What is so good about Shakespeare?

[Mise]

Sure, I certainly know people who are deeply into that aspect of a film. Not me personally, but I understand the appeal. We're very much in "esoteric" territory now though

 

[Gori the Grey]

No, I'm just asking can one appreciate it in those various ways: “watch it once in the theater, visually overwhelmed, but getting the visual gist, and that’s it,” all the way through “frame-by-frame-it for the deepest, most technical level of appreciation”? I'm not asking about the kinds of people who do the latter. (I can already guess: they’re high-priests in the CGI mystery cult).

And you seem to have answered yes, one can take it in in that range of ways. And Valka answers yes, below. That's all I need.

I just need a metaphor for a shift that will happen once we move from listening to reading.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

No disrespect, but religion covers a lot more than this. It's possible that you need to familiarize yourself with more models of 'religion' to appreciate what we mean by the term.

It absolutely makes no sense to me to use the word "cult" about Shakespeare.

I'm not disputing that the beauty of some works, or indeed the comprehensibility of some works, requires multiple listenings/viewings/readings. I'm not disputing that there are verbal artforms that do not expect 100% comprehensibility on first listen. What I'm disputing is your assertion that these artforms are accessible. I don't believe that an artform that requires multiple viewings (a significant investment of time and effort) can be called accessible. One wonders what would count as inaccessible to you, if not something that requires multiple repeat listenings and hours of dedicated study to understand. Is Latin inaccessible to someone who can't speak Latin? Is machine code? Is modern art? What could possibly be considered inaccessible to you?


No, I don't hold "full comprehensibility on first experience" as any standard of excellence. I hold it as a standard of accessibility.

So anything you don't fully understand the first time around is inaccessible? However did you get through school without giving up?

Some books need more than one read to get a better understanding of them. I've mentioned C.J. Cherryh's novels Cyteen and Regenesis. I've read Cyteen numerous times and Regenesis for the third time. They're complex books, and I defy anyone except the author herself to fully grasp everything 100% on the first reading. They're as much philosophy and ethics as science fiction story, and every time I read them, I understand more than I did the last time. Does this make these books inaccessible?

In the sense that it is a cultural clique that they want to buy into, yes, I think that this plays a huge role in whether a kid listens to rap music a second time, or says "ugh, this is awful" and goes back to Green Day or whatever. All musical genres are more or less just as artistically worthwhile as each other; there's really not much separating rap from rock or classical or pop music in terms of musical attributes that a child might appreciate. The only difference is the culture they grow up in and the cultural clique (which in this thread we've been calling a "cult") they want to buy into.

"Cultural clique" is a more palatable term than "cult." It's still negative, but not as offensive.

Catholics venerate Mary, they don't worship her; she's a saint, not a deity. (Have you ever actually met a Catholic?) Shakespeare is also a venerated figure, and given his all-but-official status as one of the Great Men of Western culture, I don't think it would be tremendous overstatement to describe him as something amounting to a secular saint.

Oh. Please. People pray to Mary and other saints. They bow and kneel in front of their statues and pictures. They make gestures meaningful to their fellow believers but nobody else.

Nobody recites prayers to Shakespeare, asks for his blessing, or kneels in front of his statues, pictures, or books.

"Secular saint" sounds like "atheism is really a religion." It really isn't, and while I have a lot of respect for what Shakespeare accomplished, that doesn't mean I venerate him.

And yes, I've met a lot of Catholics. What does that have to do with anything?

We’re about to examine a passage from Much Ado. But before we do, could I try out another metaphor. Do you, does anyone who’s following this thread, find some modern special-effects-based movies visually overwhelming: providing visual information that is cool and impressive and enjoyable, but that on a first viewing you feel like you get just the gist of it, and that if you watch it a second time, you notice more things about it? and if you watched it in slow motion, you’d notice even more things that the CGI guys had included in the scenes? and if you freeze-framed it and watched it frame by frame, you’d maybe notice even more elements of its visual effect and impressiveness? Will someone grant me that this represents how some graphically intensive movies operate and how their visual information could be appreciated?

Certainly. That's what happened with me when I watched the latest nuTrek movie. It was an overload of visuals and too much to take in and understand the first time.

However, repeated viewings didn't help my impression that it was a piece of crap that did the opposite of what the Original Series did: put more money into the actual storytelling instead of the extraneous nonsense that just interferes with the story instead of enhancing it.

 

[warpus]

Would "Cult of personality" apply here, or is that only used wrt to people who are still alive and are pushing their own image to the world?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Would "Cult of personality" apply here, or is that only used wrt to people who are still alive and are pushing their own image to the world?

According to Wikipedia, Shakespeare doesn't seem to fit the definition.

 

[Tarquelne]

@ Tarq, is there such a novel? with the word protoust, I mean. Are you thinking of an actual novel, is what I'm asking?

No. It would have been more clear if I'd said "imagining a hypothetical novel."

I meant that the (hypothetical) obscure word was protoust in addition to being obscure, not that the word was "protoust."

 

[Gori the Grey]

It's just that I like the word protoust, is all.

I also like the idea of a whole, relatively straightforward novel, with just one incomprehensible word. I guess people would treat it like a typo. Some versions of Moby Dick had a reference to a "soiled fish" and literary critics waxed lyrical over how resonant an image that was. Then something turned up that showed Melville had written coiled fish. I don't know if this is the exact story, but there's a story from lit crit that runs like that.

 

[Mise]

No, I'm just asking can one appreciate it in those various ways: “watch it once in the theater, visually overwhelmed, but getting the visual gist, and that’s it,” all the way through “frame-by-frame-it for the deepest, most technical level of appreciation”? I'm not asking about the kinds of people who do the latter. (I can already guess: they’re high-priests in the CGI mystery cult).

And you seem to have answered yes, one can take it in in that range of ways. And Valka answers yes, below. That's all I need.

I just need a metaphor for a shift that will happen once we move from listening to reading.

Ok, well, I reserve the right to continue the metaphor and call it an esoteric pursuit nonetheless. I.e. we call those people esoteric (amongst other, much less polite things) because they get hardons for CGI in films, yet we call Shakespeare lovers "cultured" when they do the same thing with Shakespeare.

 

[Angst]

Let me be clear. There is no cult. Shakespeare is a literary figure, not a religious figure.

I find it disturbing how so many people can make clear-cut distinctions between the two.

And honestly, his use of cult is obviously metaphorical. And it's not even that difficult a metaphor to understand. You spend way too much time going through minute the details of the metaphor rather than appreciate his criticism of the power of mediation (what the commoners would call "hype").

THERE IS NO CULT OF SHAKESPEARE. HE IS NOT A RELIGIOUS FIGURE AND WE DO NOT WORSHIP HIM.

Those kneejerks and your insultiveness undermine your own position significantly.

And incidentally; the academic embellishment and remediation of Shakespeare is really worship-y in its nature. It's weird that you should take this so personal.

EDIT Traitorfish said it better.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I find it disturbing how so many people can make clear-cut distinctions between the two.

You don't think there are clear-cut distinctions between religious figures and authors?

Those kneejerks and your insultiveness undermine your own position significantly.

And incidentally; the academic embellishment and remediation of Shakespeare is really worship-y in its nature. It's weird that you should take this so personal.

"Insultiveness"? WTH?

How can it be insulting to state that there is no Shakespeare-worshipping cult (that I know of; if you've found one, please link to a reputable source to prove to me it exists)?

I'm atheist, and if I prefer not to worship, venerate, perform archaic rituals, etc. to some deity or saint, what makes you think I'd do that for a writer?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Well, now we get to the riskiest moment in the unfolding of my argument. We’re going to turn to a passage Mise indicates that he did not understand during his viewing of Much Ado.

If I eludicate the passage, I risk coming across as that high priest Pangur Ban warned us about, divulging those “hidden meanings” and “mysteries.” And if, at any time, Mise reports that he feels as though I am a priest leading him, an initiate, into the “mysteries” of Shakespeare, then I lose my argument with Pangur Ban. So I must tread carefully. Because I don’t want to lose my argument!

(Mise is the perfect person for this role, incidentally, clearly unbiased, because his first comment on this thread found some truth in what Pangur Ban was saying and some truth in what I was saying)

I don’t want act as a priest. I want to be understood a little like warpus described himself in post 139 (as an analogy for how he thought his teachers, with their boners for Shakespeare, felt about sharing him with their students):

let's say you see a hilarious obscure movie on TV and are trying to tell your friends about it the next day.. but they're just not getting it, because "you just had to be there". But you really wish they could laugh with you and appreciate what you watched as if they were there.

I just want to be a dude who watched the same movie as Mise, but where he gave it a 3/5, I give it a 5/5, and I’m trying to tell him why I liked it so much more than he did. Anyway, among the things that made him give the movie the lesser mark, he says, is that he didn’t understand why they decided to fake Kate Beckinsale’s death.

So, well, one thing I can do, anyway, is play that stretch back for him in slow motion (that’s the only reason I needed the CGI metaphor):

After Claudio has accused Hero of being unfaithful/promiscuous, and Hero has swooned, the Friar steps in to propose to Hero’s father Leonato a course of action:

Pause awhile,
And let my counsel sway you in this case.
Your daughter here the princes left for dead:
Let her awhile be secretly kept in,
And publish it that she is dead indeed;
Maintain a mourning ostentation
And on your family's old monument
Hang mournful epitaphs and do all rites
That appertain unto a burial.

Leonato asks what good that will do, and the Friar says this:

Marry, this well carried shall on her behalf
Change slander to remorse; that is some good:
But not for that dream I on this strange course,
But on this travail look for greater birth.
She dying, as it must so be maintain'd,
Upon the instant that she was accused,
Shall be lamented, pitied and excused
Of every hearer: for it so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack'd and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours. So will it fare with Claudio:
When he shall hear she died upon his words,
The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination,
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit,
More moving-delicate and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of his soul,
Than when she lived indeed; then shall he mourn,
If ever love had interest in his liver,
And wish he had not so accused her,
No, though he thought his accusation true.

He goes on, but that’s quite enough. So my first question for Mise is, when the words aren’t whizzing by you at their own speed, but you can take them in at whatever pace you like , what do you make of this explanation for letting out that Hero has died? I’m more interested in the second passage; I gave the first just for set-up.

Please note that, in the phrasing “what do you make of,” I tried to concoct as open-ended a question as I could. I am explicitly NOT asking, “do you understand it now?” though you are of course welcome to speak to that, including giving the percentage of it you feel you take in with this way of experiencing the lines. I am not asking “does this give a plausible explanation for faking Hero’s death?” which is the concern of yours that brought us to these lines, though you’re of course welcome to speak to that. I’m not asking if you find it good writing, though you are welcome to speak to that. If it reminds you of your Uncle Ted, you are welcome to speak to that. If Pangur’s term “mysterious” describes your experience, you should feel free to say that. In other words, just report your reading experience.

One important condition (to get out in front of an objection I anticipate): you are to spend only as much time working on this passage as the passage itself warrants. As long as you’re finding something interesting or engaging or enjoyable about it, you should keep reading it and considering it. As soon as you don’t any longer, you should stop immediately. If you happen to get a rough estimate of how long that turns out to be, it would be great.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

x-post

As I understand the word worship, it does not necessarily imply supernatural powers in the sense you mean, while implying them in the sense which seems to escape your grasp.
There is the outright assumption of supernaturality - for instance with saints. But there is also an implicit assumption of supernaturality.
To illustrate, I could perhaps cite the article on Messis statistical abilities. For info - Messi is supposed to be the best football player in the world. To prove so, an artikle recently posted aorund here showed with statistically menas how extraordinary different Messi is to everyone else. It bore the headline "Messi is impossible". That is worship. While it is not assumed that Messi actually has magical powers - he is kind of viewed as he did. Just too good to be true. Beyond everything else. A God among men. You get the picture. And while all this is perhaps less worshippy than the worship of an outright supernatural phenomena - it can get pretty close. Close enough that it is useful to just view them as different kinds of the same phenomena: worship. After all - the prime instincts of it, the essence of it is a very human phenomena. And such phenomena do not that much care about intellectual lines like outright or implicit supernaturalism. They come from the heart and not the mind after all.

So if a guy who is good in kicking around a ball can be worshiped - Shakespeare supposedly can be, too.

edit: However, Valka, it is of course entirely possible that you personally do not worship Shakespeare. Yet, that you even bothered to invest the necessary energy to appreciate Shakespeare may still be the result of a general phenomena of such worship. So in the end you could still be part of it. Just indirectly.

 

[Tarquelne]

You don't think there are clear-cut distinctions between religious figures and authors?

Did you know that Dune is fairly commonly referred to as a "cult novel." Go ahead and look it up. It's far from the most common way to refer to it ... as it is with pretty much any "cult" novel. But it's out there.

That would make Herbert a "cult" author.

A "literary cult" is a group that has what many consider - ("what many consider" is all it really takes for this cult-ness) - a strangely zealous appreciation for the author, or his or her works. (Thus my mention of the RHPS, which is the text-book example of a "cult movie.")

This is not some new way to use the word "cult" that people in this thread are making up. No one will supply you with links about sincerely religious Shakespeare worship because that's not what they're talking about. Google "cult novel," or "literary cult."

(BTW:Bardolatry refers to the mostly 19th-cent(?) idolization of "the Bard.")

"Insultiveness"? WTH?

How can it be insulting to state that there is no Shakespeare-worshipping cult

Especially given what he wrote immediately before this, I assume he means your dismissive and contemptuous insistence for using an inappropriate meaning of the word "cult" rather than the more appropriate one that has been pointed out to you several times. Even TF's "Marian" post was just trying to highlight the essential difference.

Or, in other words, what seems to be purely stubborn refusal to consider their argument, instead focusing only on your narrow definition - despite numerous attempts to explain - is kinda insulting.

It wouldn't really be insulting if you were simply too stupid to understand. But I know you're not stupid.

If you want to defeat someone's argument you take it in it's best form. If you won't admit anything but your own worse-case interpretation, you demonstrate nothing more than perversity and defiance.

I'm atheist, and if I prefer not to worship, venerate, perform archaic rituals, etc. to some deity or saint, what makes you think I'd do that for a writer?

Your zealous appreciation of Herbert, which at times seems to have bordered on the obsessive. Your vehement loathing of nuDune, which you bring up rather often and discuss with considerable, if negative, enthusiasm. Your online-skirmishes with "schismatics."

All that, in the sense that people have been using the bloody word, demonstrates you are the member of a literary cult.

I'm happy that you know what "cult" means in the purely religious sense. At this point you most definetly should be familiar with the additional way the word has been, is now, and will be used.

 

[Gori the Grey]

"Insultiveness," by the way, is pure Shakespeare. I hope we'll get a chance to get to that. He's a great word-coiner.

 

[Tarquelne]

"Insultiveness," by the way, is pure Shakespeare. I hope we'll get a chance to get to that. He's a great word-coiner.

Yes ... and I suppose you're already familiar with the Shakespearean Insulter?

A mix of quotes and, IIRC, some new material. Even in this extremely bastardized or context-less form, I think it's a good way to develop an appreciation for Shakespeare's use of language. Thou knotty-patted fool.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Oh insulting is pure Shakespeare, too, yes. (He'd hold his own on internet forums.)

I meant Angst's nonce-word "insultiveness" is pure Shakespeare.

(Don't get insulted. I know you know what I meant, and were just adding yet another how-to-enjoy-Shakespeare mechanism.) (But shouldn't it be pated? one t? You Elizabethan-lax speller, you.)

 

[Tarquelne]

(But shouldn't it be pated? one t? You Elizabethan-lax speller, you.)

Sorry. Freudian-slip insult?

 

[Mise]

Well, now we get to the riskiest moment in the unfolding of my argument. We’re going to turn to a passage Mise indicates that he did not understand during his viewing of Much Ado.

If I eludicate the passage, I risk coming across as that high priest Pangur Ban warned us about, divulging those “hidden meanings” and “mysteries.” And if, at any time, Mise reports that he feels as though I am a priest leading him, an initiate, into the “mysteries” of Shakespeare, then I lose my argument with Pangur Ban. So I must tread carefully. Because I don’t want to lose my argument!

(Mise is the perfect person for this role, incidentally, clearly unbiased, because his first comment on this thread found some truth in what Pangur Ban was saying and some truth in what I was saying)

I don’t want act as a priest. I want to be understood a little like warpus described himself in post 139 (as an analogy for how he thought his teachers, with their boners for Shakespeare, felt about sharing him with their students):



I just want to be a dude who watched the same movie as Mise, but where he gave it a 3/5, I give it a 5/5, and I’m trying to tell him why I liked it so much more than he did. Anyway, among the things that made him give the movie the lesser mark, he says, is that he didn’t understand why they decided to fake Kate Beckinsale’s death.

So, well, one thing I can do, anyway, is play that stretch back for him in slow motion:

After Claudio has accused Hero of being unfaithful/promiscuous, and Hero has swooned, the Friar steps in to propose to Hero’s father Leonato a course of action:



Leonato asks what good that will do, and the Friar says this:



He goes on, but that’s quite enough. So my first question for Mise is, when the words aren’t whizzing by you at their own speed, but you can take them in at whatever pace you like (that’s the only reason I needed the CGI metaphor), what do you make of this explanation for letting out that Hero has died? I’m more interested in the second passage; I gave the first just for set-up.

Please note that, in the phrasing “what do you make of,” I tried to concoct as open-ended a question as I could. I am explicitly NOT asking, “do you understand it now?” though you are of course welcome to speak to that, including giving the percentage of it you feel you take in with this way of experiencing the lines. I am not asking “does this give a plausible explanation for faking Hero’s death?” which is the concern of yours that brought us to these lines, though you’re of course welcome to speak to that. I’m not asking if you find it good writing, though you are welcome to speak to that. If it reminds you of your Uncle Ted, you are welcome to speak to that. If Pangur’s term “mysterious” describes your experience, you should feel free to say that. In other words, just report your reading experience.

One important condition (to get out in front of an objection I anticipate): you are to spend only as much time working on this passage as the passage itself warrants. As long as you’re finding something interesting or engaging or enjoyable about it, you should keep reading it and considering it. As soon as you don’t any longer, you should stop immediately. If you happen to get a rough estimate of how long that turns out to be, it would be great.

Ahh, well, I got this far:

Marry, this well carried shall on her behalf
Change slander to remorse; that is some good:
But not for that dream I on this strange course,
But on this travail look for greater birth.
She dying, as it must so be maintain'd,
Upon the instant that she was accused,
Shall be lamented, pitied and excused
Of every hearer: for it so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack'd and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours. So will it fare with Claudio:

...before deciding that I had had enough. To answer the questions you didn't explicitly ask, I understood all of the words (i.e. I'm at 100%), but like those Continental philosophers I mentioned earlier, I only really understood the broad gist of the meaning. More than I got when I watched it "live" but not by a whole lot. I had kind of guessed that they were faking her death in order to make Claudio real sad and stuff (assuming/testing that he truly loved her). I think that's what this bit of text is saying but I may have misinterpreted.

It doesn't seem any more plausible; it would have been far more sensible to just sit Claudio down in a room and talk it out like grown ups instead of concocting this diabolical nonsensical cartoon scheme straight out of The Acme School of Conflict Resolution. I mean, this is just the most messed up thing ever -- holding a fake funeral for someone? Does this really happen outside of terrible 90s laughter-track sitcoms?

Anyway. It also did strike me as mysterious, but that's no doubt partly because it was written in the kind of old fashioned, convoluted, contrived English that riddles are often written in in films like The Goonies. Uncovering the meaning is surely part of the fun in reading a passage like that, isn't it? I dare say, it seems almost biblical -- but again, the fact that it's a contemporary of the KJV probably explains this. It's an apt metaphor for my experience at least.

My main thought though was still how ludicrously contrived this whole thing is. It makes no sense.

I should say that I decided to read the whole thing anyway, in case nobody made your expected objections, or in case it revealed something else. It didn't make much difference though.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

It doesn't seem any more plausible; it would have been far more sensible to just sit Claudio down in a room and talk it out like grown ups instead of concocting this diabolical nonsensical cartoon scheme straight out of The Acme School of Conflict Resolution.

Sounds like the plot of every soap opera ever.

 

[Gori the Grey]

So, just to be clear, you're reporting that you (initially) didn't even finish reading the passage a single time, that’s how little it sustained your interest. But that you understood it near 100%.

That makes it feel to me a little like all you were doing was looking for the explanation for letting out that Hero was dead, and as soon as you got that (and realized how hokey it was) you stopped.

You don’t like implausibility. Boy, are you not going to enjoy Comedy of Errors! Here’s the premise there: A merchant’s wife bears him twins. At the same time, a poor woman bears twins, and the merchant buys those twins as (eventual) servants for his twins. The family soon gets separated: father, one infant son, one infant servant in one group; the mother, the other son, the other servant in the other group. The two twins that ended up with the father are renamed with the names of the other set of twins (no explanation is given as to why). In other words, the father’s twin changes his name (we’re never told what it had been) to Antipholus, the twin who had gone off with the mother. And the servant twin changes his name to Dromio, the servant twin who had gone off with the mother. Years later, when they’re all adults, the father’s twins go off searching for their lost brothers. They come to the town where those brothers now live, and through a whole day, everybody mistakes them for the local brothers (because they look the same and have the same names, duh). But it never occurs to them that they’re experiencing all of this weird behavior from the townspeople because it’s the place where their brothers live! Even though they’re on a quest to find their brothers!

Now, on the other hand, having a form of amnesia that makes you wake up every morning thinking it is Sunday, October 13 of the previous year, and your family all catering to the delusion, is a bit implausible too, to invoke your Adam Sandler analogy.

I guess part what I’m saying is that comedy often trades in such implausibilities. You earlier spoke of a “willing suspension of disbelief”; with comedy, maybe it’s a willing suspension of the expectation of plausibility.

Anyway, one follow-up question in a bit. There's one of your questions I don't know right off the bat how I want to respond to:

Uncovering the meaning is surely part of the fun in reading a passage like that, isn't it?

Actually, real quick, which part of the passage seems "biblical" to you?