I really do not see why people are so in love with Shakespeare (if he eve wrote all his plays) Most of his works were based on earlier plays or stoies.
Yes, he often borrowed source material, but it’s what he did with it that is so amazing. The story of a Danish prince wasn’t all that interesting, and who would have otherwise guesses that a write could make something so sublime of it. It’s the language, the wit, the psychology, the metaphysics, that make Shakespeare great. To worry about the source material is missing the point entirely. I can guarantee you, no one is reading Saxo or Belleforest today, because they think it is fsantastic.
---Shakespeare
All the reasons you hear people liking Shakespeare are all wrong. Shakespeare is holding a mirror up to nature and people see themselves in it. Shakespeare is a liberal to a liberal, a conservative to a conservative, a monarchist to a monarchist, a lover to a lover, a fighter to a fighter, a Catholic to a Catholic, a Protestant to a Protestant, and so on.
Shakespeare is unique in that he is mocking Nature. He doesn’t take Nature seriously. I can’t find any writer who mocked Nature in such a way. Because of his constant mockery, almost all of Shakespeare is a comedy. His tragedies even sound like comedies until at the very end when the play suddenly calls for mass corpses.
All the stuff that is taught about Shakespeare is wrong. The worst way to look at Shakespeare is with any eye of seriousness. The guy is a total clown. But he is mocking Nature in every which way.
Shakespeare would even mock himself. “What are you reading?” asks the Polonious.
“Words. Words. Words.”
I suppose that if you are deaf and blind to the beauties of our gloriously rich, complex language; if you don’t care to see the human heart and mind subtly and deeply examined; if you are not interested in the thought, actions, and psychology of the people and culture that formed the basis of our own nation, then perhaps you would not “see why people are so in love with Shakespeare.”
I really do not see why people are so in love with Shakespeare (if he eve wrote all his plays) Most of his works were based on earlier plays or stoies.
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Would it be OK to ask, then, what you do enjoy reading? Folks who dismiss Shakespeare as glibly as you do, and for the reasons you do, surely must be reading something.
You would be hard pressed to find anything that is not.
The lad doth protest too much, methinks.
It's what a writer does with the story -- how he tells or shows it -- that makes for greatness. The source material for some of Shakespeare's plays was pretty minimal -- certainly in comparison with what Shakespeare created out of it.
You have to READ it to figure out the draw.
;-)
“I really do not see why people are so in love with Shakespeare (if he eve wrote all his plays) Most of his works were based on earlier plays or stoies.”
God made man, but when Michelango PAINTED him...well!