A very late happy birthday to William Shakespeare, who is 450!
Today I will be talking about my favourite Shakespeare play, Macbeth.
I think this is my favourite Shakespeare play because it was the first one I learned about. I learned about it in Year 6 and I bought the play in Singapore that same year. Knowing the story helped me read it faster and understand the text.
The story is about a Scottish noble called Macbeth who is told by three witches that he would be King of Scotland. He proceeds to murder the King and he eventually becomes King, kills a few more people and goes mad. So yeah, typical Shakespeare story.
Watching the EastEnders for the first time
Today in English we were getting ready to start our Shakespeare topic and the teacher showed us half of EastEnders. She said that we were going to watch EastEnders to compare EastEnders and Shakespeare.
EastEnders is literally one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Today I watched it for the first time. I haven’t laughed this much since I heard one of the singers in mum’s Les Misérables CD squeak at the end of a song. Everything in EastEnders is hilarious. It’s either spoken in a bland tone or shouted at in exaggerated facial movements. The apex of the humour comes at a part when a character is literally DRAGGED BY A CAR ALONG THE ROAD WHILE HE’S TRYING TO OPEN IT! No, I’m serious.
But onto the link between Shakespeare and EastEnders. There’s quite a lot of similarities between them actually. Both have lots of talking, lots of conflict, lots of plot lines and TONS of characters. This is how Shakespeare has influenced writing, as his stories and ideas have become standard writing styles now. What do you feel about that, Mr Shakespeare.
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. I got to see it in London last year in the Globe Theatre with my parents. That’s nice and all, but what’s not nice is the amount of people Shakespeare kills off. Decapitation, poison, suicide, stabbing, drowning… everything (especially suicide). How about we finish things off with a Shakespeare body count quiz?!
Editor’s note: The original version of Shakespeare and EastEnders was published on 28th April 2014 in Ben Williams’s World.
Never miss out on another blog post. Subscribe here:
Print 
PDF
[…] have just had a photograph printed of my wife and two of her friends. I said it reminded me of Macbeth. I don’t think I will get any supper this evening. When the hurlyburly’s done, When the […]