Cinema and theatre

We divided the theatres into several groups - my favourite is the drama. In this time, the musical is very popular but I don’t like the Czech ones very much. But in our little country it’s quite hard to find the best of the best actors, dancers and singers. Although someone doesn’t like the USA culture, I have to say that they are probably the best in the musicals. The next type is the opera.

I don’t need going to the theatre every week, but from time to time it’s a good way to relax. My mother loves the operas so when I was younger, she took me to the State Opera or to the National Theatre in Prague. But I didn’t like it so she took it up. My favourite genre is the drama - mostly the comedy because I can relax, laugh and enjoy myself. But for the last time I saw Cat on the Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams. It was very depressing but I liked it very much.

William Shakespeare is considered to be the greatest of all dramatists in the world. His work reflects an image of human unity and a love of people and nature. He was born in 1564 at Stratford-upon-Avon as the oldest son of glove-maker John Shakespeare. In 1592 he came to London and joined a group of actors. Eight years later he bought his own theatre and named it the Globe Theatre. At Shakespeare’s time there were no actresses and the men played also the women’s roles. Also one actor played more then one role. At first Shakespeare helped to adapt or rewrite older plays but later he started to write his own plays and he was very successful. The Queen Elizabeth I. and James I. liked him very much. One day during a performance, the Globe Theatre was destroyed by the fire. After his son’s death, Shakespeare went back to Stratford and he was living a quiet life with his family. He died in 1616 on the same day as he was born. Shakespeare was a big poet and he wrote beautiful sonnets but his plays are the best known from all his work.

Initially he wrote comedies like The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Winsdor, As You Like It, romances - The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest and historical plays - Richard II., Richard III., Henry IV., Henry V., Henry VI., Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, after his son’s death he wrote mainly tragedies like Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet.

This drama is about the unhappy love and death. The main characters are Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet who are the only children of two powerful houses in Verona. These two houses hate each other. Romeo meets Juliet and falls in love with her although he knows she is his enemy. They love each other very much and ask Friar Laurence to marry them. Their love and marriage are secret. However, Romeo kills Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin by misadventure. Julie is forced to marry a young nobleman called Paris. She asks Friar Laurence for help again and he gives her magic drops after which Juliet falls asleep for several hours and looks and she is dead. Romeo learns about Juliet’s death but he doesn’t know about the trick so he bought himself a poison. He rushes to the church and when he sees Juliet, he commits a suicide. Soon after Juliet wakes up and when she sees Romeo’s death, she kills herself with his sword. Both houses reconciles only after the death of their beloved children.

Next very famous dramatist is George Bernard Shaw. He was born in Dublin in the impoverished family. His childhood wasn’t happy - his father was a drunker and his mother left him because she wanted to go to London to teach singing. So G. B. Shaw was a self-made man, he spent many hours with reading books in the British Museum. In 1935 G. B. Shaw was awarded Nobel Prize for literature. To his best-known plays belongs Pygmalion adapted as a musical play My Fair Lady.

Lisa Doolittle is a poor florist who has a horrible Cockney accent and terrible manners. She is selling flowers in London’s streets where she meets Professor Higgins and his friend Coleman Pickering. Lisa’s father is a dustman but he doesn’t like working so he is taking money from his daughter Lisa. Professor Higgins is a linguist and he makes a bet with his friend Coleman: Lisa will speak English properly in 6 months. Lisa comes to Higgins’s house and offers him money for English lessons because she wants to sell flowers in rich parts of London and she needs to speak in a perfect way. Lisa has a very hard time because she spends many hours learning of the pronunciation.

Approximately 4 months later they examine Lisa’s manners at the horse races in Ascot where she meets professor’s mother and Freddie who fells in love with her. At the end of her lessons, they went to the Ambassadors´ Ball. Lisa proved her English knowledge very much because the people think that she is a princess. Higgins and Pickering are happy and they’re talking about their success but they don’t care about Lisa. So she leaves professor’s house that night but she doesn’t know where to go. She decides to go to Higgins’s mother’s house where she met Freddie ad she decides to stay with him.

Oscar Wilde was Irish-born writer, novelist, playwright, poet and critic. He was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College in Dublin. Later, as a student at the University of Oxford, he excelled in classics, wrote poetry and incorporated the Bohemian life-style of his youth into a unique way of life. His well-known play The Importance of Being Earnest can be characterised by adroitly contrived plots and remarkably witty dialogues. The plot is very elaborate and full of sudden changes of each one’s position and unexpected revelations. This play is critical to the London society in Wilde’s times, witty and bright.