Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We’d love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!
This week’s topic: Freebie Week
Oooh, what to choose, what to choose…*thinks* Okay, how about Favourite (Theatre/Drama) Plays? That’s different, and something I don’t think I really compiled together outside of Shakespeare (see author tag) 😀
Warning: There’s a lot of Shakespeare in this list 😛
In no particular order:
- Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a Dream (review) — I forgot how I came about this play but it’s a very interesting one. There’s family drama, but its deeper philosophical ponderings on life, fate, and the line between illusion and reality were very fascinating, and quite ahead of its time.
- William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (review) — Forever and ever will this be one of my favourite plays. I revisited it for the first time in years (since reading it in high school, actually) and it was much funnier than I remembered.
- William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (review) — Hamlet gets such a rap these days for his melancholy but it’s a fascinating play with so many aspects to it. Not to mention so intense!
- William Shakespeare’s Richard II (review) — It took a second read for me to really appreciate how wonderful and complex and structurally amazing this play is. Definitely a favourite amongst Shakespeare’s histories.
- William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (review) — This play has a special place in my heart as it was the first I had studied in high school. It still holds up years later in the themes it tackles and the characterisations and some of the major speeches it contains.
- Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest — Read this play years ago but never reviewed it here but suffice to say I remember really enjoying it, I thought it was very amusing.
- Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (review) — Hands down my favourite Marlowe play. It’s got it all: politics, fast-paced development of events, drama (omg the drama, the theatrics). Of all his plays I read, I recommend this one fist and foremost.
- Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding (review) — Definitely the most memorable of his plays that I read with all the drama and bloodshed, the imagery and the tragedy.
- Sophocles’ Antigone — Strangely enough I never reviewed Sophocles’ plays despite having talked about re-reading it here but anyway. It was one of those plays I read in first year university and that had stuck after all this time. There’s just something about Antigone’s inner strength, in sticking to her principles despite the changing laws of the land.
And I actually couldn’t decide on a tenth play, it was a toss up between Shakespeare’s As You Like It (review), Julius Caesar (review), and Much Ado About Nothing (review), and Aeschylus’ The Oresteia (review forthcoming). And those are some of my favourite plays! Have you ever read any of these plays (or watched any of their adaptations)? For some more theatre/play goodness:
- Shakespeare Productions, Adaptations, etc.
- So You Want to Read… (William Shakespeare)
- Shakespeare: Listing the Favourites
- Tag for more of my reviews of various classic (and modern?) plays I’ve read
What was your freebie topic for this TTT?
I don’t think I’ve ever read a play. I think I should rectify that! 🙂 Very unique list this week! Thanks for stopping by my blog!
I’ve read all the Shakespeare ones, I hated the one by Wilde, didn’t even know Lorca had written plays!! In my last year of high school, we read and compared 3 plays on Antigone, Sophocles’ being of course the base. It was an awesome class. You should try a play by Molière, “the French Shakespeare”, or Corneille or Racine, 2 other major French playwrights
Thanks for the recommendations, I’ve been meaning to check out a play or two by Moliere 🙂
Wow, that’s an original topic! I read all of the tragedies (Shakespeare) during my school years, but I still haven’t read any of the comedies, and I probably should give it a try. I’m pretty sure nearly all of the other plays I ever read were during my high school years, including The Glass Menagerie and a few others.
I much prefer Shakespeare’s tragedies over his comedies but he’s got a few comedies that are pretty darn hilarious 😀
Well, how could there not be a lot of Shakespeare on this list? ;D
I’ve only seen Richard II through the Hollow Crown and that was my first time–I knew almost nothing about the play until then. I found it really impressive, though, and I want to read the play sometime just because I feel like I must have missed so much! It’s just very interesting to me that Richard II is portrayed as a poor ruler and we know that his deposition will eventually give us Henry V…and yet…deposing a monarch isn’t exactly an obvious or moral choice.
Good for you! Love your choice of topic! Quite unique!
I do love Antigone and The Importance of Being Ernest, and my favorite Shakespeare is Twelfth Night, so I’m so happy to see it here! This is an interesting take on this week, I loved reading this! Thanks for stopping by my TTT earlier 🙂
Nice idea for freebie day! I might steal this for the next freebie topic. The Importance of Being Earnest is fun. I also love Cyrano a lot.
I look forward to reading your list come the next freebie week! 😀
Great idea! I am terrible about reading plays, and I rarely do it, but would like to brush up on my Shakespeare. I read a lot of Friedrich Dürrenmatt in university, and he’s probably my favourite playwright as a result.
I’ve never heard of Friedrich Dürrenmatt, I’ll have to check out some of his work! 🙂
Great list. I just started reading plays a few years ago, but I would love to read more. I haven’t found many bloggers who review them.
There’s a whole body of plays out there that I’m looking forward to delving into! I think I can name only a few other bloggers who review or talk about plays on occasion…
What a great topic this week! I have not read many plays, not sure what we were doing in high school English but it wasn’t reading Shakespeare, for some reason. Hmm anyway… I love the sound of Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice.
I’m not a huge play reader. I like to see them in action vs. read them. But, I have read a few plays. I liked Othello and wouldn’t mind seeing it on the stage.
I admit the last time I actually read a play was at the university. I much prefer to watch a stage production or movie than read a play. I remember seeing Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest in college–my husband (then boyfriend) and I saw a school production of it that my husband’s roommate was in. We both enjoyed it quite a bit.
Great topic choice!
Omg the Importance of Being Earnest is one of my all time favorite books. I LOVED IT SOO MUCH!!! The satireeee. I love your choice of this topic, people leave these beauties underhyped which they shouldn’t be. I also feel like most people don’t read Shakespeare anymore, which is dumb.
I really liked The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet is just a classic. Great list♥
Here’s My TTT if you’d like to check it out :)♥
Jumana @ Books by Jay
PS, I’m a new follower of yours!
What a creative topic, Lianne. Love it. I’ve not read a single play, however I do adore ‘Earnest’ in its film form AND I’ve seen LOTS of Shakesperhe films too. For whatever reason I’ve never warmed to them. The language is not to my liking.
*Shakespeare
Clearly I need to slow my attempts at fast typing. 😉
Oooh! I love this topic! I may have to do a similar one someday… 🙂
Check out my TTT.
So I have basically…NEVER READ A PLAY!! Somehow I sneaked out of doing anything Shakespeary in school and now I run away screaming. hehe. Although my friend is onto me to read a few plays so hopefully I will in the future!! ;D
Thanks for stopping by @ Paper Fury!
A great topic! Of these plays the only two I’m familiar with are ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Richard II’ but I really want to read the other two Shakespeare plays you picked and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ – and I now know which Marlowe play I should start off with! 🙂