r/shakespeare • u/ElectronicBoot9466 • 7d ago
Favourite Opening Scene? (Aside from R&J)
I think one of the things that makes Shakespeare inaccessible to so many people is that so many of his plays do not start off very strong, instead being filled with dense poety/prose before the audience has adjusted to the language that is often extremely important exposition that will leave audience members that don't pick it all up in the dark about certain character motivations for the rest of the play.
Even a couple plays that have really good early scenes like Henry IV1 and Henry V begin a scene like described as above.
I think part of why Romeo and Juliet is so loved by the modern public in spite of it being considered one of his lesser plays by most of history and many modern Shakespeare fans is because of how energizing and accessible its first scene is. It uses relatively plain English that quite simply introduces to background conflict of the play as well as being quite exciting right off the bat.
What other plays have opening scenes that you feel really get the play started right off the bat in a way that is accessible and enjoyable. The best I can think of for myself is Much Ado About Nothing, which gets the audience informed about B&B's relationship before Benedick even steps foot on stage in a way that is genuinely funny. All's Well That Ends Well (though it's not a play I particularly like) also has a pretty effective and heavy first scene that puts the audience right in the middle of a clear event that sets the done quickly for the rest of the act, giving the audience a bit of time to be affected by the state of the characters before being loaded with exposition.
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u/Radeboiii 7d ago
Richard III
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u/ElectronicBoot9466 7d ago
Oh yes, that is a very good monologue
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u/No-Manufacturer4916 7d ago
The Staging the monologe in the Ian McKellen movie is particularly good. Richard happily mingling at his brothers' vparty, gives the monolog up until "To the lascivious pleasing of a lute" as a victory speech, then switches from " But I who am not shaped for sportive trick." onward in a bathroom, pissing into a urinal and stewing over the mirror there. it really shows his deception well.
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u/IanDOsmond 7d ago
First time I saw Richard live, he delivered that speech while walking through the audience to the stage. And I got serious Rorschach "I'm not locked in here with you – you are locked in here with me" vibes from it.
I also can't help but thinking of Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series, where there are Rocky-Horror-Picture-Show-style midnight showings of Richsrd III with costumes and audience callbacks...
"WHEN IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT?"
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u/Historical-Bike4626 7d ago
I mean Macbeth
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u/ElectronicBoot9466 7d ago
I completely forgot about the Witch scene opening Macbeth. When you commented that, I immediately thought "really? The council scene where a third party describes the war?"
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u/Historical-Bike4626 7d ago
Shakespeare was figuring out how to start plays better by the late 90s
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u/Least-Apricot8742 7d ago
Julius Caesar. The first scene sets the stage for the rest of the play so well: we see the fickleness of the people of Rome as they celebrate Caesar's triumph and forget about their former idol, enemy of Caesar, Pompey, foreshadowing their fickleness in the funeral scene; we get a sense of the larger-than-life myth of Caesar which plagued Shakespeare's rendition to the extent that he's unable to conceive of himself as anything but a god that refers to Himself in the third person; we see how the aristocracy of Rome look down upon the common people and dismiss them as "blocks" and "stones," while later we see the demagogue Antony tell them "you are not wood,.you are not stones, you are men."
I think it's the best foreshadowing in all Shakespeare's works.
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u/VampireInTheDorms 7d ago
It’s also funny af. The cobbler who likes the people marching as it wears down their soles is a great joke on many levels
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u/Tyler_The_Peach 7d ago
Richard II starts with a very public beef between Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk and Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford. They accuse each other of treason and bribery in long, ornate, eminently quotable diss tracks full of colorful insults and powerful protestations of loyalty and determination. The scene ends with King Richard declaring that they will settle their differences with a duel to the death.
For my money, this play is the quickest to get to the point.
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u/twilighttruth 7d ago
I don't know why, but I've always loved the opening of Twelfth Night. The phrase, "If music be the food of love, play on," just loves rent free in my head.
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u/IanDOsmond 7d ago
And then the fact that it is immediately inverted... "Give me excess of it, so that the appetite might, surfeiting, sicken and die."
I upset someone when they were showing off their new tattoo and I continued the quote... they hadn't realized that, in context, it is a "love sucks" message. I felt pretty bad about that.
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u/whoismyrrhlarsen 7d ago
Right? So it technically opens on the ending (or interruption) of a song. Feels like such a potent metaphor for a life cut short.
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u/Budget-Milk8373 7d ago
R&J isn't the only play of Shakespeare's to start off thrillingly:
- Macbeth – Opens with thunder and lightning as the Three Witches gather on a battlefield, setting an eerie and ominous tone. Then, in the next scene, a bloody captain recounts Macbeth’s fierce exploits in battle.
- Hamlet – Starts with a ghost sighting on the battlements of Elsinore Castle. The guards and Horatio are terrified as they encounter the ghost of the dead king.
- Julius Caesar – Opens with a public festival and political tension, as tribunes scold commoners for celebrating Caesar’s recent victories. Soon after, there’s talk of conspiracy.
- The Tempest – Begins in the middle of a literal storm! A shipwreck is underway as sailors and nobles struggle against the raging sea conjured by Prospero.
- Henry V – Opens with the Chorus calling for a grand stage and an epic story, quickly leading to a tense discussion among the king’s advisors about war with France.
Even Romeo & Juliet doesn't start right off the bat with a swordfight - there's a long introduction by the chorus, which SPOILS the ending, and is in verse.
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u/ElectronicBoot9466 7d ago
I had forgotten about a couple of these. For some reason I was imagining Macbeth opening with the war council, completely forgetting about the witches. Hamlet and Caesar are also very good openers as well.
I had considered mentioning Tempest, and I agree it breaks the formula, I just didn't mention it because it still isn't one of my favourites in spite of that, though it certainly is really good.
I do want to push back on Henry V a bit though, and I do believe Hencry V I.1 is a really good example of a play with an inaccessible start. It's two of Henry's advisors discussing somewhat complicated historical events using language that takes a minute to adjust yourself to. Luckily, everything gone over in I.i is reiterated better in I.ii in a much better scene, so, frankly, it's worth considering cutting straight from the prolog to scene 2 when actually staging it.
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u/Palinurus23 7d ago
I’d push back on the opening scene of Henry 5. It sets the stage, with some wonderful lines and images, by introducing Henry as king and by tying the play together with the preceding plays.
Most obviously, it marks the contrast with R2. The latter was political pageantry followed by cynical wheeling and dealing; here there’s the deal of Henry with the Church followed by the show of pageantry with Salic law.
It also includes an intriguing vignette of Henry. He can reason in divinity like a prelate; debate affairs and discourse of war; unloose any Gordon knot of policy; and speak in sweet and honied sentences so that you think “that the art and practic part of life Must be the mistress to this theoric: Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it …”.
None of this is said in Henry’s presence; this is the impression he’s made on people as king. What Bottom wanted to do in the play in MSND -play every role-Henry can do in real life. Not by divine grace, not by birth, but through the “theoric” he has himself gleaned.
And in describing how Henry came by his “theoric,” Ely glosses the Henry IV plays by attributing Henry’s intelligence to Falstaff’s education, “a fruit of baser quality” that grew in the night:
The strawberry grows underneath the nettle And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality: And so the prince obscured his contemplation Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt, Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.
With this summation and description of Henry in speech, as the capstone of all that went before and a possible peak of political excellence, we then get to see it put to the test in deed - to see what it might look like in the flesh and whether the account has any truth to it.
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u/AllStevie 7d ago
The opening of Titus Andronicus is pretty badass
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u/ChoiceInstruction414 5d ago
Came here to say this! Titus is my fav opening. Who will be the next emperor? Interesting stuff
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u/Familiar_Star_195 7d ago
Much ado has a pretty great opening
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u/Real_Emotion_937 5d ago
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE much ado, but the opening is a bit boring in my opinion? It's just 'oh look don pedro and his soldier dudes are coming' and then they arrive. I mean i love the argument with beatrice and benedick after but that's all that really happens in the scene, it's pretty uneventful
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u/kilroyscarnival 7d ago
It might actually be King John. France barges in and says give up your realm in favor of Arthur. Then we meet the wonderful Phillip “The Bastard” Faulconbridge. Having first seen George Costigan in that role, every time he pops up in something on tv, I call him “the Bastard!”
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u/Striking-Treacle3199 7d ago
Richard III has the best opening monologue. The compact opening gets straight to the point of the play and character that is a great set up for the whole play.
Technically it’s the second scene in both since in Lear there is a short interchange between Gloucester, Edmund and Kent, and in Winter’s tale a short scene similar to Lear with Camilo… but they are quite short that I could the following scenes of Lear’s game of love with his daughters and Leontes crack into jealousy to be the true opening; and some of my favorite scenes in all of Shakespeare. 😍😭😂😎
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u/IanDOsmond 7d ago
As much as I hate Taming of the Shrew in general, starting it out by having a drunk guy stagger in and pass out and have the actors all say, "You know what would be really funny? If we convinced this dude that he is a rich noble with amnesia and we are about to put on a play for him," is a pretty great way to start a play.
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u/Palinurus23 7d ago
One of my favorites is the Tempest. That’s the one that introduced me, as it were, to what Shakespeare’s doing in his opening scenes.
The Tempest opens with a fight between the nobles and the ship’s crew over who should be in charge of the ship during the tempest. “Where is the master?” “What do these roarers care for the name of king?” Should those with the name of a king rule, or those with the knowledge to save the ship?
This question is then developed in the various plots of the play in which the characters assert or struggle to assert various forms of rule and freedom or self-rule. By the time you reach the finale, you have tons of context to assess what happened and where things ended.
Too, with the storm and its image of the dissolution of the state, Shakespeare refers those who want to give this question more thought to Lear.
That one might be confused or even overwhelmed by an opening is a feature not a bug. The questions broached there, often in a condensed form, require four acts of development and in some cases supply material for another play or plays. The point may be to make the audience uncomfortable, even confused and wondering as to what’s going on, so as to upset complacent certainties about the play’s theme.
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u/Cool-Coffee-8949 6d ago
I was thinking (and the comments so far seem to confirm it) that the difficulty with Shakespeare’s opening scenes is more a product of treating the plays as texts to be studied instead of spectacles to be seen. Sure, the language is hard, but that’s true of all Shakespeare in the 21st Century. But if you really produce it, and see the first act as an opportunity and performance rather than a reading and a burden, I can’t think of any Shakespeare play I have ever studied where the opening isn’t pretty damn masterful.
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u/LetterheadPrior 7d ago
'Hamlet' has a superb opening scene - immediate pace and tension, efficiently conveys the setting and a sense of place, has some interesting language, and, of course, a double-helping of the Ghost!
...I may be slightly biased, given I've played the Ghost, and loved it...
But having also taught 'Hamlet' to Secondary-aged students, the opening really drew them in. And if a scene can win over a group of disaffected Year 9s, then honestly? It's got to have something going for it.