Shakespeare Video Marathon

As Spring Break quickly approaches, the remaining snippets of class have been spent watching videos on Shakespeare. We actually just completed an interesting activity involving the comparison of various interpretations of a single scene from Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. In completing this activity, I was able to recognize the differences between a stage production versus a cinematic interpretation of any given scene. There was also a difference in interpretation simply based on the time period or context the director had decided to set the play in. Some performances tended to be more physical than others, drawing various emotions from the audience. By the end of the process, we as an audience concluded that it was more effective to have the excessive physicality as the more subtle interpretations began to bore us. Some interpretations we also found to be way off the mark. The director's choices did not always make sense to us, but we realized that it was simply all part of the creative process. Another difference we found was in the level of awareness in respect to sexual connotations Shakespeare had incorporated into his text. Personally, I tended to prefer mild allusions to these connotations as the blatant ones always tended to come out so vulgar.