Why is Shakespeare so popular?

[AuntShecky]

I don't know,MorpheusSandman, if I'd compare Shakespeare with Hitchcock in any way other than the fact that both artists --divided by over four centuries-- were masters of their respective crafts. The twentieth century filmmaker always struck me as somewhat emotionally cold; that is, I for one find it difficult in any of his movies to detect that Hitchcock felt a drop of the milk of human kindness or any kind of empathy in most if not all of his characters,despite Hitchcock's legendary attraction to platinum blondes.

I get quite the opposite impression with the Bard, though, and I think you've hit the nail straight on with this

Shakespeare had such a profound feel for character, as dramatic characters reveal themselves through speech. While Bloom may have overreached in saying Shakespeare "invented the human," there is undoubtedly in his work a diversity and detail of humanity that we rarely get in writing before him. Most drama before Shakespeare dealt more with archetypes and allegories rather than individualized characters. Chaucer was certainly one Shakespearean model, but even in Chaucer characters can tend more towards caricature than realism. Part of Shakespeare's power is that there probably isn't at least one play in which any reader can find a character they can identify with.

Keats famously coined the term "negative capability" for Shakespeare. Here's the quotation, courtesy of Wikipedia:

had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

I've always understood negative capability to mean an "emptying out" of one's own prejudices as well as all other forms of previously received wisdom in order to create a character in its own uniqueness. Shakespeare had the gift of "selfless receptivity" says Chris Baldick in the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Baldick concludes by stating "Keats seems to have meant a poetric capacity to efface one's own mental identity by immersing it sympathetically and spontaneously within the subject described, as Shakespeare was thought to have done."

One more reference. I searched for and found the following article yesterday, which I originally intended to post in the recent thread discussing the disputed authorship of Shakespeare's plays. But now I think this particular thread might be even more appropriate, as it attempts to explain how and why Shakespeare's achievement continues to fascinate us:

Shakespeare's Leap
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/ma...all&position=&

[The Atheist]

That said, we should be careful of totemising Shakespeare - he is a very great writer, possibly though not uncontestably the greatest in the English language, but nevertheless merely a part of a great and long-lived tradition.

Brilliantly put.

I wish more people realised that.

[stlukesguild]

That said, we should be careful of totemising Shakespeare - he is a very great writer, possibly though not uncontestably the greatest in the English language, but nevertheless merely a part of a great and long-lived tradition.

Loka... if we are speaking of the tradition of English-language literature, I suspect Shakespeare might only be rivaled by Chaucer, Milton, and maybe Blake. If we are speaking of the larger tradition of Western literature, we might suggest Sophocles, Homer, Virgil, Goethe, the Bible, Montaigne, Cervantes, Dante, Tolstoy, and a few others share the pedestal with Shakespeare. I suspect he is idolized by many for the simple fact that they have read little else of such quality. I also suspect that (beyond Morpheus' solid reasons) Shakespeare is as central as he is to the English-speaking world for the simple fact that in many ways... he and the King James Bible establish or solidify "modern" English.

Personally, I believe that it was Shakespeare's brilliance in the invention of character that is his greatest achievement... in spite of the magnificence of his language. In many ways I have long thought of him as something akin to Rembrandt. Shakespeare's characters... like Rembrandt's... strike me as so real... they have such a strength of personality that I feel I know them as well or better than many people I know in my "real" day-to-day life... that I imagine they live or could continue to live beyond the confines of his plays. Cervantes achieves this with the Don and Sancho, Dante with his narrator/invented self, Dickens and of course Chaucer with any number of characters... and there are a slew of other authors who have also achieved this from time to time. But Shakespeare achieves this feat repeatedly... to an extent I feel no other author has rivaled.

[Lykren]

As to whether Shakespeare's language or his characters are the greater achievement, it's probably the case that they are really the same thing. His facility with language not only made possible, but necessitated the creation of individuals whose words reflect the variety of emotional textures Shakespeare can evoke.

[Lokasenna]

Loka... if we are speaking of the tradition of English-language literature, I suspect Shakespeare might only be rivaled by Chaucer, Milton, and maybe Blake. If we are speaking of the larger tradition of Western literature, we might suggest Sophocles, Homer, Virgil, Goethe, the Bible, Montaigne, Cervantes, Dante, Tolstoy, and a few others share the pedestal with Shakespeare. I suspect he is idolized by many for the simple fact that they have read little else of such quality. I also suspect that (beyond Morpheus' solid reasons) Shakespeare is as central as he is to the English-speaking world for the simple fact that in many ways... he and the King James Bible establish or solidify "modern" English.

Yes, I'd agree with those you mention.

[JCamilo]

Well, but Shakespeare narratives are more accessible than Dante or Montaigne, whcih barelly can be adapted like Lamb or people do with SHakespeare since romantic days plus they are not so well adaptable to cinema, for example, which is a huge way to keep popularity those days. The same even in english, he is more accessible than Milton, Spencer or Chaucer and those poets who are good such Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson or Yeats either do not have narratives (lyrical poetry is harder to be adapted, as it became something completely different) and guys like Dickson do not have the same 500 years of tradition yet.

Having hit the top more than 5 times help for his status too.

[English reader]

I appreciate everyone's response, certainly leaves me with more than enough to chew on. I will show some appreciation towards MorpheusSandman's 6th point on how the themes in Shakespeare's plays highlight issues that our modern societies still deal with, and that for one, is a sure enough reason why Shakespeare is still studied today.

[MorpheusSandman]

MorpheusSandman - It is such a JOY to find myself newly associated with a book forum where opinions and critiques are expressed with such clarity, precision and eloquence. I'm sure your post took thought and time to organize with such precision and I just wanted to say that it is very much appreciated. I have copied your comments to my hard drive with no intention of reproducing elsewhere, but to serve both as an instructional narrative with regard to the subject matter as well as an example of how to present my own opinions in the future.

Thanks so much for your kind comment! I have no problem with you reproducing my post anywhere as long as you give me credit for it.

[MorpheusSandman]

I don't know,MorpheusSandman, if I'd compare Shakespeare with Hitchcock in any way other than the fact that both artists --divided by over four centuries-- were masters of their respective crafts. The twentieth century filmmaker always struck me as somewhat emotionally cold; that is, I for one find it difficult in any of his movies to detect that Hitchcock felt a drop of the milk of human kindness or any kind of empathy in most if not all of his characters,despite Hitchcock's legendary attraction to platinum blondes.

I only compared them on one level: their understanding of audience's expectations and reactions. Hitchcock understood, seemingly before anyone else, that audiences didn't really care about the objectives in most plots, they cared about the drama that such warring objectives gave rise to. He coined the term "MacGuffin" to describe the thing that everyone in a film were after that didn't matter a hill of beans to the audience and put it to use in a great many films. He was also the first filmmaker I know of to define the difference between suspense (two characters talking, a bomb is under the table, the audience knows the bomb is there but the characters don't), thriller (neither audience or characters know the bomb is there, bomb goes off), and mystery (audience doesn't know who planted the bomb, but they know they don't know this). He also understood audience identification, which he used to great effect in his late films, especially Psycho and Vertigo. In the former, after Marion is killed, the audience is forced to identify with the murderer, Norman Bates; how's that for a perverse reversal of sympathy? In Vertigo, he initially stages it so that the audience sees the same mystery and mysticism surrounding Madeleine; only to reveal the mystery about midway through, so that now the audience gets to be consciously critical of the delusions of the character whose delusions they just previously shared.

To me, these examples of playing with the audience is similar to what Shakespeare does in many of his later plays. Hamlet is the ultimate example, as what an audience expects of a revenge tragedy is not where the play goes; rather, the genre is just a pretext to analyze the feelings/thoughts that give rise to the desire of revenge to begin with. Hamlet seems to realize that action is itself just an act made to cover up the truth of why we want to take action to begin with, and the more he self-analyzes, the more he realizes that action can't solve what's really been lost from his world (the sense of truth and security he had being the prince to a godlike king and queen). Hamlet is THE play about disillusionment, just like Vertigo is THE film about disillusionment; and while they both have distinctly different situations and paths that reach that disillusionment, and different thematic applications, they both rely on a knowledge of their audience to create their effect. Though there are other examples as well; even as far back as Titus Andronicus where Shakespeare seems to be parodying the extremes of the revenge tragedy, pushing it to ridiculously grotesque levels; or Richard III, which only allows us to identify/sympathize with the protagonist/villain; or Taming of the Shrew, whose intro seems to stress that what the audience is witnessing is a pathetic fantasy version of how reality is.

It's true that Hitchcock was colder and more calculating than Shakespeare, but I do think in some later Shakespeare there is a certain emotional distance from what's going on. It's difficult to identify with anyone in Lear, up until Lear's grief over Cordelia's death, and much the same could be said about Coriolanus and Othello. Even those the characters are written as if they feel deeply, I don't think we can typically sympathize because, as an audience, we know too much about what's going on, so we take a more critical approach. This is not dissimilar to the effect of Hitch's "suspense" idea, that because we know the truth were become more objective and critical, we "know more" than the characters. That's one reason I think Hamlet and Vertigo are so effective, because the audience is made, at least through much of these works, as clueless and confused as the characters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/ma...all&position=&

Thanks for the link, and a very good article. Of course, Greenblatt is one of the eminent Shakespearean scholars. I have the Oxford edition of the plays that he edited.

[MorpheusSandman]

I suspect he is idolized by many for the simple fact that they have read little else of such quality.

Hmmm, it seems rather the opposite to me: that those who've read the most tend to idolize Shakespeare much more, while those who've read little tend to dislike or not get Shakespeare's appeal at all. Harold Bloom is about the biggest Shakespeare fanboy on Earth, and nobody would accuse him of having read little else of quality.

[MorpheusSandman]

As to whether Shakespeare's language or his characters are the greater achievement, it's probably the case that they are really the same thing. His facility with language not only made possible, but necessitated the creation of individuals whose words reflect the variety of emotional textures Shakespeare can evoke.

Yeah, I tried to stress this in my initial post; that his gift for language was necessary to create the characters he did, as the characters are wholly made up of language, in how they speak.

[Pierre Menard]

As has already been alluded to and explained, it's the language and the character and rightly pointed out above, how both are intertwined and create one another. Falstaff doesn't exist without the language Shakespeare gives him, his relationship with Prince Hal doesn't exist in any real way without the different ways Shakespeare writes their words and the way those words feed off one another.

I've seldom read a writer of such richness. I've read Hamlet three times only, but each time something different jumped out at me, effecting me in different ways. I re-read his Sonnets and find something I didn't realise was there the first time I read it, and so on. And he can handle just about any style: witty, gallows-humour, low-brow, high-brow, tragic, satirical, etc, etc.