]

Not quite interlinear, but I read a No Fear Shakespeare edition once... It has the original text on one side and on the opposing page a "translation" into modern English. I found my eyes straying more and more over to the modern side. I ended up just covering the modern side with a piece of paper and just uncovering it whenever I thought I was missing something in the original version.

Never, ever again! It just ruined it, IMO. I prefer a well-annotated edition all in the original verse.

[Razi]

This is a great idea. Another thing could be to give interpretations along lines. All the way from Ben Jonson, Dr Johnson, Hazlitt, Coleridge etc to TS Eliot, AC Bradley, LC Knights, Prosser, Barker etc to more contemporary interpretations like Harold Bloom, Peter Hall etc (sorry I fell out of touch about 20 years ago). I learned my Shakespeare through BBC audio cassettes: Ronald Pickup as Hamlet, Alec Guiness as Lear, Ken Scott as Macbeth etc. I knew these plays by heart by the time I turned 20, the power of multimedia. If I had stayed in touch, I would be definitely in a position to produce a multimedia electronic critical edition of his works with a timeline of critical interpretations. Possibilities are endless and endlessly exciting! Really wish I could go back to those heady days of literary madness and this time stay in touch with Shakespeare for the rest of my days. "There would have been a time for such a word."

[TallMomof2]

I like No Fear Shakespeare... slowly backing out of the thread.

[donpapachino]

thats the thing, when we're reading a book, we let our imagination free. with added images, it's no different like watching a movie then.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by donpapachino

thats the thing, when we're reading a book, we let our imagination free. with added images, it's no different like watching a movie then.

Plays are rather different to novels; a play is meant to be watched.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by donpapachino

thats the thing, when we're reading a book, we let our imagination free. with added images, it's no different like watching a movie then.

Some people see a movie when reading and some people do not visualize at all or visualize very little. For most people reading is not at all the same as watching a movie.