seeing shakespeare is usually disappointing

but there are ways…

One of my crankier qualities is that I usually don’t enjoy seeing live Shakespeare.¹ This is not for a lack of seeing “good” Shakespeare—I’ve seen a lot of “good” Shakespeare. I’ve seen big buzzy Shakespeares in New York and Shakespeare at the Globe. I’ve been to Blackfriar’s and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and the Folger. Really—to refine my comment slightly—I usually don’t enjoy seeing Shakespeare’s big tragedies. People are just too self-conscious about being Hamlet or being Lear. Comedies tend to be better on this front, and the more minor the comedy, the better it tends to be (thus I’ve seen a very funny Merry Wives of Windsor).

So all the Shakespeare I’ve seen that I really liked were comedies—Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Love’s Labor’s Lost. (I have actually seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream a bafflingly large number of times, given that it is not my favorite Shakespeare or probably even in my top five, and it’s almost always good.²) I’ve seen it done in a big-budge…