I watched this via Forced Entertainment’s Youtube channel - the Complete Works Tabletop Edition is available through November 30th.
I’ll admit it: i love the ridiculousness of Jacobean drama. I find it so much more fun and silly than the more serious and self important poetry of the Elizabethan period. I love to think about ways to stage these ridiculous scenes, the gory fights and tricks on one’s enemy.
What was best about the Forced Entertainment Tabletop version is that really, we just got those best bits - the crappy way these humans behave to one another, the silliness of revenge. Despite the serious subject matter I found myself laughing out loud at the absurdity of several moments — moments that would be performed with pathos by a human, but when represented by a goblet or a beer bottle, are revealed for their triviality. Perhaps even the triviality of the supposed “big” moments in theatre as a whole, and even more so, of humans in general, in this year when really no one is thriving, but we are all just working to stay alive.
I was on a panel earlier this year, where I was probably in the minority as someone who think that the stories are what are exciting in Shakespeare. I mean yeah, the language is beautiful but sometimes it is just a lot. In that discussion, I tried to raise this series as an example of reasons people shouldn’t be intimidated by Shakespeare, but rather embrace the possibilities of the text, the spaces in between what is written down and what we see.
Anyway, if you love stories and objects and people talking, I strongly recommend checking out at least one of the Tabletop Complete works. They are available through November 30th and might just help you divorce yourself from all those feelings of inferiority to the language or story or magnitude of Shakespeare, and remind you that he was just a dude, re-telling some stories.