There is no doubting that William Shakespeare still holds the title of the best use of modern English language in literature. We speak today with the influence of Shakespearian words and phrases in our mother tongue as English people, with the great man himself coining around 1,700 words. There was no dictionary for him to refer to whilst writing his plays, sonnets or poems. There was no way of knowing that he was doing things right, but he did them anyway and is now widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.
But even the best of the best can get things wrong, occasionally.
Here are, in my opinion, the three worst plays that Shakespeare has written.
Let’s start with one that will cause controversy.
Romeo and Juliet is by far considered to be Shakespeare’s best tragedy, with the two title characters engulfed in a passionate love affair lasting a short six days set in the city of Verona, Italy. The star-crossed lovers, who are doomed to die, cannot be together in the eyes of their warring families; the Capulets and the Montagues. However, when you look past the over-reaching theme of ‘love’ and start to question the realism of the play, it becomes less about true love and more about personal gain, teenage rebellion and jealousy. We meet Romeo at the start of the story as he is pining for Rosaline, who is known to not reciprocate his feelings of longing and love, and a band of his friends who are trying to convince him to move on. And move on, he does! The second he sees Juliet at the Capulet party he gate-crashes, Romeo becomes obsessed with her and forgets all about Rosaline, not mentioning her name any more throughout the duration of the play.
Juliet herself is described as a young girl who has not yet reached her fourteenth birthday, standing on the brink of becoming a woman. She is naïve, and has led a fortunate and sheltered life, with what seems like no friends other than her Nurse. Juliet is betrothed to Paris but does not love him, and seems shy at the thought of marriage, but dutifully mentions that she will try to love Paris, out of attempting to please her family. Why then, would this reserved, level-headed and family-orientated young girl run off with her family’s enemy? Of course, many would say true love, but it would also be worth pondering that this action may simply be to spite her parents, to rebel against their wishes for her impending marriage, and a means to escape to a more adventurous existence. Hate is as passionate as love, and so this would also explain why Juliet chooses to kill herself in her family’s crypt after seeing Romeo dead. She may also be scared about the fact that her parents believe her to be dead also, and she knows that she cannot go back to the life she left behind in order to be with a Montague. Her expression ‘my only love sprung from my only hate’ is interpretational, which could indeed mean that her love for Romeo is true and they honestly are star-crossed lovers, or it could equally mean that she chose him simply because he is a Montague and that she knew it would be the ultimate opposite of what her parents wanted her to do.
This title inspired the film 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) starring the late Heath Ledger, along with Julia Stiles and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and countless other adaptations for the screen, stage and opera alike. The story is therefore famous, however it carries harsh themes such as female submission, the importance and enforcement of 17th century gender expectations, cruelty and the motivation of money suffered by men. It is the story of Petruchio, a young man who is courting a headstrong and individualistic girl called Katherine, the ‘shrew’ of the tale. Katherine is not interested in the romantic advances of Petruchio at first, but after what is described as various psychological torments or ‘taming’, Katherine submits to being a compliant and obedient woman. A sub-plot also features in the story, with a selection of suitors battling for the affections of Katherine’s more conventional and therefore more desirable sister, Bianca. It is a hard and unflinching account of bullying and a very real look at how women were treated within the time that the play was set. Although the characters are deep and interesting, it is the themes and motifs carried out during the story that make The Taming of the Shrew the worst of Shakespeare’s comedies.
King John is a strange story of a man who is a fraud, and knows that he is. This play dramatizes the reign of John, King of England, who is a weak man amongst a strong and hot-headed family. The play is essentially about a power-struggle with both English and French monarchy, with all characters vying for the throne for one means or another. King John serves as a classic villain in this tale, and knows that his title of King of England is wrong, and that his deceased brother’s son Geoffrey should have been crowned instead. Happy to go to war to defend himself whilst knowing he is a usurper, King John is also a thief, and would steal in order to get what he wants when he wants it. The most famous complaint about this play is that it is all talk and no action, and that seems to be true from the amount of bickering and arguing the family does!