Yes, I saw that too. Fantastic. Did you see Pacino's movie Looking for Richard which is about understanding Richard III - making it, feeling it and it has Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey. humanodon as I said, I'll get back to you, but today I'm off to the Met Live in HD. Verdi's opera Falstaff is playing, merely Shakespeare in a different format. It's actually The Merry Wives of Windsor -- no one's favourite play. Let's see what Verdi does with it.

As for the question

What play would you personally recommend to get someone hooked on Shakespeare?

-- here's a quick comment: I was hooked on The Met: Live in HD after seeing Mozart's The Magic Flute a few years ago -- one of the earliest Met productions that was sent streaming around the world.

I never became hooked on Shakespeare in quite the same way. I've grown up with Shakespeare, as I'm trying to show in my posts -- Shakespeare is all around us. See any production and you will recognize quotations that are in our everyday speech. For example, at my recent Midsummer Night's Dream, I heard this oft-quoted, but unattributed line: "The course of true love never did run smooth."

The stories and characters and plots are as integrated into western culture as Biblical stories, but without the didacticism (lessons) and morality.