What is so good about Shakespeare?

[cybrxkhan]

I don't think there's anything particular that makes Shakespeare greater than any other great piece of literature. To paraphrase one of my last literature teachers in high school, Shakespeare just got lucky and built up a reputation over time and ended up surviving the test of time. Some people might assume that's a claim that Shakespeare isn't great, but that's not the point - it's how it is irregardless of whether he is great or not.


I didn't particularly enjoy Shakespeare, but I didn't hate him either. I could see the wonder in some of his works, but it could never reach me. This is just a subjective thing. In terms of older English literature, perhaps the one that spoke to me the best was, for some reason, Beowulf, but Shakespeare not as much.

It's a pity. I think the down-to-earth aspect of Shakespeare - his abundance of sex puns, for instance, or the humor in the banter he writes - is overlooked often in favor of "bigger" concepts. Shakespeare is constantly portrayed as this classy, elegant, superior sort of English, yet, ironically, when Shakespeare is performed in the vernacular dialect of his era, people tend to understand and appreciate his works more than when it is done in the stiffy RP that is typical.

 

[bhavv]

I always found English literature to be dreadfully boring. Maybe if they taught Tolkein and Rowling instead it would be more fun.

 

[Formaldehyde]

It's a pity. I think the down-to-earth aspect of Shakespeare - his abundance of sex puns, for instance, or the humor in the banter he writes - is overlooked often in favor of "bigger" concepts. Shakespeare is constantly portrayed as this classy, elegant, superior sort of English, yet, ironically, when Shakespeare is performed in the vernacular dialect of his era, people tend to understand and appreciate his works more than when it is done in the stiffy RP that is typical.

That is why it is really important to analyze his works instead of just read them. Otherwise, you completely miss much of the good stuff.

Shakespeare was a wildly successful playwright at the time because he catered to the masses, not because he was a stuffy aristocrat who only cared about the whims of the rich and powerful.

 

[Goodfella]

Shakespeare has been largely removed from the public school education system in the US. His plays used to be studied as pervasively as Warpus describes. But even back when I attended public school, the vast majority of students would study perhaps only one or two plays at the high school or middle school level from a fairly cursory perspective. However, there was a semester-long elective honors class that was taught in the 12th grade which analyzed four significant plays in great depth. But that was limited to perhaps 25 students out of the 700 seniors who attended that school.

As mandated by a class, I read maybe 3 in high school. But there's also a trade off: we had to read authors you wouldn't expect in a traditional classes like Zora Neale Hurston, August Wilson, Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and some others. Though I think Shakespeare's great, you can substitute him for other authors without it being a problem.

Here's what I remember reading in a somewhat chronological order:

Spoiler :

Ender's Game
Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde
Romeo and Juliet
1984
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Catcher in the Rye
Of Mice and Men
Julius Caesar
Grapes of Wrath
Othello
The Great Gatsby
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Eugene Onegin
The Piano Lesson
Song of Solomon
The Kite Runner
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Chronicle of a Death Foretold

There were a few more that I can't recall of the top of my head right now.

 

[Borachio]

Mr. B. I believe this is your cue.

Here I am!!

What can I say? I certainly understand people not liking Shakespeare because of what happened to them at school because that's exactly what happened to me. I didn't seriously reconsider the work until I was 50.

Reading the plays is what you do after you've seen the things performed once, or even twice, imo. They are plays. Designed to be seen on a stage in the company of an audience. (But DVDs or films will do.)

Are they elitist? I don't think so. When they were originally written and performed they were a decidedly down-market form of entertainment. Almost a burlesque affair.

Are they demanding to watch? I don't think so. Some more than others, though. The most accessible in my opinion are the three central comedies Much Ado, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It, and Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet is definitely easy and enjoyable to watch. The most difficult Hamlet, Lear, Henry VIII, maybe? Polanski's Macbeth is in a class of its own. I'm not sure whether I should recommend it or not. Richard III is scary and mad. Merry Wives of Windsor and Midsummer's Nights Dream are a laugh.

Are they flawed? Yes, absolutely every single play has some inconsistency or flaw in the plot.

Are they any good? Well, naturally they are. Incredibly so. Multi-faceted, multi-layered, and lyrical, you can see as much in them as you care to look for. Which I think is a good sign.

Are they derivative? Yep. Absolutely every one of the extant plays has a clear basis in previous works by either classical or "folk" adaptations.

What's so good about Shakespeare? According to Frank Kermode, someone who's edited many of the Arden collection, Shakespeare has an "oceanic" mind. Which says it all, to me. And briefly too.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Because it is translated into their language, and thus they have few barriers to understanding the text. I don't think that's a very confusing idea.



Yes, but it contains constructions, vocabulary and idiom that are not understood at all or accurately except by scholarly research, and not by most of the actors let alone most of the audience (as illustrated by those scenes in Romeo and Juliet where the actress says 'Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo' and gestures to indicate she is looking about.

Thus it is a mystery, like Latin mass was for Romance speakers. Only bits of it comprehensible at first, some education rewards more understanding, and so on. That's how mystery cults, ancient and modern, work; that's how Shakespeare works.

To fully understand Shakespeare, modern readers have to do some work. That doesn't mean, as you said in your earlier post, that the value of Shakespeare is a function of the work readers do to understand him. That you get to the end of it and you say "Well, he's really no good, but since I put in so much work, I'll tell everybody else that I think he is." He keeps rewarding that work, no matter how much of it you do, and the fact that he keeps rewarding that work is what gives him his value (and motivates you to keep doing the work).

Albanian speakers who don't speak English, doubtless understand Shakespeare better if they read him in an Albanian translation. They don't understand him better than English speakers who read him in English, was what I was trying to say.


@warpus: you needed to watch the plays, not read them. Yes, modern readers have the difficulty you say. Modern viewers, by and large, do not.

 

[Pangur Bán]

To fully understand Shakespeare, modern readers have to do some work. That doesn't mean, as you said in your earlier post, that the value of Shakespeare is a function of the work readers do to understand him. That you get to the end of it and you say "Well, he's really no good, but since I put in so much work, I'll tell everybody else that I think he is." He keeps rewarding that work, no matter how much of it you do, and the fact that he keeps rewarding that work is what gives him his value (and motivates you to keep doing the work)..

Yes, that's how mystery cults work.

People do not go in large numbers to see plays in another language because they are historical philologists or English scholars. And if the 'deep meaning' of Shakespeare is what they seek, popular productions would always be translated into modern English; that's how capitalism works.

Albanian speakers who don't speak English, doubtless understand Shakespeare better if they read him in an Albanian translation. They don't understand him better than English speakers who read him in English, was what I was trying to say.

Yes they do, so long as the translator is competent. If an Albanian reads Hamlet in an Albanian translation, he will understand more of Shakespeare than 99% + of English speakers.

 

[warpus]

@warpus: you needed to watch the plays, not read them. Yes, modern readers have the difficulty you say. Modern viewers, by and large, do not.

Makes me wonder why they made me read so many.. instead of reeling in that VHS cart into the class instead, or dragging us off to a theatre. As things stand, I didn't really learn much at all from reading s'peare.

 

[Borachio]

I don't know why they made us read so many either. I think they were mad. They even made us act them on the stage, too. Some kind of nightmare, imo! Though some people seemed to enjoy doing it.

 

[warpus]

I think the people in charge of school districts have boners for Shakespeare, is what I think. That, and they didn't care to make us actually learn much, they just really really wanted us to read a lot of Shakespeare.

 

[Formaldehyde]

It sounds like they are foolishly allowed to model it after their own public education.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I liked how my school district's policies works out. We read quite a bit of Shakespeare, yes, but we also read a bunch of other different things from across different time periods and cultures across the world.

That is why it is really important to analyze his works instead of just read them. Otherwise, you completely miss much of the good stuff.

Shakespeare was a wildly successful playwright at the time because he catered to the masses, not because he was a stuffy aristocrat who only cared about the whims of the rich and powerful.

Yes, this very much is true. I'd even say some of the stuff meant for aristocratic audiences was a lot more interesting than one might think. In essence, it just boils down to the fact that people in the past were fond of dick jokes and "I did your mom" jokes as we are. Sure, lofty concepts can be timeless, but so is "yo dude that chick/dude is hot I totally wanna bang her/him".

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It seems like it. Every single story seemed almost exactly the same. I'm exaggerating a bit, but Canadian or Ontario or London school boards are obsessed with drowning the kids in Shakespeare. I don't think it's doing anyone any favours.

My high school Shakespeare consisted of Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet. It was three years of utterly depressing stuff, since everyone either ended up dead or insane or both. But during my Grade 12 year, a traveling theatre company performed Twelfth Night, and on a whim, I decided to go. I had no idea at all what the story was about, so I had no prior expectations. And within 5 minutes, I was hooked. There's a universe of difference between just reading Shakespeare and seeing it performed, especially live.

The movies I'd recommend are:

Romeo and Juliet (Zeferelli version)
Hamlet (Mel Gibson)
Henry V (Kenneth Branagh)
Much Ado About Nothing (Kenneth Branagh)

These are a sampling of the tragedies, historicals, and comedies.

I disagree. In high school I distinctly remember us having a helper book to look through to help us understand what the hell is going on in the story. It had the original text on the left, with a modern English translation on the right.

Maybe it was coles notes? Either way, without that thing or help from the teacher, most of the class was lost, about 80% of the time, from what I remember.

Your teacher was unqualified to teach Shakespeare, from the sound of it.

 

[Borachio]

I quite like this collection.

 

[warpus]

Your teacher was unqualified to teach Shakespeare, from the sound of it.

Yeah maybe. She was actually not that bad, to be honest, it's just that the material provided (shakespeare play 1, shakespare play 2, shakespeare play 3, etc..) was uninspired.

I would love to see a Shakespeare play, but I doubt it'll ever happen. I don't get why they didn't send us on any field trips in highschool, as an introduction to Shakespeare sort of thing. It would probably make me appreciate his work a lot more and make it easier for everyone to get through the rest of his works.

 

[Borachio]

I spent about ten years struggling to learn French. And I did make some progress.

Then I started on Shakespeare. And it was an absolute piece of p*ss in comparison.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I like the way you think Pangur Bán.

 

[Borachio]

Nah! Translations of Shakespeare into "modern" English just don't work at all. It's like decaffeinated coffee. Or no alcohol beer. Or sex with your socks on.

What's the point of it?

 

[Kozmos]

Yes they do, so long as the translator is competent. If an Albanian reads Hamlet in an Albanian translation, he will understand more of Shakespeare than 99% + of English speakers.

But reading/seeing it translated murders the hell out of how it should have sounded/worded.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

What's the point of it?

That without the puzzle there is no point to it - seems to be Pangur's point.