Shakespeare's "amazingness"

[guiani-j]

No, this isn't a hate thread, please bear with me.

I'm doing a school project which involves writing an article about Shakespeare, and I'm stuck at a point. For all the internet has given me, I can't seem to find the one answer I'm looking for about Shakespeare's work. Why his work was so praised. I understand that the themes in his plays were very deep, and universal, and that he did a lot of awesome things with the english language, but I want to know exactly what specific things about his writing, or the way that he wrote his plays that made him the greatest writer in the english language.

I know that this is art we're talking about, and that means that I'm probably gonna be told something like: you have to really experience it to understand it. But this is for a single assignment, and I need factual answer.

[MorpheusSandman]

This is such an immense topic to which you could probably write 1,000 different essays and they'd all be relevant and 'correct' in their own way. Perhaps the greatest accolade I can give to Shakespeare is that he simply did everything extremely well. If we are to break down his works into organicistic elements you can analyze each individual one and fine genius in each. If you merely look at him as a dramatist he crafted plays that were extremely dramatic and, if adapted to modern language, would work solely on that level, yet they also show formal considerations and structure. If you look at him as a poet you find a profound ability to express thought through images and metaphors. He could be pastoral and evoke the beauty of nature, or he could be romantic and express love's poignancy or even foolishness, or ironic, cynical and sardonic in revealing the follies of man. He showed how deeply language was a part of human experience and could express everything from an internal feeling to class differences through how he used it. He could invent words or phrases and use them incredibly imaginative ways and not fall into pretentiousness. He could appeal to a general audience while equally impressing the erudite elite... This latter point is important because of all artists in all mediums there are precious few that's as able to appeal equally to the general public as to the learned and elite; Hitchcock might be an example in film. As a writer of characters he's second to none (though there are those in his class). Because he rarely judges his characters each is like a complex individual that can be read many different ways; just like in real life. He was equally great at creating mythology (and, indeed, Shakespeare is almost his own myth) as deconstructing myth, common beliefs, and really getting underneath the surfaces of life in all its facets. He could write about the highest subjects as well as the 'lowest' and showed that kings and peasants aren't so different, that fools can be wise and wise men fools. He was perpetually able to find the universal in the temporal, and comment on both. He wrote plays that challenged the notions of "comedy" and "tragedy" and could find either or both in one or the other. He had an uncanny ability to take (or even create) aphorisms and find a means to express them that didn't just deliver the idea, but the aesthetic and the feeling. I mean, take, just for a mote example his "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy in its opening lines:

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?"

He phrases a simple question and theme: "to live or die", and then explores the question so evocatively that we sense both the pain of life (suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune) and the futility of "taking up arms against a sea (of troubles)" and ending it all together. He takes a simple metaphor (sea of troubles" and expresses through it the intangibility of inner turmoil and our inability to destroy it without destroying ourselves.

You could also quote what Keats said about poetry (and, through it, Shakespeare):

I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

I can say that I find qualities in many writers to which I find preferable to an individual element in Shakespeare; e.g. I think Milton is a better pure poet and utilized blank verse more brilliantly, was richer, more ornate etc. and I lament the fact that Shakespeare didn't write an epic poem in his mature period (both Lucrece and Venus are vastly inferior to Paradise Lost); but in terms of breadth and depth, no other writer (that I've found) can equal Shakespeare in both. In fact, I'm not sure if any could equal him in breadth, but much less the depths he goes within that breadth. His endurance is due to the fact that our views of his works change and adapt with time and thought, yet they never become obsolete or meaningless. In fact, each new generation finds relevance in his expressions, but our disagreements persist. Shakespeare holds up under all kinds of philosophical thought that came centuries after he wrote them; such as Freudian thought or existentialism.

In short, there is no single element which makes Shakespeare so great; it's how every element comes together to form something much greater than the sum of his parts, and how incredibly rich even those parts are.

[guiani-j]

Humm..thanks. I'm off to converting that into a paragraph.

Joke aside, that is a very impressive description of shakespeare. I have to say I have read some of the verses of his plays, like the "to be or not to be" part of hamlet, and I just can't see any of what you're talking about. It just reads like any other poem.

This doesn't bother me though, considering my age.

Anyway, I'll keep what you said in mind. Hopefully I'll be able to discover his genuis in the future.

[MorpheusSandman]

I think what you need is a bit (okay, a lot) of a historical perspective. Read a lot of literature before Shakespeare; say the classic poems of Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Chaucer and the classic Greek plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes... then perhaps read some poetry of John Donne and the plays of Spencer and Marlowe who directly preceded Shakespeare... what you'll find is a monolithic evolutionary leap in all sorts of areas with Shakespeare. It's easy to say "it just reads like any other poem" when it's become so ingrained into our culture and thoroughly absorbed into all our forms of fiction. Shakespeare's influence is so diffused, so pervasive that I think it would be difficult to pick any English work since his time that didn't contain some of his influence.

I'd also suggest that if you really invest yourself into reading poetry (or any poetic writing such as verse drama or poetic prose) you'll quickly realize the genius of Shakespeare... or maybe it takes life experience. I don't think I would read Hamlet the same if I hadn't lost loved ones in my life. I've experienced, in all the artistic mediums, works about death and being tormented by the concept, but I've yet to see any artist penetrate so deeply into the theme as Shakespeare does in Hamlet. Perhaps Tolstoy gets close (in a completely different way) in The Death of Ivan Illyich, but it certainly can't touch the richness or overall complexity of Hamlet; in its multitudinous themes that it piles around the sides of the central theme of death, in its darkly mysterious portrayal of Hamlet itself, in all its ambiguity and equivocal nature... I'm not well-read enough to say this for certain, but Shakespeare may be the first author who created a work of such unresolved and, perhaps, unresolvable mystery that just opens itself up to such differing interpretations.

I would also highly recommend some reading about Shakespeare; there's so many books out there about him, his work, his influence, his genius... From what I've read I'd recommend The Meaning of Shakespeare vol. 1 and 2 by Harold Goddard, Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber, and perhaps some of the Guides and Companions by Oxford and Cambridge to get started.