Shakespeare?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

OK. Ryokan mentioned Ol' Shakey Bill to me in a PM earlier and we both felt he deserved a thread of his own. You can't really have a Literature section without at least a thread dedicated to the most well-known, well-respected (or should that be over-rated) writer in the history of the English language. So here it is.

This is a thread for anything to do with The Bard. Including, but not limited to:

• Favourite lines/passages from his plays
• Favourite sonnets
• Why you like him
• Why you hate him
• Whether you find him accessible or not
• Discussions of performances of his plays - live or on film
• The enduring mysteries about his life -
  • Was he gay?
  • Did he write his plays or was it someone else?
  • Did he really exist?
  • Who was Mr W.H.?
  • Who were The Fair Youth, The Dark Lady & The Rival Poet?
• The times in which he lived
• Changing attitudes to his works
• And any other shit you think might vaguely interest anyone.

[Pappa]

My favourite piece is probably Portia and her servant, dressed up as a lawyer and his helper (in the Merchant of Venice). Once you realise they were male actors, pretending to be women dressed as men, it all becomes very funny.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

There is a theory that Shakespeare actually was a woman pretending to be a man. There are surprisingly few likenesses of him, or personal facts known about him, despite his (her?) huge popularity in his day. I don't think it is a theory that's given too much credence, but it is by no means the most bonkers I have come across!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"What a brave new world that has such people in it."

"What fuels these mortals be."

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Here is my favourite sonnet of the moment. It is one of the 'fair youth' series - sonnets that were written in praise (platonic or sexual is unclear) of an unknown young man - although it works perfectly well for any loved one that you are not with.


Sonnet 61

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake:
For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near.

[Beelzebub2]

Here is my favourite monologoue from the pastoral comedy As You Like It:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

(Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

[Beelzebub2]

And here comes Macbeth Soliloquy

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

(Act V, Scene V)

[Animavore]

I'm going to go with over-rated but... hold on. Before you attack me.
I'm not saying he wasn't a very good writer in his day I'm quite sure he was. What I am against is this notion that he is the best English writer...ever.

1st of all, it's too early to say ever. It's even quite possible that the best writer ever was never found because he/she kept their writings to themselves and then were just discarded with the rest of their stuff. I absolutely deplore the thought that one person is so good he is much better than any one else. I have the same issue with Shakespeare that I have with The Beatles. They're only a band. And he's only a writer. Sorry folks but, no idolising for me.
2nd, and most important to me anyway, this idea of teaching him in schools as the definitive person seems dogmatic and almost religious to me. Personally I can no quicker force myself to appreciate Shakespeare than I can force my self to understand the apparent deeper meanings of the Bible. Anything that can't be liked quite easily and without difficulty, to me, is not worth reading. Compare for instance Nietzsche, Kafka, Oscar Wilde and Joyce, people who when I read them I was instantly and deeply immersed. When I try, and I have tried, to read Shakespeare I just don't 'get it'. I have no emotive response to his writings. Its too far detached for me.

And just so you know, the other above mentioned writers... only writers too.

[Beelzebub2]

Well, we didn't have much opportunity to study his writings here where I live (Croatia) - we mostly focused on our own writers, so for me this is a good opportunity to study more of his work.

I like this quote from Hamlet:

Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.

(Act II, scene II)

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I'm going to go with over-rated but... hold on. Before you attack me.
I'm not saying he wasn't a very good writer in his day I'm quite sure he was. What I am against is this notion that he is the best English writer...ever.

1st of all, it's too early to say ever. It's even quite possible that the best writer ever was never found because he/she kept their writings to themselves and then were just discarded with the rest of their stuff. I absolutely deplore the thought that one person is so good he is much better than any one else. I have the same issue with Shakespeare that I have with The Beatles. They're only a band. And he's only a writer. Sorry folks but, no idolising for me.
2nd, and most important to me anyway, this idea of teaching him in schools as the definitive person seems dogmatic and almost religious to me. Personally I can no quicker force myself to appreciate Shakespeare than I can force my self to understand the apparent deeper meanings of the Bible. Anything that can't be liked quite easily and without difficulty, to me, is not worth reading. Compare for instance Nietzsche, Kafka, Oscar Wilde and Joyce, people who when I read them I was instantly and deeply immersed. When I try, and I have tried, to read Shakespeare I just don't 'get it'. I have no emotive response to his writings. Its too far detached for me.

And just so you know, the other above mentioned writers... only writers too.

I knew we'd get at least one that didn't like the man. I've no issue with that. I don't like Joyce much - he never wrote shit worth reading after Dubliners for my money and conned the book buying public rotten. That's just my onion - I tried to read him but he wasn't for me. Other onions may differ.

Of course Shakespeare wasn't the greatest writer ever. He was a writer that was immensely popular in his day as a producer of bawdy, sentimental, populist plays. Most of his plots and ideas weren't original but based on earlier works. He repeated himself thematically and re-used the same ideas in many of the dialogue in his plays (the two soliloquies quoted by ryokan above (Macbeth and As You Like It) both use the stage as a metaphor for life and the same idée fixé crops up in Merchant of Venice, Hamlet and others. The "play within a play" is another overused device - a way of providing light relief in a serious play most often) - as is the cross-dressing thing, a consequence of male actors playing all the parts at the time. Add to this the laughable efforts at historical accuracy and the ridiculous coincidences that pepper his plots and it makes one wonder where his reputation could have come from!

Here is my POV on that...

What Shakespeare was, was the most influential writer in the English language. He elevated the common entertainment of the touring play to a previously unknown level. His use of language was unparalleled in his time and has never been bettered since (although often equalled.) His understanding of human nature knocks aside all of the shaky plots, dubious historical facts and other clutter. His turn of phrase was so original that the list of phrases that we owe to him is enormous - take again just those two pieces quoted by ryokan above.

• All the world's a stage (Rush album)
• Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow (Short story by Kurt Vonnegut - also quoted in Joyce's A Portrait...)
• All our yesterdays (Historical TV program from the 70's)
• Sound and fury (WIlliam Faulkner novel)

The list of phrases from Shakespeare that have passed into our everyday speech is second only to the bible.

Idolising the man is wrong. I agree. He was just a man. But disregarding him because of the reverence in which others hold him is equally wrong (I am not saying that you are doing so by the way but many do) and is nothing but inverted snobbery. Both holding him aloft as the pinnacle of writing talent and dismissing him as overrated are equally fallacious viewpoints IMneverHO.

You say that you have tried to read Shakespeare. That may be where you are going wrong. I had to read the Merchant of Venice at school for my O level Eng Lit and I hated it. It made no sense to me and I had no idea what was going on. Then I went to see it performed live by some 6th-formers (not a professional performance by any means) and it was transformed before my eyes. (It helped that the girl playing Portia was a babe!!) I still hated it (I was only 15) but it made so much more sense. Spoken aloud, Bill's words take on their full meaning. Liberated from the confusing way that they are laid out on the page (I will come to that in another post - basically, all of his plays were written in iambic pentameter but not intended to be read like that) the meaning, emotion, comedy and pathos flowed out of the words. It was a revelation.

Since then, I have been to see dozens of plays performed, both amateur and professionally, including the RSC on several occasions. Merely reading the plays never compares.

And yeah. Only a writer.

[Animavore]

Actually now that you mention it I did see a play performed by The Free Shakespeare Company (I think that's what they were called, they done free performances of Shakespeare) in Stephens Green in Dublin and I quite enjoyed.
Can't for the life of me remember the play.

[Animavore]

Checked Wiki. It was 12th Night.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Checked Wiki. It was 12th Night.

A fun play - absolutely full of cross-dressing, mistaken identity and stupid coincidences - and wonderful lines and insights. The scenes where Olivia is trying to sex up Viola, thinking she's a bloke, are fucking funny live! I saw it performed by an outdoor company last summer. The whole audience was in stitches.

[Beelzebub2]

What Shakespeare was, was the most influential writer in the English language. He elevated the common entertainment of the touring play to a previously unknown level. His use of language was unparalleled in his time and has never been bettered since (although often equalled.) His turn of phrase was so original that the list of phrases that we owe to him is enormous.

Indeed - Shakespeare contributed more phrases to the English language than any other individual. There is even a collection of well-known quotations that are associated with Shakespeare, and I counted about 140 of them. Phrases from Shakespeare

Amazing thing is that although he left school when he was only 13, total of 15,000 different words were used in his plays and a further 7000 were used in his poems and sonnets. This gave him a vocabulary of 21,000 words when the average vocabulary of the day in Stratford, England, was less than 500. Even by today's standards, the most celebrated authors do not exceed an average of 7500 words (except for John Milton - about 8000) while the average English speaking person only has about 2,000 words in their vocabulary. Shakespeare dictionary

Here is a list of Words AND phrases coined by Shakespeare.


And here is a Shakespeare Insult Generator.

"Thou goatish tardy-gaited barnacle!"

"Thou venomed hasty-witted horn-beast!"

"Thou reeky toad-spotted clotpole!"

"Thou spongy rude-growing vassal!"

There is even "Shakespeare insult dictionary" etc.


Some more links here, here, here, here.

[Pappa]

Another favourite of mine, also from the Merchant of Venice... is this:

SALARINO

Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad,
Because you are not merry: and 'twere as easy
For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry,
Because you are not sad.

It's the "glass half empty / glass half full" idea, but put in the more verbose way of Shakespeare.