Why do people like Shakespeare? he seems pretty mediocre.
>>8019763
>>8019763
yEAH DUDE, i TOTALLY AGREE. Ayn Rand is my favorite author too!
>>8019763
'Thou' and 'thee' get every female's panties wet. Go on, just try using them instead of 'you' when chatting up a chickadee. Throw in some 'verily's too and you'll be set.
>>8019763
they were taught to love shakespear in the school
any man or woman of high intelligence knows that shakespear is a hack, ask colin wilson
>Later, I read Tolstoy’s essay on Shakespeare, in which he says all that I have just said, and a great deal more. I found it
surprising that his clear analyses should not have completely destroyed Shakespeare’s reputation. And then, on reflection, I saw that it was not surprising. Most people live on a level of emotional triviality which means that when they read Shakespeare, they experience the pleasure of hearing their own feelings echoed. And since the language is impressive, and requires a certain intellectual effort to follow, they can have no doubt that this is really Great Literature. This combination - of fine language with totally trivial content - has kept Shakespeare’s stock high for three hundred years, and will continue to do so until the movement of evolution consigns him to the dustbin of quaint but meaningless antiquities.
>>8019786
>criticizes a great artist
>can't even green text properly
hurdur?
>>8019793
that's all dem invisible thingummies (is it a real word btw? i picked it from some carr's book) when you copy and paste from a pirated epub or pdf
Romio and Juliet is shit
S E C O N D B E S T B E D
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>>8019804
I think the word you're looking for is 'thingaummiebobs' or 'thingamijigs'
>>8019805
the plot is stolen from ovid, the trash for secondaries
>>8019809
No, those are whatchamacallits.
>>8019805
Further proof that Romeo and Juliet is underrated
>>8019812
What kind ovid-iot do you think I am?
Don't worry about me though, Ill get Ovid it
>>8019820
it's one of the most overrated things ever
>>8019820
it's utter garbage
>all these 'thats overrated', 'thats underrated' comments but nothing to solidify there argument
Care to elaborate people? this is a 'discussion' board not a 'crude and unexplained statement of opinion' board
>>8019786
Woah so Tolstoy is shit then
>>8019898
i like how the power of colin wilson's writing can influence people's view about tolstoy :^)
>>8019820
Troilus and Cressida is infinitely superior to R&J.
>>8019898
His short stories are the most trite pieces of christposting garbage imaginable.
>>8019786
Shakespeare's content is deemed trivial because it laid the foundation for pretty much every theme present in modern literature.
That said, Hamlet remains, content-wise, one of the most profound things ever written.
Macbeth was good, my favorite book in elementary school.
>>8019763
im sure /pol/ would love othello
>>8019929
He was a genius. His short stories are some of the greatest ever written.
>>8019763
>Why do people like Shakespeare? he seems pretty mediocre.
He is the greatest poet of all time, by far; there is nothing even remotely comparable. I do not think you like to like to read poetry, for if you did you would understand how great Shakespeare’s poetic texture is, and that alone would be a reason for witnessing his value.
Also, to really understand just how great Shakespeare is you need to read many of his plays: the tones, settings, atmospheres, themes, even the poetry itself changes completely from one work to another. It is not just one moment in his corpus that counts, but the whole journey of development. Shakespeare is the most varied of all writers: he worked with a lot of subjects and created several different characters, and he did that always using a language that the god themselves would agree to be silent in order to listen, so beautiful it’s imagery is.
You will find several different philosophies of life and world views in Shakespeare, depending of the work or the character you are currently accompanying. Shakespeare is very humane in the fact that he tries to nest inside several different brains and think from their perspective. He could work with plots and subjects that probably did not interested him very much in particular, but that he know that would be the joy of his audience. Yet, even if the work was not particularly a favorite of his he could still produce a work of quality.
But that thing about him inventing humanity as we know it is just a stupid thing; is assertion without prove, just a way of cheerleading for Shakespeare in a hard and almost religious way.
>>8021041
You forgot him.
>>8019763
do u realize how many people u triggered
>>8021041
>But that thing about him inventing humanity as we know it is just a stupid thing
>>8021048
No, I did not. I like him very much and I appreciate his power of writing so concise and concentrated verses, and also his rhymes, that are very natural, sometimes even to the point of seeming predetermined.
But Shakespeare’s poetry is more varied, he is much more fertile in creating metaphors and bold and strange imagery, and he deals with many more topics and themes in his poetry than Dante.
Great part of Dante’s work is just narrative, although narrative versified in a wonderful way. But Shakespeare’s verse is always deeply metaphorical and colorful, almost all lines contain images.
>>8021041
Master and Man is banality to the point of pain. The shoemaking angel? The greedy landowner who dies from exhaustion in the chase of profit? The feuding neighbours?
These are as trite as they come, with nearly condescendingly simplistic content. Tolstoy made brilliant novels and novellas, but if you consider his short stories, which are nothing but watered down and reductively simplified christian banalities to be among the greatest written, you should fuck off and read Gogol.
>>8021072
>ead Gogol.
Already did that.
I do not care much about the themes of Tolstoy’s short stories, or the message behind them. Some of them have clear Christian-tolstoian messages, some don’t: I don’t particularly care. I can appreciate a writer if he is of the kind that tries to preach or of the kind that simply tries to present life as it is or the kind that choses plots and stories that are more unrealistic, but more audience-grapping.
What I mean is: I don’t care about the reasons behind the work, just the work itself. And Tolstoy’s short stories are always filled with details, smells, sounds, gestures and a great perception of how humans are, how they act, how they talk, what they think, etc.
There is something very particular in his work, a wealth that does not seem to be found in other authors, and perhaps such greatness lies especially in this: an ability to discern details. Anyone who has tried to write seriously knows that is not remotely easy to see so many particular gestures, actions, language tics, twitches, individual thoughts, microscopic details of individuality, and in general the multiple features that make every human being a single entity. We usually capture some of these details in each other, but nothing close to what Tolstoy could capture. Other authors also have this ability, but not on the same level. Nobody seems to have seen so much, no one has the capacity of keeping so many details – collected everywhere and for long periods of time – safe in mind for so long until the opportunity to use them in fiction arose. The mental eyes of Tolstoy were the most light-absorbing in literary history: no other author paid that much attention, or at least was able to remember all the particulars collected thorough his persona experience until the time of writing finally appeared.
Tolstoy seemed to be, in his mind and in his five sentences, a flayed man, perpetually naked in raw meat, without the tick skin of numbness: every little vibration in the environment around hit him with significant strength. A butterfly for the common man reverberated with the force of a hawk to this man, the sensitive of sensitive’s.
>>8021100
patrician
based anon BTFOs pseuds
>>8021105
Look at those dubs too
>>8019828
au contraire it's always been the latter.
Shakespeare is probably a lot more interesting than my English teacher made him out to be.
>>8019935
The only legitimate answer in the thread.
>>8019929
>>8022573
Jerry Messing is a devote Christian, asshat.
Shakespeare isn't even better than Marlowe. Complete hack.
>>8019777
>>8022588
>devote
>>8022619
at least marlowe's face launched 1000 ships (:
I used to feel the same way until I saw Kristoffer Tabori's performance of John Savage in Brave New World [1980].
His character speaks many lines of Shakespeare, and the way he does it is actually impressive [and I'm not easily impressed].
In fact, his performance is the only thing that makes the film worth watching since the sets and other actors make it almost unbearable.
But when John speaks, everyone listens.
>>8022520
>English teacher
>didn't make Shakespeare interesting
Great planet we have here.
We get something from his works that you don't, OP.
If you don't get it, that's fine. But you shouldn't put your faith in the performances to get the message across. He's been performed so long and most people understand his works so poorly that most performances are god-awful. Even stuff by the royal shakespeare company is amped-up, edgified beyond recognition, and a complete distortion of his plays.
Not to mention the gutter trash who want to parade him around as the posterkid for their cause of the week by running gender-swapped plays. Urgh it makes me so mad.
I guess the only argument I can give is that Milton said that Shake's plays make us "marble with imagining" (a pun on marvel). That's fucking Milton. In the poem he basically says that Shakespeare means TOO much.
Maybe a fun exercise would be to read one of his plays along with a friend and talk with them about what you thought the characters motivations/main themes were. I practically guarantee you'll have come out with almost contrary ideas. There's just SO much fucking meaning to be found in Shakespeare. Every page is the equivalent of 100.
>>8022751
Is the movie really good?
I just finished the book and would hate to see the image of it ruined by a bad film, I want to know if it's worth watching.
