I'd like to second that reccomendation emphatically. Bloom's book is a delight to read in itself, quite apart from being a real incentive to go on to the plays.Originally Posted by reader
I'd like to second that reccomendation emphatically. Bloom's book is a delight to read in itself, quite apart from being a real incentive to go on to the plays.
I'm nobody, who are you?
Are you nobody too?
There's a pair of us, don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know!
How dreary to be somebody!
i don't think much of shakespeare either. i read julius caeser and didn't think much of it. apparently it was supposed to be a comedy, which is strange because they virtually all died, or killed thenselves-which is something his characters always seem to do. i'm no expert on it though-i studied romeo and juliet, but julius caeser's the only one i've read!! anyway, i don't think he bothered to expand enough on his characters emotions and personality and experiences for it to be deep and meaningful instead of melodramatic. but i am just an idiot spouting a self-righteous opinion of something i know nothing about after all. i don't think u can wish he never existed at all though, because no matter what you think of his writing, u must admit he made a HUGE contribution to literature and the human language in general. he created a lot of great quotes, and maybe if i read more of his plays i'd like them, because the sheer power of his plays is what's kept them going all this time-the power of his language.
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
(Mark Twain)
I like Shakespeare's works.
You're not an idiot Fayefaye. That you have your opinoin is in no way a sign that you're dumb or something.
And I'm glad Shakespeare lived. Even though I have more work do be done at school, because next term we're going to study Hamlet. But then so we are going to do The Scarlet Letter, Moll Flanders and more I can't remember just now. If the authors didn't live, we shouldn't have to learn about their works, sure, but we would have much less good things to read... And probably would have to learn about awful stuff. This way we (or at least I) get to study something nice.
I have a plan: attack!
I would like to reiterate that watching a shakespeare production is much more entertaining than reading one, but even better is acting in one. I always enjoyed the bard's plays, but I never truly appreciated how incredibly deep they are until I had the oppertunity to play in Hamlet. That gave a world of insite to what shakespeare was trying to say about human nature.
...Also baby duck hat would be good for parties.
Well, a little off topic:
IWilKikU, who did you portray in Hamlet?
( And no, you won't come even near me, so sorry, no kicking...
)
I have a plan: attack!
I was Claudius. It was just a collegiate performance, but it still gave me a much better understanding of the play
...Also baby duck hat would be good for parties.
i'd love to watch a shakespeare prod. never have though. cry
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
(Mark Twain)
you're right Blackadder.Shakespeare may not be an easy read for all.but if you feel the message is important enough,trudging thru it is worth it to get to the end result.believe me.i would have have to say the hardest read for me ever is John Updike.ive had two books of his for ages and have never finished either.(Couples And Witches Of Eastwicke).now he is REALLY hard to get into.have patience with it ajoe,its worth it.
Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying-Stephen King:Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redmption.
Two Roads Diverged In A Wood,And I,I Took The One Less Traveled By.And That Has Made All The Difference.-The Road Not Taken:Robert Frost.
Shakespeare is of great importance to the modern world. Some of his "lesser" plays suck, but when you consider how many there are of them, that is understandable. Look at any Director, and ask yourself if he has not produced a film that is crappy.
All of the commercially available editions of Shakespeare's plays that I have EVER come across have been in modern English. Although I have had a look at some of the unedited 16th century texts for purely academic reasons, I can safely say you'd find them significantly harder to read than you do the ones you are probably more familiar with. Consider it half-way between Shakespeare as you know it, and Chaucer's middle English.
As any literary scholars here can testify, Chaucer's middle English is relatively easy (compare that to the Petersbrough chronicle, for example) to follow middle English, and Anglo-Saxon is about as challenging again.
If you fancy a challenge, read "The Dream of the Rood" in the original Old English, and then come back and say "Shakespeare's hard"
I can't think of any Shakespeare play that doesn't have at least one bit in it that justifies the epithet "brilliant."
From the first post, I would surmise that the individual is not very familiar with dramatic conventions contemporary to Shakespeare. While this might seem "boring" and "beside the point" to some, I personally find it comparably interesting to the texts, and as it makes them more readable, and the implications therein more sophisticated, certainly useful.
I think the MAJOR fault in weighing up an Elizabethan play is placing too much importance on the *story* - at that point the Narrative was very much beside the point. Most of "the bard's" plays are based around borrowed material. Due to the lack of copyright laws at the time, polts were stolen remorselessly, and often a playwrite would find his idea on show at other theatres.
The brilliance of Shakespeare is in the language. Rhetoric was comparable to the arias of Opera today, IE the plot was merely a vehicle for the 'music'. People went to listen to the rhetoric, not just see a sword fight, etc.
Also, the context of the plays are important, as Elizabethan England is a very different world to the one which any of us live in (some more than others for the ahem 'foreigners' posting here) and as such a casual reader might overlook something significant and pointed, or else put too much emphasis on something which back then would've been common-place and thus of no particular interest.
Lastly (it is late, or rather, VERY VERY early here, so I will have to sum up) a 'novice' Shakespeare reader will often fail to appreciate that he is reading a play, and thus a lot of the technical significance and difficulties in performing a play will be overlooked. When, for example, a character is going on about how it is blacker than a sooty cloth down a well, it is not because Shakespeare is going on, but because the audience needs to know why an actor walking around a stage in direct sunlight in the middle of the day can't see the object 3 feet from him. Likewise, the reason why long diatribes about romance are so important is because at the time, women were not allowed to act. Thus, no boobs or hanky-panky could be acted (well, that is not strictly true, as Stoppard points out in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead - itself reason enough for Shakespeare-not-writing to be abhorent) thus language was the only way to convey the emotion.
I could go on about pioneering special effects, etc but it is late.
Hope this is even a little bit informative. If so, I may continue my ramblings onto the topic of the Globe theatre.
That's it in a nutshell. As with any artist, his brilliance is to be judged in how he uses his materials. We judge Michelangelo on how he crafted rock and paint, not on his subject matter or even the realistic accuracy of his work. (Any first year art student will tell you that the proportions of The Pieta are entirely wrong. Mary would stand about 9.5 feet tall if her thighs were as long as Michelangelo made them.)
Shakespeare's use of words is innovative, beautifully poetic, and infinitely careful. He is a master craftsman with language. Unfortunately this is the technical side of the art, the toughest for the neophyte to appreciate.
Hey, keep rambling! It's good stuff, and I wholeheartedly agree.
BTW, if anyone here wants a taste of the Old English language, check out my sig (minus the great eth, thorn, and ashe symbols as I couldn't get them to show up.)
I've always had a great love of books, but as I'm studying them seriously for grades, I'm finding that I enjoy them more when I have a background for the writer and the story. I think some people underestimate all that extra-textual stuff and really miss the point of the story, or play when they skip over it. All three of my Shakespeare proffs, have gone out of their way to have us read all those "piles of info" that other people run away from, just because it's more reading. It really makes it much easier and less stressfull when you have a background.
Ok, I'm done with my analysis of those who can't appreciate Shakespeare.
Hwæt! We Gar-Dena in geardagum,/Þeodcuninga þrum gefrunon,/hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,/ monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,/ egsode eorlas, syððan ærest wearð/ feasceaft funden; he þæs frofre gebad,/ weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,/ oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra/ofer hronrade hyran scolde,/gomban gyldan. Þæt wæs god cyning!
I'm new to these boards, and I have to say this discussion is fantastic. I'm sure many Shakespeare novices have felt at one time or another the way our young friend here does, and the responses have been both informative and inspiring.
I must add, I think, that in addition to Shakespeare's genuis being language; it is as much what that language conveys. His insight, his understanding of all things human is in many ways even more representative of his genuis than just his word usage alone. He uses the words in a way that conveys a message or emotion much more completely than our plebeian language of today. It never ceases to amaze me how I can read a passage a million or more times, and then suddenly, in an instant, the many layers and depth of meaning become brilliantly clear to me. There is in fact a quote in Midsummer Night's Dream that is extremely apropo for this discussion, and is one such passage that I fully understood only recently. In Act 2 Scene 2 Lysander says:
"The will of man is by his reason sway'd;
And reason says you are the worthier maid.
Things growing are not ripe until their season
So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason;
And touching now the point of human skill,
Reason becomes the marshal to my will"
Sometimes it helps me to read and reread, and then like some have suggested hear or see, and read again. Although it may seem tedious, like a chore, there are very few things that give me as much pleasure as fully comprehending one of The Bard's finer, deeper points in a moment of clarity.
A group of actors played The Merchant of Venice in my school.
If I hadn't read the play, I doubt I would have understood half of what I did. The language is difficult to wade through.
Hamlet is amazing, though.
Okay, on a lighter note, here is a nice short story Isaac Asimov, a writer who is prolific as he is topping my charts as a favourite, wrote on Shakespeare. It's hilarious!
http://rsise.anu.edu.au/~daa/coffee/bard.html
Last edited by Luckdragon; 11-11-2004 at 08:05 AM.
Okay, guys, as I'm asleep as you already know, I won't go further than say that I love Shakespeare ever since I read the Charles & Mary Lamb Classic when I was very young, and have read/seen many of his plays (and a few sonnets) since then. So I love Shakespeare, that's established. He was a fantastic author who had a profound influence on anyone able to read and write today, and even those who have never opened one of his books. He left us almost 20 000 words, either of his own creation or that he simply was first to record.
And with the phrases, yes,
And also "Being cruel to be kind" (from Hamlet), of course among others, as you stated..........A dish fit for the gods - Julius Caesar
A foregone conclusion - Othello
A laughing stock - The Merry Wives of Windsor
A sorry sight - Macbeth
All that glitters is not gold - The Merchant of Venice
All's well that ends well - All's Well That Ends Well
As dead as a doornail - Henry VI............
Well, off to bed *refrains from ya-ya-yawwwnning*
Mmselle. Darcy
After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
-Aldous Huxley
Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
-W. A. Mozart
Non scholae, sed vitae discimus.
Not school, but life teaches us.
You Have Not Lived Or Loved
Hi,,,no hard feelings,,,,
YOU HAVE NOT LIVED OR LOVED .....you are "missing the forest for the trees"....it is beautiful! You have to go to another level beyond the written word...through interpretation and emotion and possibly experience,,,but, I "GOT" these in 6th grade due to extensive reading as a child.
Shakespeare is not SHAKESPEARE for nothing!
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