Which Shakespeare play...?

[husbandcallsmepickle]

Which Shakespeare play did you study for GCSE English? We were chatting about this at work and most of my colleagues read Macbeth. I was in the minority as I studied A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Again I may be in a minority but I also love baz lurhmans (spelling?)

r&j.

the soundtrack is amazing too

I adore that version.
It's so visual and just fantastically done.

visually Leo 😍 my teen angst was all about that movie

I did Macbeth.

DH did R&J, as did both DC

I did A level English and we did Othello, Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra. It was the first time I realised that Cleopatra was a contemporary of Julius Caesar and I was gobsmacked.

It's absolutely gorgeous. Also, there's something about the modern setting that makes it more accessible - I used it to introduce the play to Y9 before starting reading. It helped them understand the play but you have to do a lot of heavy lifting afterwards to correct the "then Tybalt shot Mercutio" etc answers 🤣

Twelfth Night in y9

Romeo and Juliet for GCSe

Antony and Cleopatra and Othello at A Level

Oh yes, I remember watching these when I was quite little.

I wonder if they're on YouTube somewhere.
I may have to investigate....

I would love to go to Shakespeare Globe! It must’ve been wonderful!

🤣🤣🤣 that’s quite funny tbf.

The soundtrack is amazing!

Whenever I hear a song from the soundtrack when we are out somewhere straight away I’m like “name the film soundtrack!”

and it’s just utter proof my DP never bloody listens because if I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a million bloody times that young hearts… by Candi Staton (covered by kim thingybob) is from R&J! 😀🤪😆

That made me laugh! 🤣

Romeo and Juliet. I also love the Baz Luhrmann version - so clever and funny. I adored details like the guns having brand names like 'sword' and 'long sword'.

My slightly eccentric school made us read a ton of Shakespeare: we did Midsummer Night's Dream, then Macbeth and Taming of the Shrew, then Merchant of Venice, R&J, then Antony and Cleopatra and Othello. I absolutely loved it and I think being expected to just cope with the language by cracking on through lots of plays really helped - by the time we got to GCSE we were just used to the idea we wouldn't understand all of it and it didn't matter.

@sockqueen I also studied Henry V at GCSE

For A Level I studied Richard II.

As a teacher I have only ever taught R&J or Macbeth at GCSE and always Hamlet or Othello at A Level 🤷‍♀️

As you like it!

O level: Macbeth, and Romeo & Juliet
A level: Hamlet, and Othello in depth. We also whisked through King Lear.

I'm American, so no GCSEs, but in my day (which admittedly was quite some time ago), we did Julius Caesar in sophomore year, Romeo and Juliet in junior year, and the Scottish Play in senior year. However at university, I studied many more and have read them all (including Titus Andronicus).

Julius Caesar for O level / Othello & Hamlet for A level

It was ages ago and I did coursework only so we studied 40 texts - my English teacher was nuts! We did Macbeth, The Tempest and Much Ado, then Othello, The Tempest again and King Lear for A-level. Wild comparison with now, when most of the texts get chosen based on how short they are.

Macbeth.

O-level - A Midsummer Night's Dream
A-level - The Tempest and King Lear

Macbeth for O’Level along with Great Expectations and the War Poets (Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon et al). Luckily my English teacher was passionate about Shakespeare and used to bring in recordings for us to listen to. Admittedly we spent a lot of time saying ‘who’s that playing Lady Macbeth’ or some such and missing a bit of the text but she really got us through it. Great Expectations was another thing - I got through my exam by watching the old David Lean film version.

Merchant of Venice for GCSE. Then Merchant of Venice (again) and Othello for A level.

Romeo & Juliet for GCSE. Not happy as the other class did Macbeth, which would have been much more interesting.

Othello and Richard II for A level. Enjoyed Othello. Hated Richard II.