Craig Franklin
5 books read for LibriVox
- Once everyone escapes to the Forest of Arden, the play just relaxes, and you get Rosalind in disguise coaching her own lovestruck suitor in how to woo her. She runs the whole show, wittier than anyone around her, and the melancholy Jaques grumbling nearby only sweetens it.
- Read it for the night before Agincourt, when Hal walks disguised among his soldiers and gets argued with about whether his war is even just. The big speeches soar, sure, but the quiet doubts underneath are what stick, and the Chorus keeps apologizing that a stage can't hold it all.
- You get Shakespeare at his most verbally playful here, with four men making grand vows to avoid women and immediately tripping over their own love letters. The wit is dense and sometimes showy, but the women’s clear-eyed teasing gives the comedy real bite, and the late change in mood leaves it pleasantly unsettled.
- You get Falstaff at his most shameless, trying to seduce two respectable wives and being cheerfully outwitted by both. The plotting is broad, quick, and pleasantly ridiculous, with disguises, pranks, and a final woodland humiliation, so you’ll enjoy it most when you want Shakespeare being openly comic rather than profound.