Ok, here goes. Does anyone else think that maybe, just maybe, Shakespeare isn't the most incredible author out there? I know that this is taboo, and I know that me saying that I know is just putting up a shield, but I sometimes get the sense that Shakespeare's ideas and themes aren't as remarkable as many people make them out to be. His prose is incredible no shit -- there's no questioning that. But, when I was reading Hamlet, it very much seemed to be a relatively simple depiction of human suffering, revenge, existential crises, etc. Yes, you could pull the "it was great for his time" argument, which is valid, but on the other hand...can we really say that it continues (in the modern world) to be as mind-blowing a depiction of "the human condition" as many people make it out to be? I feel that over the years, our understanding of people and existence has gotten more and more complex and intricate and that Shakespeare seems more like a beginning to this process than the zenith. You can say to this that the increased complexity of post-Shakespeare works does not make things better, and I agree. However, I do feel that an increased thoroughness and a more acute perception of humanity/consciousness/etc makes it a better, more impressive and perceptive work of art overall (something that I believe certain authors have been able to attain). I am definitely not an expert in Shakespeare, however, so if anyone here has the ability to call me out, please do so -- it would be great to know that the literary community doesn't just like this guy because of peer pressure.
also, inb4 bloom memes
>>7748827
i always thought he was considered the greatest playwright? that's probably different from the greatest author, but what do i know?
Join the party my friend
http://www.cosmoetica.com/S3-DES3.htm
>>7748851
shiiiet
>>7748827
>Ok, here goes. Does anyone else think that maybe, just maybe, Shakespeare isn't the most incredible author out there
Nope.
>peer pressure.
Oy vey. There is legitimately nearly half a millennium of Shakespeare criticism. And you have to come here and shitpost.
get this
break
speare
http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/James-Joyce-Literary-Tastes.pdf
>>7748827
I disagree, his work really is memorable and incredibly well written. You need only compare it to other authors of the time/nowadays to see that.
The only comparable playwright I can think of is Goethe, but even though I'm personally a little biased towards the man I can admit that Shakespeare has far better prose.
I think one the main reasons Shakespeare isn't well liked is because he's so celebrated. It's easy to dislike something solely on the basis that it's popular, but it's hard to actually find many legitimate flaws in his writing.
>His prose is incredible no shit
>His prose
>Shakespeare's prose
>>7748851
>But let’s keep things simple. I am a poet. I am also a great poet.
Stop spamming this moron.
>>7748875
what's up dude
>>7748873
>he greatest thinker of all times, in my opinion, is Aristotle. Everything, in his work, is defined
with wonderful clarity and simplicity.
Did this mother fucker read De Anima?
I think his ideas and themes are a gigantic glittering form of architecture, and the free verse he cultivates is just very delightful, playful badinage most of the time.
One major roadblock I think I see is that people tend to read Shakespeare indirectly, as someone who was very comfortable with the Tudor court, and very much a product of his time. I think this is inaccurate and manages to limit our appreciation for him.
Everyone has their own vision of Shakespeare, and that's fine, he can be enjoyed by anyone but I think there's a great deal to be gained when you view Shakespeare as a Catholic and as a rebel to the Tudor throne. I'm neither of these, but I think that that particular persuasion has gone shockingly unnoticed by most scholars and fans.
>>7748900
badinage... badinage. that is a great fucking word.
>>7748827
Nah man. I think you missed a lot in between the lines in Hamlet. There's so much to it. I find that I discover something every time I read or analyze it.
Read Lear too, the depth of the themes is a little more on the surface.
>>7748910
I guess I'm just smitten by the Bard's badminton game
Shakespeare is total shit and if you think differently you are deluding yourself.
>>7748929
I don't doubt that Hamlet is an incredible work, but I do feel that that (as I said up there) there are other works in the English language that have just as much to them if not more.
A reminder to all Willyfags that the bard wrote this
The little Love-god lying once asleep,
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire
Which many legions of true hearts had warmed;
And so the General of hot desire
Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy,
For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,
Came there for cure and this by that I prove,
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.
While Donne wrote this
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
Ok, here goes. Does anyone else think that maybe, just maybe, the Pyramids at Giza aren't the most incredible monument out there? I know that this is taboo, and I know that me saying that I know is just putting up a shield, but I sometimes get the sense that the Pyramids' forms and geometries aren't as remarkable as many people make them out to be. Their size is incredible no shit -- there's no questioning that. But, when I was reading a children's encyclopedia, it very much seemed to be a relatively simple depiction of human greatness, will to be remembered, existential crises, etc. Yes, you could pull the "they were great for their time" argument, which is valid, but on the other hand...can we really say that they continue (in the modern world) to be as mind-blowing a depiction of "the human desire to be remembered" as many people make them out to be? I feel that over the years, our understanding of people and existence has gotten more and more complex and intricate and that the Pyramids seem more like a beginning to this process than the zenith. You can say to this that the increased complexity of post-Pyramid monuments does not make things better, and I agree. However, I do feel that an increased thoroughness and a more acute perception of form/figure/etc makes it a better, more impressive and perceptive work of art overall (something that I believe certain authors have been able to attain). I am definitely not an expert in pyramids, however, so if anyone here has the ability to call me out, please do so -- it would be great to know that the monument community doesn't just like this set of structures because of peer pressure.
>>7748942
i like shakespeare's better
>>7748946
nice
I wish I could into Yeats.
>>7748875
>hasn't read Antony's eulogy for Caesar
>>7748957
He's saying he didn't write prose because he wrote plays and sonnets.yes, i know
>>7748947
Don't worry munchkin. You'll learn.
>>7748953
HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
>>7748957
A reminder to Willyfags that Donne wrote this
VARIABLE, and therefore miserable condition of man! this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute. I am surprised with a sudden change, and alteration to worse, and can impute it to no cause, nor call it by any name. We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and air, and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and a regular work: but in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity; nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant. O miserable condition of man! which was not imprinted by God, who, as he is immortal himself, had put a coal, a beam of immortality into us, which we might have blown into a flame, but blew it out by our first sin; we beggared ourselves by hearkening after false riches, and infatuated ourselves by hearkening after false knowledge. So that now, we do not only die, but die upon the rack, die by the torment of sickness; nor that only, but are pre-afflicted, super-afflicted with these jealousies and suspicions and apprehensions of sickness, before we can call it a sickness: we are not sure we are ill; one hand asks the other by the pulse, and our eye asks our own urine how we do. O multiplied misery! we die, and cannot enjoy death, because we die in this torment of sickness; we are tormented with sickness, and cannot stay till the torment come, but pre-apprehensions and presages prophesy those torments which induce that death before either come; and our dissolution is conceived in these first changes, quickened in the sickness itself, and born in death, which bears date from these first changes. Is this the honour which man hath by being a little world, that he hath these earthquakes in himself, sudden shakings; these lightnings, sudden flashes; these thunders, sudden noises; these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of his senses; these blazing stars, sudden fiery exhalations; these rivers of blood, sudden red waters? Is he a world to himself only therefore, that he hath enough in himself, not only to destroy and execute himself, but to presage that execution upon himself; to assist the sickness, to antedate the sickness, to make the sickness the more irremediable by sad apprehensions, and, as if he would make a fire the more vehement by sprinkling water upon the coals, so to wrap a hot fever in cold melancholy, lest the fever alone should not destroy fast enough without this contribution, nor perfect the work (which is destruction) except we joined an artificial sickness of our own melancholy, to our natural, our unnatural fever. O perplexed discomposition, O riddling distemper, O miserable condition of man!
>>7748827
You're so brave OP, for your controversial opinion that Shakespeare is good but not the best. Nobody here has ever held that opinion. You are a revel, and despite the backlash you will inevitably cause by having such a unique and revolutionary viewpoint, you posted anyway.
>>7748992
A reminder to Willyfags that Kurosawa made this
>>7748970
It's not that I dislike the work I've read. I just haven't experienced it the way other people have. Maybe it'll happen at some point. Maybe I'll get a physical collection, and not just from the library this time.
>>7748990
Lifeless. Useless to any narrative, overgrown, obviously hardly edited, and with all the rhythm of a Swedish death metal group. It's like drinking word vomit. No theme, no subtext, nothing. This is literally genre fiction.
>>7749021
Also its quite important to distinguish between the earlier and more lyrical Yeats and the later and more 'philosophical/ragey' Yeats.
But maybe William Gass' review will help you with your quest for appreciation
William Butler Yeats’s The Tower
Wouldn’t we all like to grow old full of lust and rage as Yeats did? Wouldn’t we all like to have a late phase that would unlace the stays, and unwrap everything, and lay it bare for our wise, ripe, appreciative, and lascivious gaze? The Tower is not a volume of the late poems. Those I admire even more than the masterpieces here, but this is the book that did its worst and best with me. Poetry has been a beleaguered castle on a cliff for a long time, and my castle had four towers: Yeats, Valéry, Rilke, and Wallace Stevens. Their period produced some of the greatest lyric poetry our European culture has ever seen—perhaps its last gasp. These poets understood that poetry was a calling—and to consciousness a complete one. Yeats wanted to be a seer, and if, as it happened, there was nothing to see, he would invent it, not simply for himself but for everybody else, too. He sets Byzantium down in Sligo. Yeats invested his language with an original richness, as if every word were a suitcase he would open, rummage around in, and carefully repack, slipping a few extras in among the socks. I read him in one gulp—the Complete Poems—from end to end, and then in small bites, and finally in ruminative chews. The Tower became a tree, and rooted itself in me. Yeats grew old disgracefully. It is the only way to go.
>>7748865
>>7749022
I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear", "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium...
Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself, I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the "Henrys," "Troilus and Cressida," the "Tempest," "Cymbeline," and I have felt, with even greater force, the same feelings,-this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent merits,-thereby distorting their esthetic and ethical understanding,-is a great evil, as is every untruth.
>>7748827
Shakespeare is to human thought and perception what Newton is to math. High-schoolers can take calculus classes now with what Newton derived naturally from the universe. And we can experience the range of thoughts, emotions, reflections, and philosophies which Shakespeare gave to us.
If that seems incredulous to you, I'm sorry, and furthermore, this is meant in a sense of language: Hamlet did not create existential nihilism, but he clarified it.
>>7749028
Is there a "Collected Poems" edition that you might recommend?
>>7749048
That's a weird thing to ask for a non-translation
Get the shiniest?
Unless you're talking about poems + academic analysis, in which case I don't really know.
>>7749038
>High-schoolers
>Shakespeare is babby-level
>>7749065
This. They wouldn't put the YA tag on every play of his in the library if he weren't easy as fuck.
>>7748972
Sometimes you have to shift gears when reading Shakespeare and see his work as a gothic pantomime:
https://youtu.be/0FNS4QH25mo
>>7749075
A reminder to Willyfags that Rabelais wrote this
As for the enormous expense which you say would be needful for undertaking the great work of walling this city about, if the gentlemen of the town will be pleased to give me a good rough cup of wine, I will show them a pretty, strange, and new way, how they may build them good cheap. How? said Pantagruel. Do not speak of it then, answered Panurge, and I will tell it you. I see that the sine quo nons, kallibistris, or contrapunctums of the women of this country are better cheap than stones. Of them should the walls be built, ranging them in good symmetry by the rules of architecture, and placing the largest in the first ranks, then sloping downwards ridge-wise, like the back of an ass. The middle-sized ones must be ranked next, and last of all the least and smallest. This done, there must be a fine little interlacing of them, like points of diamonds, as is to be seen in the great tower of Bourges, with a like number of the nudinnudos, nilnisistandos, and stiff bracmards, that dwell in amongst the claustral codpieces. What devil were able to overthrow such walls? There is no metal like it to resist blows, in so far that, if culverin-shot should come to graze upon it, you would incontinently see distil from thence the blessed fruit of the great pox as small as rain. Beware, in the name of the devils, and hold off. Furthermore, no thunderbolt or lightning would fall upon it. For why? They are all either blest or consecrated.
How dost thou know that the privy parts of women are at such a cheap rate? For in this city there are many virtuous, honest, and chaste women besides the maids. Et ubi prenus? said Panurge. I will give you my opinion of it, and that upon certain and assured knowledge. I do not brag that I have bumbasted four hundred and seventeen since I came into this city, though it be but nine days ago; but this very morning I met with a good fellow, who, in a wallet such as Aesop's was, carried two little girls of two or three years old at the most, one before and the other behind. He demanded alms of me, but I made him answer that I had more cods than pence. Afterwards I asked him, Good man, these two girls, are they maids? Brother, said he, I have carried them thus these two years, and in regard of her that is before, whom I see continually, in my opinion she is a virgin, nevertheless I will not put my finger in the fire for it; as for her that is behind, doubtless I can say nothing.
>>7749112
Hot tranny, lad.
>>7749112
wait, did he just suggest to build walls out of cocks and pussies?
>>7749129
no, just pussies. okay then.
>the 'Shakespeare was multiple people' meme
Is this still popular in modern academia? It's been a few years since I was among the ivory towers.
>>7749112
>mfw i just bought this
i am so fucking excited to read this shit.
>>7749162
>>7749162
>>7749162
> Does anyone else think that maybe, just maybe, Shakespeare isn't the most incredible author out there?
yeah. 90% of every high school class, many academics, and every contrarian alive.
but go ahead and try to suggest someone else for the top spot.
Until my twenties I, too, was an edgelord who dismissed Shakespeare as cheesy and unreal. But then I tried reading him with an open mind.
As it turns out, Shakespeare is so good that I don't know how to say anyone is better. There isn't a single Shakespeare play that I could pin down well enough to say, "I know another work that treats this better". Every time I return to Shakespeare I find him even better than I remembered.
And that, as it happens, has been the common experience of the greater part of the most eminent literary men at all times over the last few hundred years.
>>7749203
If you are a lover of poetry these days you know that it’s not a good time for your love. The greatest flowering of poetry in world history- in terms of diversity, depth, & breadth- occurred in the United States roughly between the years 1910 & 1970. During that 60 year period there were more great poems being published & more great poets writing than anywhere or anywhen else.
Elizabethan England? Please- I’ll grant you Shakespeare, Milton, & above both- John Donne. Who comes next? No 1 that can reasonably be granted greatness. The assorted Dynastic periods of China? Tu Fu & Li Po I’ll grant, & perhaps Po-Chu-I, but you’re stretching the definition of an age when it spans centuries, & after those 3 you are left with ‘poets’ who wore that appellation about as neatly as a Joyce Carol Oates- most were routine scribes who wrote routine verse. Haiku? Bashō, Buson, Issa- then who? Not to mention that 3 line haikus- even at their best- simply cannot match the depth, complexity, nor music of even a sonnet. Latin American poets in the early-mid 20th Century? There are a few greats- Paz, Neruda, Huidobro come to mind- but most were just political hacks- bumper sticker writers. The French Symbolists? Mallarme & who else? The Romantics? Hmm….England- Shelley, Keats, perhaps Coleridge & Wordsworth. Forget Byron or Clare- the rest fall off a cliff. Perhaps the German Romantics? Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Holderlin, Heine? Puh-leeze! Perhaps the Soviet Era poets of Russia? Pasternak, Mandelstam, & Tsvetaeva are greats, while Akhmadulina, & Akhmatova were pretty good. Don’t even try to make a claim for the propagandist Mayakovsky.
Now, here’s a pretty good list of the major American poets who were writing & came to fame during the 1910-1970 period: Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Robinson Jeffers, Archibald MacLeish, Marianne Moore, Hart Crane, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, Edna St. Vincent Millay, e.e. cummings, Kenneth Rexroth, Kenneth Patchen, Edwin Rolfe, Charles Olson, Robert Hayden, John Berryman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, James Emanuel, W.D Snodgrass, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, Anne Sexton, Weldon Kees, & Sylvia Plath come to mind without much effort. & some could argue this list is only ½ or ⅓ its proper length.
>>7749168
some of his characters spoke prose
not especially good prose though
>>7749203
>he hasn't watched Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well
>>7749213
>Please- I’ll grant you Shakespeare, Milton, & above both- John Donne.
haha, not another one of these idiots
I stopped reading there, my friend
>>7748827
I think he's incredible. He shows so much depth in his work
>>7749221
Shakespeare has less idea density per good chunk than any of the Moderns or Donne. Let's give his 2 be or not 2 be for example
Although the whole multiplies in images, its really nothing less than variants on a theme.
Until "end them" establishes the primary motif
"To die and to sleep" establishes the 'death as dream' variant and the standard 'existential' afterlife thing
But "natural shocks the flesh is heir to" doesn't add much to the "slings and arrows" except a biological basing
"The oppressors wrong etc..." further builds, but still stays on the 'whips and lashes'
The last part develops on the existential message to link up to the fear of thereafter
I mean I can accept its good, but it really is just a well-unveiled notion of a theme + the meter
But give you a bit of Rilke
http://sanslittlebalcony.tumblr.com/post/102315379049/about-fountains-rainer-maria-rilke
And you see how the moderns are just willing to fuck around with mood and swapping images to play out something greater. Shakespeare usually takes a whole plot and multiple soliloquies to do this except for a few sonnets (the famous "my lover's lips are not" etc...) and maybe when he's at his peak in the plays. And he rarely switches the theme in each soliloquy but develops these changes over a longer time.
Rilke starts off with descriptions of a fountain and ends with this crazy fucking image of the watching heaven and then FLIPPING OVER heaven watching man instead. Stevens usually fucks with the primary image/theme at every line sometimes, then links it back together across who knows how many variations.
Willy suffered from too much excess. So really his plays are just well-mnemonicked plots most of the time. Guffaws and beauteous metered lines (for its time), but where are the hardcore motions of the idea?
Which is good for high school kiddos, but man someone really needs to bury him dead.
>>7748900
>free verse
Er, blank verse
>>7749263
Rilke and Stevens are my two favorite poets, period - but this is just silly. Shakespeare invented the nihilistic consciousness - where is that in your myopic rubric?
Granted, for anyone who doubts the brilliance of John Donne, read "The Ecstasy".
>>7749324
>Shakespeare invented the nihilistic consciousness
1. No he didn't. The East was fucking around with that shit waaay before Willy
2. Even then, Aristotle invented Logic, and his Logic was shit. Founders do not get immediate access to praises.
>>7749263
>less idea density per good chunk than any of the Moderns or Donne
I'm loving every laugh over here
>>7749334
Don't worry my dear, one day you'll stop being fooled by Meter and realize that nice sounding things are just a trick of the biology. Then you'll be able to grapple with real poetry properly.
>>7749341
There's not much idea density in this post. What I'm saying is, it's not a good chunk.
>>7748851
Tom?
>>7748968
no on all levels
>>7749348
Oh dear me what a shitposter is he,
That came from some dark caves of anon
And reared the girth of his purple schlong
To cleave my beau post into sad twee
But fret not shitposter I understand
That you have certain longings in this earth
And you thrusted and thrusted your furious girth
That thy virginal precum has glazed thy own hand
One day when your post has made its fair mark
And you have conquered thee caverns anon
And this board is bowelled to your furious muck
Dearest Cave Troll, you thee have won
And upturned this soil to your orgasmic face
But, dear shitposter, you’re still a disgrace
>>7749034
Pleb.
>>7749162
There was a documentary that came out in, like, 2012 about the 'authorship question.' Heavily biased toward Oxfordians. Still a stupid, elitist theory.
I know this may be controversial but, I think Shakespeare was a pretty good writer. I mean at least as good as terry pratchett, steven king or jk rowling.
>>7749378
>Heavily biased toward Oxfordians
Unless you're in an Ivy, what isn't?
>>7749380
Only two of the four listed writers could actually write an ending to their stories.I put Shakespeare and Pratchett. What did you guys put?
>>7749263
Shakespeare is simultaneously the death of the old school (musical, rhyme-y, and worried about shit like meter, which edge lords can't handle) and the birth of the modern tropes being argued here.
Edge lords don't get Shakespeare because they are only interested in dry idea count or daring imagery (which he does both formidably) and ignore the fact that he is the zenith of the playwright tradition from Plautus and Terence to his day.
OP is a fag, Shakespeare is God-tier.
>>7749034
Tolstoy's artistic sentiments are extraordinarily strange and eccentric. The second half of "What is Art?" is just him shitting on pretty much everyone. And not even limited to writers, either: Wagner in particular receives the full treatment. I think only Dickens and Moliere escaped his ire.
Tolstoy was a great writer -- my personal favourite within prose -- but his opinions on the work of others is highly dubious. Would not take seriously.
>>7749383
Same, actually. Dark Tower ended terribly and Rowling couldn't even make the setting work past the third book.
>>7749411
>thinks its about a dry idea count/imagery
He had to wheedle his themes through long ass plays. The top tier Moderns can do what he did with a soliloquy in a stanza or so because their ideas aren't just quantified but stack in a narrative way that gets at something larger than psychological trappings or plot movement.
All 10 Duino Elegies total are like around maybe 30 pages and they capture the complexity of existence and its crises far more than Shakespeare ever could in stacks of pages.
"Another oft-ignored aspect of the Bard’s preeminent reputation is that of the Founder Syndrome. You know what I mean. The 1st person or group that accomplishes something great- or often merely good- in a field gets a reputation far out of proportion with their actual accomplishment. The reason is the fallacious belief that innovation alone constitutes greatness. It can be a part, but many is the innovator succeeded in scope by a successor... Likewise Shakespeare is looked upon as, if not the 1st English successful playwright & poet, the 1st GREAT English playwright & poet. & the cause may be just. However, the light that obscures any deeper delve into the actual work sans critical exploration is a bane on truly understanding the actual depth & achievement of the man’s work. All we are left with is an idealized afterglow- not a portrait of depth. "
>>7749427
>30 pages capture the complexity of existence and its crises
nigga 30 pages isn't even enough to start describing Shakespeare's take on female submissiveness in The Taming of the Shrew.
Not saying the Duino Elegies aren't good, but mastery of the long form demands respect of its own, in any case.
>>7749162
The authorship question is a complete non-issue, but Shakespeare (the idea of the man, rather than his actual work) is popular enough amongst plebs for them to be persuaded to buy things that sound fascinating about his life. Hence this bunk "theory" keeps reaffirming itself through a cottage-industry which never ceases to churn out new books and documentaries which all present some recently-discovered, perfectly trivial piece of "evidence" and present it as game-changing. There is very little academic veracity to these theories. The person who wrote Shakespeare was, almost definitely, Shakespeare.
>>7749443
>Shakespeare's take on female submissiveness in The Taming of the Shrew
This better not be some /pol/ conspiracy
>>7749458
As with pretty much everything Shakespeare, there's plenty of writing for both sides of the debate.
IMO, there's a reason Shrew is not tossed aside like Titus Andronicus. It's not solely female, though, it's more about general gender politics.And the power of cash.
>>7749466
The problem with that is that it becomes hard to distinguish between the play and the complexity of the period. Whether Willy was depicting the times and didn't know better, or purposely criticizing the times through his poetry then depends on having to look at the times itself. The communication is lacking if you have to sift through the milieu of the time.
But you can tell that people will still be feeling Duino Elegies 500 years later purely from the words themselves because it expresses a perpetual abstract and universal sentiment lucidly.
On the other hand if you want a better and clearer view of Gender Politics, then look at Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives. Rather than being forced to be pulled out of historical data and all that, the complexities are all existent within the work itself formally.
>>7749483
Good post, I'll be sure to do so.
>But you can tell that people will still be feeling Duino Elegies 500 years later purely from the words themselves because it expresses a perpetual abstract and universal sentiment lucidly.
That's kind of funny, because people are still feeling raw emotions from Shakespeare, 5 centuries later.
>>7749511
Well nobody really cares about stuff like Timon of Athens anymore, and I think only the most hardcore will seek out every sonnet. Even Taming is viewed more as a lesser comedy now.
(For that matter, how many Lope de Vega plays are actively being studied by Spain's academia?)
I never said Hamlet was bad, but I just said that the Moderns had better sensibility at stitching together those ambiguities in a way that outmoded a lot of stuff before.
Years down the road you'll probably see someone finally find a way to translate that quality properly into longform narratives in the same sense that Shakespeare did in as prolific a way (rather than in the uncohesive meandering way that Po-Mo is still struggling with for most of their things). Being able to mix up everything and have it not be a mass of shit. The question then will be how much of Willy will last when that happens.
>>7748827
I'm willing to bet you just didn't pick up on much of Hamlet because it is one of the most poignant psychological portrayals in all literature.
I consider the dynamic between Hamlet and Ophelia--wrought out of his own frustration at lack of power over his mother--to be the most tragic love story of all time, and it isn't even the central focus of the play.
>>7749714
He wrote in both verse and prose
Shakespeare is just an anglo meme anyway, very few people outside the anglosphere considers him the greatest author in history.
>>7750058
Agree with you here.
Every sophisticated culture has their equivalent of a Homer, Shakespeare, or Whitman. In the modern age, Shakespeare is mainly admired by upper class whites; his best aspects have been strip mined and reapplied by a wider range of authors. Without the verbose, flowery bloat.
>>7748827
Shakespeares value is English language itself.
>>7749373
do you even know how to scan decasyllables?
Our would-be critic, learned not in verse,
In numbers strives to make his point yet worse.
He thinks heroics can be writ by fools,
But only proves he does not know the rules.
