The Ordanence Survey being the perfect example in terms of detail, Atlases being more facts/knowledge about a place, and what everything actually means.Originally Posted by Eiseabhal
The Ordanence Survey being the perfect example in terms of detail, Atlases being more facts/knowledge about a place, and what everything actually means.
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost:
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
I agree with Eiseabhal that maps are not obsolete and they can give more information. I particularly like reading maps that show historical or geographic trends.
I also agree with JCamillo that I am "reading" the app. That comment surprises me in a way. Perhaps I could generalize reading to include listening to the directions from the GPS that tell me when to make a turn or how far to proceed down a street. It is not normally what we think of as "reading", but it gathers information from a source that is not the actual street in front of me. Perhaps we could call all of these devices "texts" since they project onto something else what it is we will be experiencing subjectively.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
The only movie script I've ever read was Star Wars: A New Hope. It was basically everything that existed on screen but without the visuals. I liked it less than the movie. The novelization I actually preferred because it added things like descriptions which gave my imagination something extra to play with. Keep in mind I read both when I was 9, so I wasn't the best judge of aesthetics. The only other time I've read parts of scripts were instances when the film never got made. Stanley Kubrick died without ever lensing a frame of his Napoleon script.
I have to disagree with you about watching Shakespeare's plays over reading them. There is nothing worse than watching bad Shakespeare. In fact, I would go so far as to state that Shakespeare is the most bungled author on stage or in cinema. Every no talent actor, director, and set designer wants a crack at him. Since the words are only about twenty or thirty percent of a performance, this becomes a recipe for mediocrity, where Shakespeare's excellent lines create an awful contrast with the shallow banality of the rest of the production. Baz Luhrmann's production of Romeo + Juliet starring Leonardo DiCaprio should be listed as a crime against humanity by the Hague. Access to the text is critical to deconstructing how the language works. The actual play has so many other components that isolating the excellent words is complicated by all the other distractions going on be they sets, costumes, makeup, acting, music, props, lighting, dancing, or special effects.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
I agree that some performances of Shakespeare can turn his tragedies into comedies and make his comedies rank lower than Mall Cop 2. The scripts are still valuable. I also need subtitles when watching his plays so I am still reading them for better understanding. However, watching even a badly performed play is better than only reading a Wikipedia summary of the plot although that summary is still valuable. When I was in high school there were few alternatives to reading the script. Now there are many ways to approach those plays.
For some songs that I enjoy, I search out a YouTube version with the lyrics printed. This does help me focus on the words and is closer to reading than just listening to the song.
Last edited by YesNo; 02-20-2016 at 11:07 AM.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
Shakespeare's plays were originally meant to be experienced from the stage-- and I think they still are. Alot of the drama of the plays, etc. are moved by the stage.
Film scripts rely alot on the visual, in fact, I think it was George Lucas who said the writing in Star Wars took a backseat to the set design, costumes, action, etc. With Shakespeare this isn't necessarily the case, though alot of the plot-moving action in, say Hamlet, takes place on the stage or cues, and not necessarily in the prose (like conversely Don Quixote).
I would say that I often read Shakespeare plays before going to see them performed or in film, and that I am able to follow it much better because the language moves fast and has alot of dense wordplay or words that have become arcane. Maybe in his time this went by easier, but I've read quite a bit of Shakespeare, and if I haven't read the play before going to it I sometimes get lost or there are stretches where I don't know precisely what they are talking about, or small things go over my head.
I think that, even at a time when people hardly read books anymore, Shakespeare still has the last word about the human being. It is all there in those plays and poems written so many centuries ago. They are about human passions, human conquests and losses and the irony of fate. They tell of kings and clowns, of men and women, about the "real" world and the stuff dreams are made of. And all written in a language cintilating with metaphers and word games.
These are plays to read and enact.
I remember reading a script version of E.T. (not the actual script, but a more descriptive version) to my son as a bedtime story, and it was very enjoyable. We were especially struck by a line that went,"And he was...something...something... million light years from home." There are many novels that have been made into movies that surpassed the original text, but I cannot recall any instance of it happening the other way around - no great novels have been made from great movies!
In Shakespeare's case he did write with the direct intention of them being performed, he being part of an acting troupe and all, and there is an unbroken tradition of his plays being performed on stage from his time till now, but the fact is the plays work very well as texts that can be read, and that is why we are reading Shakespeare - not because they are great plays (which they are) but because they are also great literary texts. Millions of readers down the ages have considered them the best thing they've ever read. I'm curious to know whether people think the plays (when performed well of course) are the best plays ever. For myself, I've never seen a single performance of a Shakespeare play, so I do not have an opinion.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
I have seen two live performances of Midsummer Night's Dream long ago which I thought were entertaining enough for me but were probably performed poorly. I've seen ten or so of his plays as videos over the past few years, including Midsummer Night's Dream, since the library has them. If I compare those videos to modern movies, I think I would rather watch a modern movie, but then I am a cultural cretin, so my opinion doesn't really count.
Supposedly I read Hamlet in high school long ago in the technological dark ages when the only way to experience Shakespeare was to read texts. I got an undeserved A in the class. It wasn't until I saw a DVD of Hamlet a few years ago that I realized he died at the end along with a bunch of others. (I hope I didn't spoil the ending for anyone.)
Last edited by YesNo; 02-22-2016 at 02:00 AM.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
Because Shakespeare wrote to be read as well as performed. That should be quite obvious to anyone who has studied his works.
The assertion that Shakespeare should only be watched is terribly one-sided and mutilates half of the artistry of his drama by ripping Shakespeare out of the literary tradition of poets such as Ovid, Petrarch, Chaucer etc. which he was consciously working within and reshaping on the stage.
It's basically philistinism by people who don't care about good verse.
Last edited by Adonais; 02-26-2016 at 03:41 AM.
I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate statement though. Most of the plays were not published to be read during his lifetime. However, some like Hamlet are clearly too long to have ever been performed entirely on the Elizabethan stage. A case could be made that Shakespeare did intend his plays to be primarily performed, since while he did write poetry he never wrote a closet drama (like those of Seneca) which are intended to be read and not performed. Just because something contains poetry does not mean it was intended to be read, poetry can be an oral tradition like that of Homer. Jonson's masques were also likely not intended to be read, the poetry was conceived of as part of a spectacle alongside Inigo Jones' presumably expert sets and costumes.
Now I do agree it's silly to say that one should never read Shakespeare and only experience it as a play. However, I also think you lose a lot when reading the language and not appreciating it as something conceived of as part of a performance. It's always possible to break down elements of a work and comment on the parts on their own merits.
Last edited by OrphanPip; 02-26-2016 at 04:02 AM.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Actually no, most of them were. For example, Hamlet was published in 1603 and King Lear in 1608, both probably very soon after they were first written and performed.
Except as you say, Hamlet is too long to be performed in its entirety. Indeed, the scripts we have of Shakespeare's plays would likely have been chopped and changed for individual performance (as they are for performances nowadays). As for Homer, Archaic Greece was an illiterate society with no literary tradition, so I don't really see the comparison as useful.
I don't disagree that Shakespeare was writing plays for performance instead of closet dramas, that's self-evident. My point is that within these dramas he was at the same time consciously writing a piece of literature. That's part of Shakespeare's genius to be able to operate on two levels at once.
I agree that something can be missed when considered without a performance. But really, Shakespeare's language is far more a literary than a dramatic construction, and Shakespeare is a far greater poet than he is a dramatist. If anything, more will be missed by only watching Shakespeare and never reading him than vice-versa.
A good example is something like in Act 1 Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet, where beginning "If I profane with my unworthiest hand" the dialogue between Romeo and Juliet is in the form of a sonnet. Shakespeare is playing a literary joke here, and it's one the viewing public would not have been able to get.
Last edited by Adonais; 02-26-2016 at 04:26 AM.
Only half of them were published before he died, and it's unknown if Shakespeare had a direct role in the publication of any of the quarto editions. If Shakespeare cared a lot about the textual aspect we might expect him to get involved in the publishing like Ben Jonson did. Yet, we don't really have much indication of his interest in the textual life of the plays after they were performed. We are also left to deal with the question of the irregularity in the publishing. Even taking the example from Romeo and Juliet, the first published quarto of the play is missing large portions of the play and contains several errors. Most scholars think this quarto was reconstructed from an actor's memory. The second quarto at least has some direct connection to Shakespeare because it seems to have come from a rough draft or "foul papers" version of the play, but even that edition is incomplete as it's missing stage directions that are found in the first quarto. To get to the modern polished Romeo and Juliet took editors piecing together changes made to the draft that managed to be recorded for the first quarto. If Shakespeare wanted Romeo and Juliet to be read as a piece of literature why did he do such a poor job of ensuring his literary vision was published as he imagined it. Jonson went out of his way to make polished copies for his publishers.
Of course I agree that the text can be read as a great piece of literature, but I don't think this was necessarily intentional.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
The best point is that publishing was something quite different in that time than to us now. Publishing his plays would have little effect on his ambition to be recognized as a great poet, so it is unlikely he bothered to pursue it hard, while he probally wouldn't ignore his own skill to use poetry while writting them.
But this is silly, people read dramas for pleasure since ever, people write verses as if they are meant to be only read and never performed almost as long. We are not that dumb to not understand (or imagine) the action between the lines of Shakespeare's plays and his poetic skill was enough to make the text interesting.
What makes you think the educated part of his audience wouldn't have got it. Course they were written to be performed.
who said they got it after it was performed?
Shakespeare is complex, it is hard to "go it" even for the educated audience today. So is Dante, and dante didnt write to be perfomed.
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