moogbastard asked: Do you have a favorite Shakespeare play?
I don’t have a ready answer for this, even though I’m sure I do have one - I think Lear has some of the most stunning poetry he wrote, and like all past-and-future goths I love Titus even though it’s hardly top-shelf Shakespeare next to the heavier hitters. Of the historical plays, we dug deep on I King Henry IV in college so I have fond memories of that but Richard II, which I read on my own but didn’t make a formal study of, is one I remember fondly.
Lots good to say about all the ones I’ve read, how can anybody not fiend for Hamlet, but Lear, you know…if you’re a Shakespeare person, I guarantee that if you make a practice of returning to “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” every five or ten years, it’ll hit you a little harder every time. Like,
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender’d battles ‘gainst a head
So old and white as this!
…the answer is King Lear.
