by Nick Baldock

Created on: April 01, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

Part of the problem with discussing Favourite Shakespeare' is, like the man said, that it's all full of quotes. There are fashions in Shakespeare as with everything, but by and large there is a rough-and-ready Top Ten' with which people are more or less familiar, and then there are the rest. (I should admit here that I haven't quite seen every last canonical work).

There is no need to assume a pseudo-intellectual status and claim that we really like Cymbeline best or that Pericles, Prince of Tyre is Shakespeare's forgotten masterpiece (it isn't). Best' is a slightly obnoxious word in these circumstances, but there are occasions on which the genius of Shakespeare achieves its greatest expression.

Hamlet is, obviously, beyond criticism, but it really is that good. For all it litters the stage with as many corpses as a Jacobean tragedy, it is also a study of paralysing depression after bereavement and a warning to all academics of elevating thought above action. Macbeth is essentially about vaulting ambition and not coincidentally contains one of the best female roles in Shakespeare. King Lear may be the finest play ever written in English; not only does it address one of Shakespeare's perennial concerns, that of stability within a state, but faces an apparently pitiless universe and gleans some comfort therein. Othello completes the four classic tragedies, and is absolutely a terrifying glimpse into the heart of jealousy, but doesn't quite shake the feeling that the handkerchief is a piece of slightly messy contrivance.

Nothing compares with the depth and poetry of these four tragedies. Romeo and Juliet is wonderful, but does not have the depth of the former due to the immaturity, in the literal sense, of the protagonists. The Tempest, Shakespeare's swansong, has many supporters; I always think in contrast that, by that stage in his career, Shakespeare was inclined to see just what he could get away with. This would explain the fact that Cymbeline and Winter's Tale are, frankly, barking mad, and might go some way towards explaining the sloppy handling of the different strands of Tempest. Not that there aren't ideas and passages of brilliance Ariel., Shakespeare's one explicit spirit but it just doesn't cohere.

As for the comedies, it's always good to be reminded that Midsummer Night's Dream is genuinely funny, but the rest are viewed with a certain sense of dread, fearing that the production will attempt to force the humour beyond its natural constituency (usually

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