What is so good about Shakespeare?

[Borachio]

Also, the out-and-out lyricism of it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I quite like this collection.

I remember seeing that version of Twelfth Night. The live performance I saw here was better, though.

I can't quite imagine Michael York as Benedic in Much Ado, though...

 

[Borachio]

No! That was Robert Lindsay. And Cherie Lunghi was great as Beatrice.

The Branagh version is very, very good, though, imo.

Hang on, that's Much Ado.

Twelfth Night has Felicity Kendall as kittenish Viola.

Gah! I'm getting muddled.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Yes, that's how mystery cults work.


If an Albanian reads Hamlet in an Albanian translation, he will understand more of Shakespeare than 99% + of English speakers.

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.

@ Pangur: The mystery cult analogy is pretty much exactly wrong. Shakespeare is widely and freely available to anyone who wants to read or watch him. There are literature professors who have devoted their lives to studying and understanding him, and, if you're in college, you can avail yourself of them to help speed your progress in understanding and enjoying Shakespeare. But there are no mysteries into which to be initiated, and no priesthood to do the initiating.

Borachio's experience belies your claim. It sounds as though he just, at a particular stage in his life, started taking an interest in Shakespeare. I recently took an interest in Mozart's Piano Concertos. They'd been available to me all my life; this is just when I happened to bother getting acquainted with them. How did I do so? By buying a CD and listening to it. I didn't contact the Mozart authorities and start making progress in the Mozart mysteries. Do musicologists and music historians understand and Mozart more than me? Of course. Do they enjoy him any more? Possibly; their greater understanding maybe gives them other things to tune into. But do I enjoy Mozart plenty even in my musically naive state? You bet.

Shakespeare can work the same way. Your first analogy was better. Shakespeare is like a modern day screenwriter. If you're interested in Shakespeare, all you have to do is the same thing you would do if you were interested in the work of a modern day screenwriter: go to one of his plays/ movies and watch it. His plays are not fundamentally puzzles to be solved. They're dramatizations to be enjoyed. Valka's experience testifies to this.

@ warpus: Modern high schools have lost their way with introducing students to Shakespeare. (In part because they've made him puzzles to be solved) They should show film adaptations, and after that do a little bit of reading of particular passages that stood out in the film.

Anyone who feels like warpus does, wanting to sue his high school for not properly introducing him to Shakespeare, can remedy the situation much more easily. Rent Kenneth Branaugh's film of Much Ado About Nothing and watch it. That's it. You'll find that the language actually provides you with little if any difficulty. You'll follow the plot readily. You'll enjoy yourself. And that's what Shakespeare aimed at: for you to enjoy yourself. If you do that, you will be doing Shakespeare, without beginning an initiation into any cult.

I'll take up Pangur's second point in a later post, if this thread continues.

 

[illram]

Purely from a linguistic standpoint, Shakespeare had more of an influence on the development of the English language than any other author I can think of. Stylistically he also took a relatively un-lyrical language and was able to somehow make it sound beautiful at times.

 

[Pangur Bán]

@Gori
Yeah, mystery cult memberships are open to anyone, but people are drawn in by some vague promise of unraveling hidden meanings while progression is dependent on how much of yourself you invest.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Hey man, English was closer to German at the time and Germany once was called the country of poets and thinkers!

x-post

 

[Borachio]

Shrouded in secrecy, ancient mystery cults fascinate and capture the imagination. A pendant to the official cults of the Greeks and Romans, mystery cults served more personal, individualistic attitudes toward death and the afterlife. Most were based on sacred stories (hieroi logoi) that often involved the ritual reenactment of a death-rebirth myth of a particular divinity. In addition to the promise of a better afterlife, mystery cults fostered social bonds among the participants, called mystai. Initiation fees and other contributions were also expected.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/myst/hd_myst.htm

 

[Gori the Grey]

Pangur. I find progression in anything is dependent on how much of yourself you invest, don't you?

Progression as a basketball player is dependent on how much of yourself you invest. Do you regard basketball as a mystery cult?

Edit: (to keep up with your edit): there are no hidden meanings in Shakespeare.

 

[Pangur Bán]

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

Not any more than anything you read from German or French or Russian. At least you'll understand what's being said!

 

[Gori the Grey]

The primary value in Shakespeare is not what is being said, but how it is being said. (Not that one can utterly separate the two, of course.)

This is actually the second point I want to make to you, about reading Shakespeare in Albanian translation. The next level of enjoyment, after just watching a play, is to take some interest in how Shakespeare phrases things. Yes, now you encounter all of those difficulties that make you feel like progressing is akin to advancing in a mystery cult. But that's not it. You're just enjoying playful use of the language. That's why I used my rap analogy earlier. You enjoyed the words speeding by you. Now you slow them down and study how it is they have the effects they do.

But that has to be done in the original language:

Spoiler :

Shakespearean.

Spoiler :

Who thought I was going to say Klingon?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Not any more than anything you read from German or French or Russian. At least you'll understand what's being said!

To be fair the German translation I read somehow managed to be cryptic itself and needed its own translation ... which is hilarious if you think about it

 

[Borachio]

But that has to be done in the original language:

Elizabethan English/Early Modern English.

Crystal and Son aren't my favourite people, though.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Thanks for the video reference, B. The passages they give confirm the rule-of-thumb I was given by the person I most trusted to know these matters: that the modern English pronunciation closest to S's is Scottish!

Why don't you like Crystal and Son? I read his book: Think on my Words.

 

[Borachio]

I've not read "Think on my words". I've read their "Shakespeare's words", though. And I felt robbed.

Since the same, and more, information is to be found in the Arden editions.

I'd say O.P. is nearest to a Warwickshire accent, myself. I think it's just like modern English would be, possibly, if the Hanoverians hadn't arrived.

Queen's English! <spits>

 

[Gori the Grey]

While we're on a Shakespeare thread, may I take the occasion to ask you: of all of his characters, why Borachio, for heaven's sake, as a username here?

 

[Borachio]

Minor supporting anti-hero role. Simples.

Also, literally, a drunkard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7eOwKN3Goo 1:42

 

[Gori the Grey]

Your wonted self-deprecation helps me understand why you favor a minor character. Like Prufrock, you regard yourself as "an attendant lord, one who will do, to start a progress, swell a scene or two."

Nothing you contribute on this site suggests that you're any kind of anti-hero, though. Are you very different in real life than the personality you project here? And if so, why do you project an affable personality here? Do you just need this site as a sort of relief valve from the pressures of your RL villainy? Do villains need a place where they can, under the cover of anonymity, just be nice for a while? I wonder.

 

[Borachio]

an attendant lord, one who will do, to start a progress, swell a scene or two

Ha! You're good! Ain't no flies on you, Mr Grey. (Frightenly so.)

But nope. This is pretty much me, that you see here (such as I "is"). I don't have the patience, or the talent, for rank duplicity.

 

[illram]

To add to my earlier comment, the language specific qualities of Shakespeare make his work harder to appreciate in another language.

Sort of how beautiful Arabic calligraphy translated into English in Arial font loses a large part of its beauty.