Shakespeare's Roman plays are underrated. They're all absolute masterpieces. In particular I think Antony & Cleopatra is super underrated these days.
>>25089462Can't go wrong with Julius Caesar either
>>25089473I actually have Marc Antony's funeral oration memorized. Have since high school.
>>25089462>The highest praise, or rather form of praise, of this play, which I can offer in my own mind, is the doubt which the perusal always occasions in me, whether the Antony and Cleopatra is not, in all exhibitions of a giant power in its strength and vigour of maturity, a formidable rival of Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, and Othello. Feliciter audax is the motto for its style comparatively with that of Shakspeare's other works, even as it is the general motto of all his works compared with those of other poets.>Of all Shakspeare's historical plays, Antony and Cleopatra is by far the most wonderful. There is not one in which he has followed history so minutely, and yet there are few in which he impresses the notion of angelic strength so much;—perhaps none in which he impresses it more strongly. This is greatly owing to the manner in which the fiery force is sustained throughout, and to the numerous momentary flashes of nature counteracting the historic abstraction. As a wonderful specimen of the way in which Shakspeare lives up to the very end of this play, read the last part of the concluding scene. And if you would feel the judgment as well as the genius of Shakspeare in your heart's core, compare this astonishing drama with Dryden's All For Love.
>>25089473what about the tragedy of coriolanus, cymbeline and titus adronicus, ive never even heard them mentioned before
>>25089582>coriolanus10/10, one of Shakespeare's greatest.>cymbelineWould be a 10/10 were the story not a total mess. Definitely symptomatic of the general weirdness that prevents Shakespeare's later plays from being as popular as his most well known (e.g. Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, etc.).>titus adronicus1/10 in the Shakespeare rating system.
>>25089582Coriolanus is fun in part because of the utter disdain that Coriolanus shows for the average Roman citizen, a disdain that he is never really disabused of nor even really shown to be in the wrong for having. Coriolanus is kind of a "fuck them poors" story.
