What is your opinion of Shakespeare?
- Thread starter Willieck
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I love Shakespeare. Ive read the sonnets so many times that I have several memorized. I generally think that while some my genuinely dislike his work, most who spout hatred are doing so for the sake of being contrarian.
One of my fondest memories of high school was going to see a local, outdoor performance of Macbeth with some of my friends. It was blistering hot outside and I really felt for the actors with all their heavy leather costuming, but the really put on a good show and I appreciated the story much more than I ever had before. Not long after that we went back to the same place to see a Midsummer Night's Dream production, which didn't impress us as much but we enjoyed it. So, I can't claim to be completely versed in Shakespeare, I've enjoyed the little I've seen.
Shakespeare sort of fell to the sidelines of my consciousness a while back. Then this summer, I remembered that they do a performance of two plays here in the park every summer (for like 2 weeks, it's a very short summer 
) and went with some friends for the first time. The two plays this year were Much Ado About Nothing and the Scottish play. Sadly I was out of town for the latter, but as I was watching the former I realized two things: why the hell has it been so long since I was in a real theater and how could I possibly have forgotten how awesome Shakespeare was?
So my stack of things to read right now is fairly massive, but there's definitely some Shakespeare in there. My favorite plays back in highschool were Twelfth Night and The Tempest... maybe they're due for a timely rereading.
) and went with some friends for the first time. The two plays this year were Much Ado About Nothing and the Scottish play. Sadly I was out of town for the latter, but as I was watching the former I realized two things: why the hell has it been so long since I was in a real theater and how could I possibly have forgotten how awesome Shakespeare was?So my stack of things to read right now is fairly massive, but there's definitely some Shakespeare in there. My favorite plays back in highschool were Twelfth Night and The Tempest... maybe they're due for a timely rereading.
I love Billy Shakes. And I really don't think he's that hard to read. You just have to read more slowly, and OED the occassional now-dead word, if you don't have a copy with all that good stuff in the margins.
I do have to admit I'm not a fan of forcing secondary students to read Shakes. In my school, we read R&J in 9th, Ceasar in 10th, Hamlet in 11th, Macbeth in 12th. I think it does more harm than good forcing HS students to read the plays, since it turns off far more 16 year olds than it engages.
I do have to admit I'm not a fan of forcing secondary students to read Shakes. In my school, we read R&J in 9th, Ceasar in 10th, Hamlet in 11th, Macbeth in 12th. I think it does more harm than good forcing HS students to read the plays, since it turns off far more 16 year olds than it engages.
^I agree that one always runs the risk of souring students on a subject, but I think it depends more on who's teaching it and how its being taught.
I love Shakespeare-- the plays, anyway; I consider him the ultimate Pulp writer. And I always get a kick out of the fact that academics consider a scriptwriter to be the greatest writer in the English language. 
That said, he is definitely overrated. He is far from the greatest writer in the English language. We only know of him today because he had some good pals who published a folio of his work after he died. The Shakespeare idolatry trend reached its peak (or nadir) a few years ago when somebody published a book that actually claimed he invented thinking.
But, as I said, I do love his work; enough that I've written both a poem and a short story in homage to his style.
That said, he is definitely overrated. He is far from the greatest writer in the English language. We only know of him today because he had some good pals who published a folio of his work after he died. The Shakespeare idolatry trend reached its peak (or nadir) a few years ago when somebody published a book that actually claimed he invented thinking.
But, as I said, I do love his work; enough that I've written both a poem and a short story in homage to his style.
I like Shakespeare. Marc Alaimo, Jeffrey Combs and Casey Biggs did some scenes from the works of Shakespeare (with Combs playing an improbable Juliet) during their appearance at Creation Vegas. It was very well received.
They concluded their performance with a reading of this:
They concluded their performance with a reading of this:
My favorite method to do Shakespeare is when they take his works and put them in a modern setting, but with the dialogue from the original:
- A rather bizarre Richard III, set in what looks like 1930's-40's England. Ian McKellen is chilling.
- Hamlet in modern day New York City. Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan) is the CEO and 'King' of the Denmark Corporation, Hamlet is Ethan Hawke as a techno-geek type, Bill Murray as Polonius (don't laugh - he is actually pretty good), Liev Schreiber as Laertes.
- Romeo + Juliet in California beach country. Leo DiCaprio as Romeo, Claire Danes as Juliet. Montagues and Capulets as feuding corporations/families. Normally I hate Baz Luhrmann kitsch but this was really cool. I love it when somebody says "Put up your swords!" and everyone takes out guns - which have 'Sword' as the brand name. Also, any film with Paul Sorvino (he plays Juliet's father) can't be all bad...
(fun fact: When they were filming Romeo's final speech at the end, Leo did such a good job that Claire started to cry so they had to start over. She smacked him on the arm and said "Don't make me cry, I'm supposed to be comatose here!")
- the perhaps-vaporware remake of The Merchant of Venice, set in Las Vegas. Stars Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. Honestly, are they even still working on this?
- A rather bizarre Richard III, set in what looks like 1930's-40's England. Ian McKellen is chilling.
- Hamlet in modern day New York City. Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan) is the CEO and 'King' of the Denmark Corporation, Hamlet is Ethan Hawke as a techno-geek type, Bill Murray as Polonius (don't laugh - he is actually pretty good), Liev Schreiber as Laertes.
- Romeo + Juliet in California beach country. Leo DiCaprio as Romeo, Claire Danes as Juliet. Montagues and Capulets as feuding corporations/families. Normally I hate Baz Luhrmann kitsch but this was really cool. I love it when somebody says "Put up your swords!" and everyone takes out guns - which have 'Sword' as the brand name. Also, any film with Paul Sorvino (he plays Juliet's father) can't be all bad...
(fun fact: When they were filming Romeo's final speech at the end, Leo did such a good job that Claire started to cry so they had to start over. She smacked him on the arm and said "Don't make me cry, I'm supposed to be comatose here!")
- the perhaps-vaporware remake of The Merchant of Venice, set in Las Vegas. Stars Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. Honestly, are they even still working on this?
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Shakespeare's the man, plain and simple. For my money, there's nothing in the English language that's better written than Sonnet 29.
I've read Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, and Richard III.
I've seen performances of The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Merchant of Venice.
I'm currently in the process of reading Othello, though very slowly of course, and plan to read more in the near future.
Something I'm curious about is how people view his lesser known plays. One that's really caught my eye is King John. Anyone read that one?
I've read Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, and Richard III.
I've seen performances of The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Merchant of Venice.
I'm currently in the process of reading Othello, though very slowly of course, and plan to read more in the near future.
Something I'm curious about is how people view his lesser known plays. One that's really caught my eye is King John. Anyone read that one?
Shakespeare's popularity with the wider audience rests upon a handful of dramas. Romeo and Juliet is famous for the unthinkingness of the lovers, but the peculiar motivations of the creepy nurse are rarely remarked. In Macbeth, the action is supernatural. Iago in Othello is notorious for his lack of motive (and the same is true of Marlena,) and Othello is completely unreflective. Hamlet is also prompted by the supernatural. Notably Hamlet is such a cipher that one cannot determine his age. Lear's division of his kingdom again is notoriously unmotivated by any intelligible motive.
The construction of the plays is fluid. The dialogue is superb. But what seems to appeal is that the heroes are driven, internally by all consuming passion or externally by malignant magic. They act out restrained passions of the audience. Thus it does not matter that the action often does not make any sense, or that all the theatrics, despite the gloriously thumping words, have no relation to real life of any sort. They evoke a dream life with a pungency usually found in reality. I suppose people will imagine this to be provocation but how is Hamlet, for instance, supposed to be insightful into the human condition when the human condition is remarkably short on ghosts? When you boil the play down to what actually happens, it is astonishing how often the results are manifestly nonsense.
The only comedy widely popular seems to be The Taming of the Shrew. Henry IV survives because of Falstaff. Although to a degree The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night and As You Like It can occasionally gain an audience, particularly when they or the tragedies are reinvented.
The extent to which Shakespeare's plays served the views of the powerful seems to be negelected. Such things as the witches in Macbeth because James believed in witched, or the foolish Cleopatra because James disliked the memory of his mother are just a small part of it. Henry V is plainly a chauvinist orgy, while Richard III is a Tudor bashing of a predecessor (but covertly of the younger Cecil?) All's Well That Ends Well ends up endorsing marriages arranged for young noblemen (implicitly, by the Queen.) Troilus and Cressida argues against war (feared by Elizabeth lest it give a general enough army to overthrow her.) Alcibiades in Timon of Essex is parallel to Essex.
As to the question of originality and greatness, I think Shakespeare the comedian is vastly more original than is given credit. But without the slighted contributions of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, Shakespeare the tragedian wouldn't have existed at all. (Everyone has heard about Marlowe's influence, but Kyd apparently wrote the original Hamlet play, and his interest in Greek tragedy seems to have influenced the Chorus in Henry V.) Those fellows, unlike Shakespeare, fell afoul of the Tudor police state. Shakespeare, despite all the jawing about his humanity and depth, was never in danger of offending the powerful.
Not even when Essex ordered a revival of Richard II as agitation for his planned coup. My guess is that Shakespeare and company escaped unscathed because they informed the authorities as quickly as possible. This perfectly logical explanation is inconceivable to the English patriots who revere Shakespeare, though.
On the notorious question of who wrote Shakespeare, my opinion is that the man from Stratford wrote the plays. The man from Stratford can easily be Shakespeare because Shakespeare isn't such a wonderful person. The guy who wrote Taming of the Shrew could easily be the guy who left his wife the second best bed. As for talent, put up Shakespeare's first six plays against Marlowe's first (and only) six plays.
As to Shakespeare the man, there are some really interesting questions. First, how did he get the money to buy into a partnership? He wasn't a famous actor and no other Elizabethan or Jacobean playwright managed to make much money.
How would he know the official version of Marlowe's death (alluded to in As You Like It,)? The death of Kyd, Marlowe's roommate, was apparently from lingering effects of torture aimed to elicit charges against Marlowe, was enough to cast doubt on the official story. Why, then, did he trouble to propagate it to an audience not interested in the private lives of playwrights? Probably Shakespeare kept track of Kyd, apparently basing his Hamlet on Kyd's earlier play. And where did Shakespeare find a copy of Kyd's Hamlet, inasmuch as the authorities had confiscated Kyd's papers? Playbooks were proprietary, and even Shakespeare has problems with plays being lost.
The obvious solution, that Kyd's Hamlet was not a significant influence, doesn't seem to work, given Hamlet's odd structure. (Theatrical producers tend to cut Hamlet savagely. Branagh's version was notable most for actually playing the whole damn thing.)
Where was Shakespeare's library when he died?
Did he die of syphilis? (Read the last two sonnets.)
Incidentally, I see no reason to think he was gay, or even bisexual. One sonnet very clearly denies this. Shakespeare the flatterer seems to me to be so obsequious that he would gladly be some extreme in his devotions, especially to a hoped for patron he thought might be effeminate, in his poetic tastes at least.
The construction of the plays is fluid. The dialogue is superb. But what seems to appeal is that the heroes are driven, internally by all consuming passion or externally by malignant magic. They act out restrained passions of the audience. Thus it does not matter that the action often does not make any sense, or that all the theatrics, despite the gloriously thumping words, have no relation to real life of any sort. They evoke a dream life with a pungency usually found in reality. I suppose people will imagine this to be provocation but how is Hamlet, for instance, supposed to be insightful into the human condition when the human condition is remarkably short on ghosts? When you boil the play down to what actually happens, it is astonishing how often the results are manifestly nonsense.
The only comedy widely popular seems to be The Taming of the Shrew. Henry IV survives because of Falstaff. Although to a degree The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night and As You Like It can occasionally gain an audience, particularly when they or the tragedies are reinvented.
The extent to which Shakespeare's plays served the views of the powerful seems to be negelected. Such things as the witches in Macbeth because James believed in witched, or the foolish Cleopatra because James disliked the memory of his mother are just a small part of it. Henry V is plainly a chauvinist orgy, while Richard III is a Tudor bashing of a predecessor (but covertly of the younger Cecil?) All's Well That Ends Well ends up endorsing marriages arranged for young noblemen (implicitly, by the Queen.) Troilus and Cressida argues against war (feared by Elizabeth lest it give a general enough army to overthrow her.) Alcibiades in Timon of Essex is parallel to Essex.
As to the question of originality and greatness, I think Shakespeare the comedian is vastly more original than is given credit. But without the slighted contributions of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, Shakespeare the tragedian wouldn't have existed at all. (Everyone has heard about Marlowe's influence, but Kyd apparently wrote the original Hamlet play, and his interest in Greek tragedy seems to have influenced the Chorus in Henry V.) Those fellows, unlike Shakespeare, fell afoul of the Tudor police state. Shakespeare, despite all the jawing about his humanity and depth, was never in danger of offending the powerful.
Not even when Essex ordered a revival of Richard II as agitation for his planned coup. My guess is that Shakespeare and company escaped unscathed because they informed the authorities as quickly as possible. This perfectly logical explanation is inconceivable to the English patriots who revere Shakespeare, though.
On the notorious question of who wrote Shakespeare, my opinion is that the man from Stratford wrote the plays. The man from Stratford can easily be Shakespeare because Shakespeare isn't such a wonderful person. The guy who wrote Taming of the Shrew could easily be the guy who left his wife the second best bed. As for talent, put up Shakespeare's first six plays against Marlowe's first (and only) six plays.
As to Shakespeare the man, there are some really interesting questions. First, how did he get the money to buy into a partnership? He wasn't a famous actor and no other Elizabethan or Jacobean playwright managed to make much money.
How would he know the official version of Marlowe's death (alluded to in As You Like It,)? The death of Kyd, Marlowe's roommate, was apparently from lingering effects of torture aimed to elicit charges against Marlowe, was enough to cast doubt on the official story. Why, then, did he trouble to propagate it to an audience not interested in the private lives of playwrights? Probably Shakespeare kept track of Kyd, apparently basing his Hamlet on Kyd's earlier play. And where did Shakespeare find a copy of Kyd's Hamlet, inasmuch as the authorities had confiscated Kyd's papers? Playbooks were proprietary, and even Shakespeare has problems with plays being lost.
The obvious solution, that Kyd's Hamlet was not a significant influence, doesn't seem to work, given Hamlet's odd structure. (Theatrical producers tend to cut Hamlet savagely. Branagh's version was notable most for actually playing the whole damn thing.)
Where was Shakespeare's library when he died?
Did he die of syphilis? (Read the last two sonnets.)
Incidentally, I see no reason to think he was gay, or even bisexual. One sonnet very clearly denies this. Shakespeare the flatterer seems to me to be so obsequious that he would gladly be some extreme in his devotions, especially to a hoped for patron he thought might be effeminate, in his poetic tastes at least.
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I find his works to be extremely hit and miss. More miss than hit.
That's my favorite as well, and the first I memorized.
"He that wounded her hath hurt me more than had he killed me dead."
Titus Andronicus is my all time favourite.
The Roman/Elizabethan dysfunctional bizarre-ness of it all was what turned me onto Shakespeare.
Titus Andronicus is my all time favourite.
The Roman/Elizabethan dysfunctional bizarre-ness of it all was what turned me onto Shakespeare.
I love Shakespeare-- the plays, anyway; I consider him the ultimate Pulp writer. And I always get a kick out of the fact that academics consider a scriptwriter to be the greatest writer in the English language.
I remember sitting in class reading ahead in Macbeth while some discussion was going on, and suddenly realising that what I was reading was a pretty decent thriller - it's a real page-turner once it gets going and you get used to the rhythms of it.
Titus Andronicus is stunning - it's like Stephen King, Jackie Collins and Thomas Harris all rolled into one writing for The Bold and The Beautiful.
You just can't get plots like that any more
