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PRAGERU’S EXTREMELY BAD SHAKESPEARE TAKES or, WHY I STOPPED TALKING ABOUT SHAKESPEARE (Ad-free Patreon cut!) (Patreon)

Published:
2025-08-17 18:25:35
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

This video took many months to research, write, film, and edit. The subject is about something I am very passionate about: William Shakespeare and the people who use him to hurt other people.

The final video will need to pass YouTube's various checks but as patrons, you get to see it now.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Death to fascism,

-K

Files

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Comments

Carl Sage

While I am still watching this, I felt compelled to let you know that I *still* use some of your videos - eg: Klingon 'Hamlet'; Star Wars Shakespeare ; etc - as supplements in the university theatre courses I teach. Because those videos are worthy. And so are you.

Andie

I was gonna say-- didn't Solzhenitsyn bring down the Soviet Union because of one of his books (A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich)?¿

Andie

Nishima is fairly popular I'd say, but I think that's moreso in how he died than his works lmao. Another favorite is Banana Yoshimoto, she writes a lot of short stories but she's very well-known in Japan.

Brian Martin

Could you please reupload your commentary videos for The Klingon Hamlet?

Thomas Hale

Holy moly, Kyle, I'm so excited to watch this. Thank you again for your hard work!

Tony Goldmark

It's always fun to see PEOPLE WEARING EYEGLASSES claiming that trans people are "unnatural" because "biological sex cannot be changed." I'd love to snatch those glasses off Klavan's stupid face, throw them on the floor, stomp on them and say "biological eyesight quality cannot be changed."

David Malinsky

I was gonna watch it through before commenting, but I saw MICHAEL “Free Speech is Bad” KNOWLES TEACHING SHAKESPEARE AAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!! This whole gaggle of monsters is filled with awful folks, but Knowles I have a particular loathing for. Damn these people! I actually saw Prager at my local worship place (which I hated anyway). He got a lot of pushback for his anti-gay stuff. I pushed back against anti-evolution talk and he blew it off. AND THE DAMN CREATIONISTS ARE BACK!! Thank you for what you do, Kyle. You’re the voice we need now.

Brian Martin

This is probably the greatest thing you could ever have made to close the book, so to speak, on your Shakespeare videos. The yearlong wait was worth it. I can't wait to see what you have planned for future content. Thank you.

David Malinsky
>>184281891

At 23:50 - I keep coming back to comparing Puritans and Leninists—and whose art remains. Ever since I was a teen I was into communist music. I had a tankie phase. And that leads me to think of ideologies—of hate, and the hatred for them. These Christian Nationalists are clearly children of the Puritans. I hate them. I’m sorry. I know it’s wrong. I know how filled with hate THEY are! But them being in power is an objectively worse world for everyone, including themselves. The sheer artlessness of the Christian Nationalists is what’s so disturbing, disgraceful, disgusting, despicable. Jesus uber alles. Mindless submission. Feeling in the service of destruction of the human imagination. And they are winning as we speak. Ok, gotta keep watching.

TheLibrarianSaysOok

I find it fun that I'm watching this video after having just came back from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which engages in some mild Bardolotry, but mostly to sell knickknacks at the gift shop. While they do, of course, put on Shakespeare plays every season, they also do plenty of other playwrights' plays (someone at OSF definitely likes August Wilson). In the current season there were 3 Shakespeare plays and one play inspired by Shakespeare (Fat Ham, basically "Hamlet, but at a South Carolina African American backyard barbecue and it's more explicitly queer") out of 9 total plays. Next season has 10 plays of which again 3 are Shakespeare plays. Also, if you read the director commentary in the programs it's clear that OSF seems to be picking directors who they think will have something to *say* about their Shakespeare play in question (to the point that my review of this season's Julius Caesar was essentially "yes, it was well done, but a production that depicts ancient Rome as a proto-fascist military dictatorship, and all of the actors are women or nonbinary? A little play out, isn't it?"). What I'm saying is that I wouldn't be surprised that their current artistic director would largely agree with Kyle here

TheLibrarianSaysOok

Having been an English major at an American liberal arts university (University of Puget Sound 2010-all my life I wanna be a Logger, etc. etc.) I suspect that most colleges and universities that don't require Shakespeare specifically for their English major would still require you to take either a British literature course or a literature before the 19th century course or possibly both, or would have you take some sort of freshman level humanities level course, all three of which would almost certainly include at least one Shakespeare play and/or a couple of his sonnets, meaning that it would be possible to graduate as an English major without having read Shakespeare but you'd probably have to actively try to avoid him. And from what I remember of college English majors, most of them were the sort of people who would probably would feel like they should at least check Shakespeare out, even if they probably would then move along to post-colonial literature or environmental literature or something more specialized in their junior and senior years that PragerU would think would be the downfall of society

John Vinals

Do you think you’ll ever do a video essay series like your Shakespeare ones on, say, Dickens or Chaucer or Austen or Bhasa or Chikamatsu Monzaemon, by the way?

Daniel Fain

Amazing Video, absolutely loved it!

David Malinsky

Dammit, if Jesus can be a Chinese man, to inspire a rebellion that killed millions, why CANT Shakespeare be a Black girl to give people hope! Nuremberg the the Wire and Prager folk. How could anyone not be ashamed to listen to their talk!? How the value ignorance and hate while duck speaking of beauty and truth!?

David Malinsky
>>184293889

These people, so concerned with moral hierarchies, completely fail to understand that they could well be at the bottom of that hierarchy they so worship. Or perhaps they DO know, which is why they cling to such things. The Right truly does value hiding information, and thus knowledge and wisdom. And the supposedly superior people they claim to produce…just aren’t! Those focused on obedience above all are rarely concerned with accuracy, let alone insight. I guess I’m taking their frame, then. Becoming them by using their tools against them? Do they, like Sith, gain yet more followers by being struck down in hatred? Perhaps so…

David Malinsky

I wrote this a while ago and perhaps it’s relevant here: The writer isn’t god! She can’t be: she can only be a totalitarian dictator or an artist. Words can’t move. Words can’t act. So they can’t even be marshaled into predictably like other people can. A writer is just the sculptor or photographer of the mind, capturing a snapshot out of natural chaos. A theatre or film director or composer or conductor is closer, since they are corralling individual artists into a single vision. But it still remains static! The game designer: social, improv , board, video. THAT is closest to what a god actually is! Gods have to deal with unpredictable lesser consciousnesses in a way none others do…like managers, bosses. And game design is turning that process into an art!

Arkholt

I'm not a native speaker of Chinese so I hope someone more qualified than me will comment, but in the study of Chinese that I've done I have found that there are idioms and phrases that are still in use that come from Journey to the West, as well as the other three of the four great works of Chinese literature, most notably Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The authors of those works don't have any kind of prominence in Chinese culture, though. It's more the works themselves that are well known.

Andie

Eh, I don't think Shakespeare's writing in English is the (predominant) reason of being considered one of the best writers of all time. Shakespeare was also a playwright, and I feel that definitely helped his works become more globalized and "seen" and adapted.

John Vinals

I have actually written a whole essay on my Tumblr about how "Hamlet" is all about self-hatred and self-loathing.

Blake Meads

Listening to the Daily Wire people talk about art of any kind is dystopian.

Will Denson

You know, as a Christian, I can’t help but think that Bardolatry from the Religious Right is particularly egregious.

Patrick Pinney

At 1:26:55 I caught a mouse click. Haven't finished the video but so far it's great!

John Vinals
>>184305942

It definitely helps that he was very prolific and his works are all short plays and not 800 page doorstopper behemoths.

shadowbliss

Want to know a Trans person's opinion? Firstly, I HAVE read SOME Shakespeare - Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Nights Dream. I've ALSO read the entirety of Kit Marlowe's plays (I despise The Jew Of Malta). I like reading. Secondly, I do think reverence for an artist to a point where you'll die on a sword for them and their place in society, especially the Shakespeare's of an artform (Mozart to music, Da Vinci for painting), is extremely silly. I'm not saying "don't like what you like" but the idea that "The Artist" needs defending from "MODERN VALUES" is silly, especially if they ARE the kind of artist who has survived transitional periods of human civilization. Like Shakespeare, Mozart and Da Vinci. The balancing act of "I love the work, it was also destructive in its own way" (or even "is destructive in it's own way" for art where the damage is still being done) is just...appreciating art as an adult! Thirdly, (and probably what you're all reading this for): what piece of work is man...these people clearly don't know how Shakespeare was staged. I'm also glad that these men and trans people are on the same page about one thing - we HAVE been around for as long as history. Especially if Shakespeare was writing about us (or not using transfems as actors...). That or he predicted all that with the gift of foresight and stage it in a way that would specifically make the words make no sense (wouldn't the gender conformity message be lost on an audience who saw gender non-conformity in the play itself?), and ALSO risk SOMEONE finding out about said gift of foresight at a time when witchcraft was seen as unambiguously evil. And there's no third option. EITHER Trans people are historical OR Shakespeare had the gift of foresight! Fourthly, these people want to talk about the amazing life of Puritans AND bash transgenderism AND fellate Shakespeare as an amazing writer? I feel like Twelfth Night would make their heads explode. That or...whine about "Shakespeare wrote A WOKE PLAY?!" I also want to end on another "self own" of these people, imagine how bad a Catholic you'd have to be to admit that ONE BOOK is your only source of morality. That one book is the line between you and a immoral lifestyle. That one book - not "basic human kindness"

Kayla Chenault

Speaking of the english major requirements, I went to Christian university and graduated with an English degree and never once did I have to take a "class on Shakespeare." That would be insane in a country where most students have to read at minimum three shakespeare plays in class before graduating high school.

Allan Olley

A quick search tells me Audre Lorde self-described as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” P U left out some of the best parts adding insult to the injury of not using her name. "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" (Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 1) seems like an appropriate response to Prager's entire enterprise.

Alex Mayzlakh

Well, maybe not Tolstoy, but Pushkin - definitely

Frank McManus

When I see those PragerU goobers talking about literature I immediately think of how I first learned poetry, using the methods of "new criticism" (especially via works by Cleanth Brooks and John Ciardi). In retrospect it was not a great overall philosophy (for reasons implied throughout this video), but it was excellent in one respect: it trained students in the close reading of texts; it demanded that we burn through the fog of "appreciating greatness" to see exactly what is going on in the works we read, down to the level of detailed understanding of prosody. So I instinctively rebel against bardolatry or the deeply ignorant discussions of Shakespeare on PragerU. It's as if they hate the actual text of Shakespeare, but are interested in him only insofar as he can be the mouthpiece for their bigotries and ideologies. I suppose in this video, the emphasis on performativity takes a similar role of debunking all that PragerU silliness. As for "new criticism" it now has a quaint quality, and can be seen as rather conservative, but for me, it feels like a necessary foundation to open up the reader to newer critical perspectives that deal with history, biography, politics, race, gender, etc. as well as the many newer ways of understanding the complex relationships between the text and the reader, or the author, actor and audience in Shakespeare's case. All of which is, I guess, meant to say: I love the video, in spite of the absence of new critical perspectives, lol!

Erika

death to fascism