Hey guys, it's Olivia here from Olivia's
Catastrophe and today I'm here to give
you a video on how I read Shakespeare. So
this video is because of the all the
world's a page read-a-thon that's
happening at the moment. I am co-hosting
it with Cara from Wilde Book Garden and Julia
from Shakespeare and Such. And we are
just reading Shakespeare, enjoying
Shakespeare's works, reading some
retellings and having a lot of fun
talking about it on our Twitter. Which
I'll leave a link to down below if you
want to join us or join in reading. I'll
also leave a link to my announcement
video and the two other announcement
videos from the other two co-hosts so
that you can get some ideas of what you
read, or if you want to join in. It's
running all the way through July and
there's three prompts per level of
beginner, intermediate or advanced so you
can hop in any time. Do as little or
as much as you want. But let's get into
the video of where I talk about how I
read Shakespeare. I just want to give a
quick disclaimer. This is how I read
Shakespeare and I don't think it's the
way that everybody should read
Shakespeare. You read Shakespeare how you
want to. But if you want to know a bit
about how I process Shakespeare here we
go. There are seven steps to me
reading Shakespeare. And the first one is
choosing the play. When I started to read
Shakespeare first, I read it back in
secondary school. Didn't pay too much
attention. And then I chose to do a
module on it in university. Chose by free
will. And I kind of had to read what they
were reading. But once I was reading it
by myself I went through all of the
tragedies. And then I kind of went
through all of the comedies. I'm working
through the comedies at the moment. And
then lastly I'm gonna work my way
through all the histories. I feel like if
you want to get into Shakespeare a very
good place to start with is the
tragedies. The tragedy plays tend to be
his most popular or the most well-known
plays. And then some of the comedies, I
guess, are pretty well known as well. And
then the history plays are a bit more
heavy because they're more entrenched in
the history. He's got an agenda that he
kind of has to follow in those plays. And
it means that they can be a bit more
difficult to read or some people think a
little bit less entertaining. I don't
particularly like the history plays
because I don't particularly care about
the British monarchy and the history of
the British monarchy. So that just
doesn't interest me personally. But if it
interests you maybe you'll enjoy the
history plays a lot more. The second thing
I do when I read Shakespeare is I go and
spoil myself completely. This is
something that's very out of character
for me. I detest getting spoilers. I don't
want to know anything. I don't even watch
the film trailers because film trailers
spoil the films, in my opinion. So I try
my best to avoid spoilers. However, with
Shakespeare plays, I read the synopsis
and I get a full on spoiler. The place
where I go to read the synopsis is the
RSC website. RSC is Royal Shakespeare
Company and they're the official
Shakespeare company in the UK. And on
their website they do have a plot
summary of every single play. I just type
in RSC Romeo and Juliet
plot summary. And it'll give it to you. Sometimes in the plot summary it just
gives you the whole thing, it spoils
everything. And sometimes it gives you
like, a synopsis and then says don't read
on anymore if you don't want know the ending.
So then it doesn't spoil you. But that
doesn't happen in every single play. The
reason I spoil myself is because first
of all -- there's different reasons. So
first of all it makes it a lot easier to
just understand what's happening when
you read Shakespeare. Shakespeare has a
tendency to have a main plot line and
then a subplot line that follows these
two characters that... that is a little bit
comedic or just a little bit mirroring
the main plot. And sometimes it can get a
bit confusing. Especially when he has
characters who have the same type of
name like Edgar and Edward, for example.
Shakespeare loves to have similar
sounding names. So it makes me avoid some
of that confusion when I am reading. As
well as that in Shakespeare's time the
audience already knew what was gonna be
happening,
seeing as Shakespeare's plays are not
original ideas all the time. They're
based off of different things. Myths,
history and other stories. Which means
that the fact that the play is already
told doesn't ruin the enjoyment for me. Being spoiled before reading Shakespeare
play doesn't actually hinder my
enjoyment of the play whatsoever. I truly
believe that enhances it.This is
kind of associated to how I read
Shakespeare but I'll just mention as my
third thing. There are different editions
of Shakespeare that you can get. There
are these like Folger editions, I believe.
And in the Folger editions, often they have
the one column of Shakespeare's text
and next to it it has definitions of
words or a little bit of backstory into
what those words mean or why Shakespeare
used that word. And
if you're new to Shakespeare that can be
really helpful to make sure you're
understanding what these words that he
is using mean. And what that
reference means. And it can really
enhance your reading that way. However, I
prefer not to use that simply because it
it really like messes with my focus on
understanding what's happening with the
story because I read the story and then
I read the anecdote. And I'm not really
focusing on the story. I'm just kind of
reading back and forth abd my brain is
not computing the two at the same time.
So I use an edition without that. But I
did want to mention that you can get
editions with that which can be very
helpful for if you're a beginner to
Shakespeare or if you just need some
more help with the language. Because
Shakespeare -- old language is hard to
understand and process and handle. So the
fourth thing that I do once I've chosen
my play, once I've spoiled myself, is I
make myself a very big cup of tea and I
sit down and I read the play from start
to finish in one sitting. That's my
problem with reading Shakespeare plays: is
that I need to make sure I have a solid
two to three hours where I don't need to
do anything. It takes me about two to
three hours for me to read a Shakespeare play
and I want to read it all in one go. I
tend to read Shakespeare plays all in
one go just because I feel like it's the
closest I can get to watching adaption.
But doing the reading version. I tend to
read plays all in one go because plays
are meant to be watched performed all in
one sitting. And you just watch the play,
you know. So I feel like the best way
that I can get closest to that with a
reading experience is just to read the
play in one sitting, all the way through.
And just get the full effect of the play.
I know that might not be feasible for
some people or not how people like to do
it, but that's just how I like to do it.
Fully immerse in the Shakespeare play
from beginning to end. So one thing I
miss from when I was studying
Shakespeare in uni was that after I read
a play I would have a class on it where
we would look at the symbolism, the
imagery, some of the meanings that we get
and the background of Shakespeare. And I
think because I did a module on Shakespeare that's kind of what I want after
I've read a Shakespeare play. So the next
thing I'll do maybe after a couple of
hours after reading the play or something.
I will do some research. I don't
particularly look into the origins of
the play, where he got his ideas form or
any of that. Or the history of the play
in context of the time period. But I just
look into the imagery, 
symbolism, some of the language. Some
of the... like a bit more on the character
relationships just so I really
understand some of the things he's
driving home. It's kind of how with
poetry some people break down the poetry. They want to look into the images and
things like that. That's how I read my
poetry and that's kind of how I read my
plays. I like to break it down a bit more
than maybe I do with a novel when I
first read it. The next thing I do, which
I do need to get better at before
judging a Shakespeare play, is watch an
adaption. I think it's really important
to remember with reading playscripts is
that it's actually meant to be performed
on stage. You're meant to see it in action and
you don't get the full effect of a play --
well, personally, I believe I don't get
the full effect of a play until I've
watched an adaption of it. And I can
definitely tell because some of my plays
of Shakespeare that I read, my opinion
changed after watching it. For example, I
read Romeo and Juliet and I was feeling a
bit more mediocre about it. It's actually
still not one of my favourite plays. However, I love adaptions of that play
so much. The same thing goes if Antony
and Cleopatra. I read it and I didn't
enjoy it. Then I watched a brilliant
brilliant adaption of it. And now it's
one of my favourite Shakespeare plays. And
I reread it and then I even enjoyed the
playscript itself when I reread it,
because I've seen an adaption. And I
think that happened with one more play. Ooh! Henry the fourth part one.
I said history plays are not my thing. I
watched a brilliant adaption and then I
loved that one. So I do think watching an
adaption is a very important part of
enjoying Shakespeare or enjoying plays. And the last thing is I just want to
talk a bit about is how I choose which
adaptation I'm gonna watch because
there's many different adaptations of
Shakespeare plays. For example, Hamlet
which is a very popular play. There's
tons of ones you can watch. I  just want
to talk a little bit about the three
things they make me choose what
adaptations I'm going to watch. So the
first thing which is really important to
me is that I'm not that keen on watching
adaptations where they don't use the
actual script from the play. I know that
there are some which update the play and
they kind of modernise it. And therefore
make it more understandable and more
accessible to modern-day viewers. And I
do understand the benefits of those
adaptions and I do understand why people
enjoy them. And sometimes if I've watched
an adaptation that has the original play
script in it, I then go and watch
something modernised. And it does make it more approachable.
However, for me personally I do want to
still hear Shakespeare's words even if
they modernize the costumes or the set. I
don't particularly mind that. But the
language, I do want it to be similar to
the actual play. Second thing I look for
is authenticity. And by that I mean
Shakespeare has characters who are
Jewish sometimes, Shakespeare has
characters that are black and they get
whitewashed or this diversity that's
been implemented in the original gets
completely overlooked and ignored. And I
think that's just something I don't
enjoy seeing in adaptations at all. When
they kind of ruined the diversity
included in the book or exclude it. So, for example, there are many many
adaptations of Antony and Cleopatra but
Cleopatra is white. I don't really want
to watch those. Ain't got time for that.
Othello being white - ain't got time for
that either. So I just want to see the
authenticity in those adaptions. In that
respect of the word authenticity. And the
last thing I look for is generally just
director and actor. I've watched quite a
few plays by now. A few adaptations and I
know that I tend to enjoy, for example,
the 1960s Zeffirelli adaptions.
I do tend to enjoy those. That's my
favourite adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that
I've watched to this date. So I know to just
look for his kind of works and I will
find them for the plays that he did do.
I also look for actors. There are many
different ones with like, actors that we
know and like. So for example, Hamlet.
There's a Hamlet with David Tennant
in there, there's a hamlet with Benedict
Cumberbatch in it, there's a hamlet with
oh -- it's escaping me but he plays
Moriarty in Sherlock BBC. So you can like,
look for actors that you tend to like.
There's an adaption of Henry the fourth
part one that has Tom Hiddleston in it. It's
not my favourite take on that play. But
there you go. You can watch Hiddleston while
watching Shakespeare. There's a Midsummer
Night's Dream that has like, Michelle
Pfeiffer and some other famous people in
it. So there are famous people in
adaptations and you can go and find the
ones that you just want to watch. And
those are kind of what I look for when
I'm looking for an adaptation. The
language, authenticity and then who's
starring in it because that might make
me want to watch it more. Don't think
there's anything more I can mention
about how I read Shakespeare. So let me
know in the comment section down below: have
you read Shakespeare or have you watched
an adaptation? Which
is your favourite adaptation or how do
you read Shakespeare? I'm very curious. I
know that Julia and Cara are making
videos on the same subject. We kind of
all individually had the idea and then
we're like: hey, we're all pulling up this
idea! So we're not coordinating when we
post that so if it's already been posted
I'll leave a link to that in the
description box down below.
It hasn't been posted. Go subscribe to
their channels. You should do that anyway.
Go subscribe to their channels and
you will definitely see them up at some
point. Give this video a thumbs up if you
enjoyed it. Hit the subscribe button if
you want to see more and don't forget to
hit that notification bell to be updated
every time I have a new video. And you
know what they say: onwards and upwards.
Excelsior!
