Straight Outta Stratford-Upon-Avon - Shakespeare's Early Days: Crash Course Theater #14

[@TEDEd]

Loving this title! Made our day.

[@liamfoskett5220]

TED-Ed Hmmmmmm

[@moonknightproductions]

When a giant channel comments on another giant channel about a title, what does that say about our society??

[@ms.rstake_1211]

Wow! Is this really Ted Ed. Do a collab!

[@tuskinekinase]

Hello TED-Ed, your Shakespeare videos are also amazing, please do more

[@Udontkno7]

yo!

[@vksepe]

Honestly, Stratford is such a cute little town. I live like 20 minutes away and this title makes me chuckle imagining the NWA coming from there.

[@MarkThePage]

I swear everyone in that town owns like five dogs. It's amazing.

[@mrfantastic9466]

Stratford is amazing, in the summer its just beautiful

[@ninamarie177]

I visited Stratford about 4 years ago in summer and I loved the vibe, I really wanna go there again to just relax.

[@Udontkno7]

If only that vibe was in Compton lmao

[@biginbabylon]

I did Richard III for many years ! Love that he’s getting more attention . Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York !

[@jacklandismusic]

“A few years ago, they found Richard’s bones. In a parking lot.” Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

[@Farellemoon]

You are seriously one fo the most fun host/teachers this series has. I just love the energy so dang ol' much.

[@papelhojas]

I could (and did when i first found crash course) watch most of these for hours, i honestly wish every single episode of just about any topic was longer 👍✨👊

[@leannuh47]

This title is everything

[@superdark336]

A charismatic villian with scoliosis... me irl....

[@1gorli]

Ah, yes. The famous Would-I-was Shook-speared

[@Calvero52]

I recently got back into Shakespeare after seeing the Broadway show Something Rotten last month, fittingly the day after his birthday. The show pokes loving fun at musicals and Shakespeare and doesn't take anything seriously, such as a tap dance battle between the protagonist, Nick, and Shakespeare. Hilarious show whether you love or hate Shakespeare or musicals 😄

[@chloewilliams2529]

7:40 he really do be dabbing tho...

[@stephaniehight2771]

OK, nobody else made the joke, so I must. "They paved Richard III and put up a parking lot.">

[@gazelleguy]

Was that light falling after saying Macbeth for real? Or is Yorick truly a man of infinite jest?

[@BlueTyphoon7]

He knew that naming the scotish play was a bad idea, yet he did so anyway

[@Dinuial]

Thank you for addressing the "Shakespeare isn't Shakespeare" thing right off the bat. It started in his lifetime as elitist prejudice and the biggest reason it's still around today is people think he was the world's greatest playwright when he was, in fact, one of the world's greatest script doctors.

[@audiblebeauty]

I highly recommend Looking for Richard with Al Pacino for a great dive into the character and villain, plus some general interludes on the Bard. More recently, the Hollow Crown has been an AMAZING adaptation of the history plays.

[@QUARTERMASTEREMI6]

@audiblebeauty Hah! - *I loved the Hollow Crown.* One brilliant series worth every minute! :)

[@culwin]

SHAKE-SCENE SICK BURN!!!!

[@katiegould6609]

Ugh I LOVE Richard III (the play, not the guy)! There's a lot of interesting discussion about disability as a tool, either for the country to see him as unfit (and a metaphor that the kingdom is unfit) or that it's subversive in that he uses ppl's misunderstanding of him to do what he wants. Also you got the whole nature vs nurture. AND there's so much discussion of guilt and fate and power from the women I could go on for ages I mean just WOW!

[@lucillem7706]

I love Richard III so much, I spent 2 years studying it in my english lit class and I'll never be as passionate about any other play as I am with Richard III. Richard murdered Anne's fiancé and her father in law too though (I mean, that's the point of Anne's scene in Act I).

[@keelsteacher2820]

Lucille M I love Richard III as well!

[@CaptainRiterraSmith]

Verily was he a worldly genius! A prolific father of tropes and words! Shakespeare, a codifier of drama!

[@aperson22222]

In college I wrote a paper about how subversive _Richard III_ was. A huge amount of it centered on how much less memorable Richmond was, and I argued that this is confirmed as Shakespeare's intention when he flat-out tells the audience that Richmond is a "puissant." I assumed that was just an old-timey spelling of "pissant." Nope. Much the opposite in fact.

[@agilemind6241]

Yeah, "puissant" is french for powerful. And at the time public executions and bear baiting were entertainment so it makes sense that propaganda plays would be about bad-dudes getting their comeuppance rather than glorifying the current rulers.

[@tuskinekinase]

It's truly amazing how Richard III and MacBeth are among my favorite characters of all theatre. The MacBeths are quite sympathetic, and though Richard was painted very, very hard in a bad light, we still can't help rooting for this magnificent bastard at various points in the play. This Shakes had a knack in writing compelling villians and antiheroes which I think all creative people could and should learn from.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

"Ale taster of the borough... and eventually mayor, An unorthodox political ascendancy." Portland, Oregon had this in the 1980s. Local bar owner Bud Clark, also famous for being the man in the trenchcoat in the "Expose Yourself to Art" poster, ran for mayor in 1984 as an independent against the incumbent mayor, and to the surprise of many political commentators, won. (Bud was the only "serious" other candidate, nobody in the political establishment wanted to run against the incumbent mayor.) Bud went on to serve two (very successful) terms, then retired back to owning his bar. (Which he still owns, and regularly presides over, in his late '80s today.)

[@toluatilola6412]

I go to the same school that Shakespeare went to!

[@npinero1]

STATIC!!! Don’t start none, won’t be none!

[@aperson22222]

Ale Taster of the Borough? I wish that were my job.

[@MarkThePage]

I say MacBeth before every show, and they go swimmingly. I could go on for hours about Shakespeare (and Stratford-upon-Avon, which has SO MANY DOGS). The bard wanted all of his plays to do and be everything. Did you know he wrote his lines in iambic meter? Not just the poetry--all the dialogue. Iambic meter. Check it.

[@UltimateKyuubiFox]

MarkThePage Iambic pentameter.

[@Udontkno7]

I wish I had your bravery. I just say "The Scottish Play" really softly.

[@patricksratliff]

But (more sincerely) there are some notable exceptions to the use of iambic pentameter. In some plays it comes and goes without discernible explanation...although certain cases (e.g. the weird sisters use of trochaic incantation, "DOU-ble DOU-ble TOIL and TROU-ble; the contrast of Mark Antony's more (emotionally) rhetorically impactful funeral speech (in meter) with Brutus' (who gives his funeral speech in prose); the porter in Macbeth; etc.) suggest that Shakespeare continued to develop ideas as to how to apply (and also sometimes remove) functional, overarching meter for great effect. "Diction" or "lexis" is one of the core ideas of Aristotle's foundational analysis of the tragedy.

[@williamwant5482]

@@patricksratliff and pretty much all of twelfth night is in prose

[@Groaker]

Shakespeare. The "Empire Strikes Back" of Crash Course Theater

[@kimhardonniere870]

i love this community of learning that crash course creates, unfortunately, i don't live in a community of learners even though i'm in high school but i've learnt so much on world history thanks to my wonderful teachers who recomended it. Thank you !

[@NoelleMar]

John Shakespeare has always cracked me up. I want to write a book about him lol. Also, heart eyes. So happy for this episode.

[@Nanoubonbon]

I’m with you!!!!

[@TheDamborg]

Slight correction: Richard killed Lady Anne's Husband and Father-in-law, not Father and brother.

[@abi243]

Wait so a quarto is basically a bootleg?

[@MarkThePage]

Yes! Scripts weren't being printed and sold, so people would see the shows and try to remember the lines and scribble everything down. Though I haven't heard of any of these bootleg scripts being used for productions. One imagines copying a Shakespeare play down the street might not go over well.

[@AlKohaiMusic]

After so many years of performing it, I still love the Shakes. Mainly because I can read his plays in a variety of queer contexts. And that’s truly the think in life that makes me happiest.

[@masonroman9931]

Who's watching this bc there teacher said so

[@NoaGloomy]

We shall forever be trapped lol

[@sp4c3it55]

yeah

[@arijitbhattacharjee19]

I love this man

[@colinrast6572]

!! I can't imagine a person writing plays in just a week or two.

[@MKPiatkowski]

If you've already got the basics of plot and character, which he did because all his plays were based on earlier stories, you just need to decide structure and write dialogue. It can certainly be done.

[@annikboyer3395]

I wonder if Molière will be covered. Les fourberies de Scapin with Louis de Funès was totally genious!

[@dervlacunningham4770]

You are absolutely fabulous

[@meghuskin3383]

IS OPERA NEXT???

[@QUARTERMASTEREMI6]

@Crash Course From _"A kingdom for my horse!"_ to Mike's *Boo Richard! Yay Richmond!* _I have got to love myself some rah-rah Tudor propaganda._ (9:37 - My favourite part by far! Mike, do keep it up! ♡)

[@elfarlaur]

Richard III must have been the inspiration behind Crusader Kings II

[@keep1234quiet]

wow!shakespeare told me he love this title in my dream,and he want call you...

[@ben123321neb]

It's actually Stratford-upon-Avon with a lowercase 'U' - a resident

[@colinrast6572]

I didn't know that most of Shakespeare's plays were written collaboratively.

[@jamiee7367]

Not exactly "most", but a fair amount. Of the 36 plays in the first folio, 5 plays are collaborations: _Titus Andronicus_ with George Peele, _2 & 3 Henry VI_ with Christopher Marlowe(?), _Timon of Athens_ with Thomas Middleton, and _Henry VIII_ with John Fletcher. 1 play, _1 Henry VI_ is Shakespeare’s revision of an earlier play written by Thomas Nashe & 1 or 2 others (possibly Marlowe). 4 plays ( _Titus Andronicus, Measure for Measure, All's Well that Ends Well,_ & _Macbeth_ ) also appear to contain additions by Thomas Middleton. Outside the folio, _Pericles_ was written with George Wilkins, and _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ & _Cardenio_ were written with Fletcher. There's also the anonymous plays _Edward III_ & _Arden of Faversham._ _Edward III_ is definitely a collaboration between Shakespeare & at least 1 other, but their identity(s) is contested. _Arden of Faversham_ may be written by Shakespeare & Thomas Watson(?), but others dispute Shakespeare having any hand in it, let alone Watson. Shakespeare also wrote short additions for the plays _Sir Thomas More, The Spanish Tragedy,_ and possibly _A Knack to Know a Knave._ Finally, there's _Sejanus His Fall,_ by Ben Johnson & a collaborator. The play was very controversial, & accused of "Popery & Treason". Therefore, Johnson rewrote all his collaborator's parts before publication, & never mentioned who they were. Shakespeare is one of the more likely candidates for this collaborator's identity. All in all, that's: *9* definite collaborations *2* potentially collaborations *3* plays added to or revised by Shakespeare *1* play possibly added to by Shakespeare *4* Shakespeare plays revised by Middleton that's *19* in total. Quite a lot, in my opinion.

[@JBTriple8]

I watched A Shakespeare Episode on the Netflix of the Who Was Show i didnt know the saying My Kingdom For A Horse came from Richard III

[@Meatybanky13]

Can you create one about slavic gods

[@janedough8997]

Will you be making a video about Aphra Behn?

[@oof-rr5nf]

Jane Dough Nice profile photo! Power to the aces. ✊

[@lindamo9067]

What happened to the Life of Pi vid from Crash Course Literature

[@momosbread7507]

Yoo can someone helps with a paragraph I have to do about this because I’m doing online school because of covid-19 and I’m soo confused 😣

[@traceyolsen308]

Have you covered the authorship question? That would be a good episode. The First Folio has sections where cryptographers have shown passages are saying Francis Bacon and Henry Neville wrote them, some other printing on The Sonnets have a code suggesting they were composed by de Vere ...some other texts that Marlow was a front for Bacon,.. and if there was another author. why put these codes into the official versions to imply these other people were responsible for them? I'm looking forward to AI channelling Shakespeare and giving us a few plays, films and documentaries about this.

[@loreleibertoch6886]

I have to watch this to learn about Shakespeare so I can make a tik tok about him for theatre🙃

[@Ty-ux9ms]

Can somebody explain to me the different types of plays by shakespare?

[@geoffreywinn4031]

Educational!

[@Malakalima]

Great video! I just want to point out that Richard murdered Anne's father and husband, though. Not her brother. :)

[@АндрейДынин-л8т]

I want to share with you couple theories or laws of the universe 1)The speed of light is not motion speed limit for matter it is energy exchange limit. Example = no matter what two points speed is, if the difference less than speed of light they can interact\exchange energies. If difference more then speed of light points will NOT interact\exchange energies.Pass through each other without any consequences. It is a key to multiverse. 2)Energy exchange take least resistance path every time\in time, in each universe. It is in everyday life, in motion of water/air, in how people live their lives, in each atom behaves. I want to get a Nobel for it, but i am no one. Best regards Dynin A.I.

[@TaliaOutwrong]

Hence forth using that definition for quartos as my definition for zines.

[@Charles-nm1zx]

What happen to #15?

[@alexiswelsh5821]

Saw you on Seeker plus yesterday.

[@RedJet-bq6fq]

I don’t get what’s so funny about the tile. Can someone explain? Thanks

[@infinityzombi6287]

I guess because of the reference to a movie called "straight-outta-compton".

[@journie_]

will this series be covering ballet?

[@davidshi451]

What I've always wondered is, how does Shakespeare compare to other playwrights at the time?

[@Woesteinvuir]

Heads and shoulders above his contemporaries. There are lots of other good writers, and several of them wrote masterpieces, but none of them are masterpieces in the same way Shakespeare's are - works of great and piercing insight into the human condition.

[@satansamael666]

Will we cover PT. Barnum and Jenny Lind???

[@ivanpb1983]

Here's an idea!

[@colinrast6572]

I didn't know that Richard the 3rd had been portrayed as having a hunchback.

[@jeffreybernath6627]

*pushes up his glasses by the bridge* I think you mean "once more UNTO the breach?" Guys? Really? Okay, you get a pass for the lolz gotten from "I am no longer perfectly comfortable saying 'MacBeth.'"

[@mememan2293]

whos here from schools right now

[@vanikestewart8578]

so Willy Shacks's brother is in the 27 club

[@Epinardscaramel]

The playlist "theatre" hasn't been updated in a while, I didn't know there were new episodes :O

[@kelleymcmorris7430]

Insurrections: don't start none, won't be none

[@mamoonaakhunzada4930]

same here

[@BeastOfTraal]

"Queen Alexandra and Murray"

[@LordMephistoteles]

awwwww too short when it was beginning to turn into the interesting stuff

[@moniion7415]

Now that I know about Richard's play, I realize how off Shakespeare was with the whole thing. Read Philippa Gregory's series on the 'Cousins' War.'

[@stephaniehight2771]

Philippa Gregory?! Really?!

[@nikolalol-vb3sj]

Can you make 'crash course egyptology' pleaseeee?!?!?!

[@lucasgelati]

Seems you are on this side of the Edward III debacle then!

[@Luboman411]

This is a great synopsis and all, but a question still digs at me about Shakespeare and whether or not he was the true author of all his plays--a lot of the great plays of his later years happen in Italy. And he gets a lot right about Verona, Venice, Padua, Messina and Rome. How is it possible that he could get these Italian cities right but he was too poor to have left England? And why his infatuation with Italy instead of France (which is more natural fit for an Elizabethan Englishman) or Greece or another nation? Christopher Marlowe spent a lot of time in Italy which is what leads me to believe that there was some collaboration between the two...

[@canadmexi]

Luboman411 Have you ever seen the BHH video on Anonymous? When I read your comment, I was thinking "Shakespeare is posh dude, because poors can't art good.".

[@agilemind6241]

Probably like modern authors he asked other people to read his plays to check for errors or for suggestions especially when writing about things he didn't have first hand knowledge of. It's pretty uncommon for any kind of writing to spring fully formed and perfect from the brain of one person working alone, any number of people - friends, family, actors, publishers - could have looked the manuscripts over and helped correct small details.

[@jamiee7367]

It's not that hard to imagine Shakespeare knowing what he did about Italy without having to go there. For one he could gleam information from the source materials. Several of the plots for his plays set in Italy come from Italian novels & stories that were translated into English. There's also his connections to John Florio, who could've provided him with ample knowledge on Italian culture & language, and there's Will Kempe, an actor in the Lord Chamberlain's men who had actually been to Italy. Basically, Shakespeare read stuff about Italy & asked some friends who knew more. It isn't so impossible. And even then, he still gets things wrong. One example that comes to mind is in The Taming of the Shrew, where Shakespeare mistakenly places Padua in Lombardy, when it's actually in Veneto.

[@bellringer929]

does Richard really offer to give his 'kingdom for a horse' ? that seems brave of him

[@pogchampweak]

what are the 5 main points i kinda need it lmfao

[@patricksratliff]

Once more UNTO the breach though...

[@Kraflyn]

so... he wrote poems and then he bought the second fanciest house... interesting, do say more please :D

[@fndthousing]

I don't understand why they would have to write a new play every couple of weeks, surely as they were travelling they could regurgitate the same stuff?

[@jamestang1227]

Will we eventually talk about other European playwrights like Molière?

[@WelshBathBoy]

Avon is pronounced like Av'n, fyi, like the 'on' in 'button'

[@rubymoon9565]

*I'll teach you how to flow* Tupac feat. Shakespeare

[@kmbehrens14]

Interesting to not count Julius Caesar in the Histories, according to that definition. It’s not a tragedy of Caesar himself, because he’s killed in Act III; I guess it could be the tragedy of Brutus? The play seems mostly political to me, rather than a character’s demise.

[@MKPiatkowski]

I always thought the play was about Brutus.

[@Kraflyn]

and how exactly do you know shakespeare wrote all of his plays? O.o have you been there?

[@djangoray2665]

Where art thou 😘.

[@rkpetry]

*_...so-where did all the otherwise-controversy come-from about who, wrote, Mr. 'second-frontline's' (who shakes spear behind first-frontline, to forward to forward, not renegade) plays, docu-stories about a woman, a man, Bacon (for whom I suggest WS was Editor-in-Chief)... and-about how WS knew so much about royal intrigues... controversies, all..._*

[@agilemind6241]

Because gossiping about royalty is a completely new invention which definitely never happened in years past.... (sarcasm)

[@ishaanbhardwaj1220]

Hamnet!

So you think Shagsper wrote the works published under the name Shakespeare. You state as a fact that at age 7 this Shagsper started attending Stratford grammar school?! Really? Do you have documentation of that? People have been looking for this proof for years, centuries even. (I would be ever so excited to see this evidence.) He “ probably” read Plautus and Seneca, and maybe he left school at 13 or 15 - assuming he even went to school, since there is no documentation about his schooling. He might have worked as a butcher or even for his father, (while continuing to read Plautus, Seneca and maybe even Ovid, as well as pursuing corporal pleasures and becoming a parent at an early age.) After marriage and three children, having worked as maybe a butcher, maybe a glover or maybe a teacher, or maybe, maybe, maybe - he did after all have to support a family - he shows up in London, why or how we don’t, but we can create myths to fit a needed explanation. And his family? Maybe his father took up the financial slack. Lots of maybe’s here. But seriously, I’d love to see the evidence concerning his entrance into school at 6 or 7. And shake-scene? Why do you keep mentioning Edward Alleyne - shake-scene?

[@yuridelgado6068]

Shakespeare is not THE actor, almost an analphabet, but Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, a well know writer of THE artisticy, social class that didnt support play writers

[@the17thearlofoxford38]

So you don't know what day he was born, and you can't say with any certainty that he did anything. Except write the plays, despite the lack of evidence. People will believe anything. And get furious if someone disagrees. Despite the lack of evidence.

[@MKPiatkowski]

More evidence than you, my friend. The lack of evidence is common for that time period for anyone non-nobility. That people think you might be the author points more to classicism than anything else. The plays could only be written by someone who truly understood acting, which you did not.

[@the17thearlofoxford38]

Very punny, but no, the lack of evidence is not common for the non-nobility. One of the reasons people think that someone besides William Shaksper of Stratford wrote the Works of Shake-speare is because it makes no sense for there to be such a lack of evidence to prove the story about a two-decade career on the public stage in the post-Renaissance city of London after the invention of the printing press (especially considering how much time and money has been spent on researching every scrap of paper from the period). Edward de Vere lived with an acting company until he was 12, and later owned theaters and was a patron of acting companies. In 1597 Meres put him at the top of the list of English play-writes. One would think he knew more about acting than a guy who held the horses outside the theater. @@MKPiatkowski

[@LittleJoeTheMoonlightCat]

Hamnet Schlemiel.

[@Dius276]

Why is there is there no Crash Course on geography? Or did Miriam the Super-Racist torpedo that idea for good?

[@PennyDreadful1]

Ale taster? I guess there are worse jobs to have in Elizabethan England.

[@thedon4185]

I’m

[@thedon4185]

Me too

[@cosimocub]

i live there and he never wrote the plays

[@rainydaylady6596]

I'm curious how it's been determined that Shakespeare wrote his plays. I watched something a few years ago and one of the actors seemed quite emphatic that Shakespeare didn't write them.

[@XaurielZ]

The question you should be asking is 'what evidence is there that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare's plays?' The answer is, none, beyond hearsay and classist assumptions about Shakespeare's level of education. 'Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays' is the null hypothesis here. You'd need some pretty good evidence to disprove it, and 'I heard once that some guy said so' isn't very good evidence.

[@MarkThePage]

There is such a thing as "literature forensics", which is one way people figured out that JK Rowling was behind Robert Galbraith's novels. If an analysis of writing patterns in Shakespeare's plays discovered any big inconsistencies, I imagine this conspiracy would be more than just a theory.

[@ms.rstake_1211]

Prove he wrote the plays! ...p.s I love this show so much

[@ms.rstake_1211]

Just want to say he really summarized the play.

[@rustedcheese8041]

I like children