It’s no secret that I’m a Shakespeare devotee and this has been going around Facebook among my fellow Shakespearean practitioners so I thought I’d torture myself by trying to pick favorites even though it is kind of impossible to do so. Ask me again next week and many of these answers will change…#1: Your favourite play – The Winter’s Tale
#2: Your favourite character – Falstaff or Cleopatra
#3: Your favourite hero – Camillo
#4: Your favourite heroine – Beatrice or Paulina
#5: Your favourite villain – Richard Gloucester
#6: Your favourite villainess – Margaret
#7: Your favourite clown – Parolles
#8: Your favourite comedy – Much Ado About Nothing
#9: Your favourite tragedy – King Lear
#10: Your favourite history – 1 Henry IV or 3 Henry VI
#11: Your least favourite play – Taming of the Shrew
#12: Your favourite scene – 4.7 of King Lear “No cause…” or 4.2 in Henry IV part 1
#13: Your favourite romantic scene – 4.4 of The Winter’s Tale
#14: Your favourite fight scene – Tybalt vs. Mercutio for style, the Macduff Family’s death for brutality
#15: The first play you read – Romeo & Juliet
#16: Your first play you saw – Taming of the Shrew
#17: Your favourite speech – Juliet’s “Gallop Apace” was the first speech I feel in love with and it is still a favorite but Hal’s “I know you all” is up there
#18: Your favourite dialogue – 5.2 in Much Ado or 4.3 in Richard III
#19: Your favourite movie version of a play – Trevor Nunn’s 12th Night
#20: Your favourite movie adaptation of a play – 10 Things I Hate About You but I’ve yet to see any of the BBC Shakespeare re-tolds
#21: An overrated play – Taming of the Shrew
#22: An underrated play – 3 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, King John… basically most of the history plays
#23: A role you’ve never played but would love to play – Beatrice (preferably alongside my husband as Benedick), Hamlet, Paulina, and I know I’m not ready for it yet but in the future: Cleopatra
#24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role – there are genuinely too many to list so I’m abstaining from this one
#25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff? – Falstaff. Seriously has anyone ever picked Hal? I played Hal and love Hal but who picks Hal over Falstaff unless they’re a Puritan?
Day #26: Your favourite couple – Beatrice & Benedick or Antony & Cleopatra
Day #27: Your favourite couplet – Helena: It is not so with Him that all things knows As tis with us that square our guess by shows
Day #28: Your favourite joke – Clown: Would you have a love song or a song of good life?
Sir Toby: A love-song, a love-song
Sir Andrew: Ay, Ay, I care not for good life…
(12th Night might tie Much Ado for my favorite comedy…) but I also laugh every time at “This Tunis, sir, was Carthage” from The Tempest
Day #29: Your favourite sonnet – 29 “for thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings that then I scorn to change my state with kings”
Day #30: Your favourite single line – a tie between “Serve God, Love Me, and Mend” and “It is required you do awake your faith”