Posted on 04/23/2016 8:31:19 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
Exactly 400 years ago on this day, William Shakespeare passed this mortal coil. His effect on the English language was YUUUUUGE. Therefore I am asking for general observations on The Bard.
p.s. PLEASE DON'T post conspiracy theories about how the true author of the Shakespeare plays was really somebody else. That stuff is old AND annoying. It was SHAKESPEARE who wrote it.
Ditto! I was homeschooled and got started on Shakespeare with LP phonograph records -- a series titled "Living Shakespeare." They're still in my living room and I still listen. Each record has a booklet with the original text and the abridged text, mercifully footnoted for the student. If any homeschoolers are looking for help with the Bard, there are probably some of these things on ebay.
Incidentally, I was named after a person significant in Shakespeare. So into the Bard are my people :)
Great thread pj! Well done.
Age does not wither her
Nor custom stale her infinite variety
Most women cloy the appetites they feed
She makes more hungry where most she satisfies
And the question of who wrote Shakespeare is not about “conspiracy” theories, in addition to just being fascinating to discuss if only because you learn so much about so many things during the course of the discussion.
And for those who have not noticed, the author of the plays is exactly the type of person or persons who would construct a mystery.
I’d quibble — Shakespeare’s plays vary in quality; Milton’s a bore; KJV is merely a period vernacular translation of much older Scripture.
The greatest works in English (albeit shorter) also include the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence.
bttt
He actually has quite a bit of popular appeal. He’s probably the most popular writer in the world.
Only because every high school student has to read 1 play a year. It’s a great way to increase sales.
Not just that...he’s the most performed dramatist, the most quoted, the most well known. Even in countries that don’t teach him as often as Anglophone countries do.
But even that has its roots in how and how often he’s taught. He’s quoted (usually misquoted, or at least misapplied) because everybody has that basic familiarity. And that basic familiarity comes from him being ever present in school. And he’s performed in a large part because he’s become a resume checkbox for anybody in the dramatic arts. Anybody that wants to establish themselves as a serious actor knows that step one is do some Shakespeare, heck even retired NFL runningbacks know the path to being a respected actor runs right through your nearest Shakespeare festival (Eddie George who’s now playing Billy Flinn in the Chicago touring company, which unfortunately I didn’t have the time to see this year). It’s a self perpetuating mythology, because generation after generation is taught that Shakespeare is “serious art” then anybody that wants to make “serious art” does Shakespeare. Which makes sure there’s lots of productions, including the occasional wave of really bad movies filled with actors that really don’t have the chops.
“Somehow I think of Cruz when looking at this passage. Too bad his sense of vaulting ambition has prevented him from seeing what he is doing. “
Since most of us researched Cruz and his wife, he was DOA anyway.
That’s a ‘Chicken or Egg’ argument. He’s taught and performed all the time because a great many people in every generation feel that he’s the best writer in the language (and some would say in any language). But he is to English what Homer is to Greek, Virgil to Latin, Dante to Italian, Goethe to German, Pushkin to Russian...
Not really. We all know the bandwagon is a powerful tool for making things popular. There’s a reason CBS finds a way to declare all of their shows #1 at something for their advertising, they know there’s that crowd that doesn’t want to miss the boat. The myth of Shakespeare perpetuates the myth of Shakespeare, as long as he is held up as the pinnacle the world will support the idea that he’s the pinnacle.
Funny that you led off your list with Homer since there’s a good chance that there was no such guy but actually a bardic tradition that built the myth of the man. A myth which now perpetuates itself in the same way.
The Iliad and The Odyssey were either written by Homer or by another guy with the same name. It doesn’t matter. The Homeric tradition comes from something very tangible....two epic poems. That’s what I was referring to. If you think Shakespeare doesn’t ‘live up to the hype’ or whatever then what writer would you suggest replace him as the basis of English Lit. And the way the Academic World is structured these days, the hip thing to do is not to repeat what’s been said before but to debunk and put up someone else that you discovered on your own. Shakespeare has withstood this sort of thing.
Actually they were either written by Homer or came to evolve over decades by the telling of dozens even hundreds of people. It does matter, because it’s the proof of how myths perpetuate.
I don’t think ANYTHING can live up to Shakespeare’s hype. It’s an unachievable myth at this point. He’s been lauded to godhead. The basis of English lit should be much wider. They shouldn’t erect pillars, they should put down floors. There were many contemporaries that produced worthy stuff (worthy enough for him to rip off in some cases) plus of course centuries of English literature before a lot of which is really good. English lit is taught in the exact same very bad way American history is taught, much how we jump from Columbus to Plymouth Rock to the Revolution studiously skipping 3 centuries and a few actually very important wars, English lit teacher jump from Homer to Shakespeare and maybe a few mention Chaucer in passing. They really should be finding something to talk about every 200 years or so, there were writers, and some of their writings survive. Shakespeare hasn’t withstood #@$% English teachers’ OBSESSION with Shakespeare survives everything.
The myth of who wrote the Homeric Epics isn’t relevant to how the poems themselves are regarded aesthetically. We don’t know who wrote the original Ballad poems featuring Robin Hood either. But everyone agrees those are of low quality so they aren’t taught.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time with English Dept. academics and, as I’ve said, they go out of their way looking for long forgotten writers to dredge up and be known a the scholar who discovered them. Chaucer is indeed taught to any English major at a decent university. It’s hard to teach him to high school students because Middle English takes a while to master unless you have an exceptional ear for English words...unless you read a translation. All the Arts have ‘Pillars’, Bach and Mozart in music, Michelangelo in visual art, etc.
No I think it is. Homer has been deified far in excess of the poems. Probably more people know who Homer is than can actually say what the Iliad and Odyssey are, the contents of those stories has become separate from the poems and Homer, and yet Homer remains an iconic figure. And we see the same thing happening with Shakespeare, the texts have changed, the icon has risen, and along the way we’ve completely lost sight of the fact that they’re originally entertainment, they’re supposed to be FUN. Not worshiped.
Chaucer could be taught in high schools, nothing wrong with teaching it translated. They’re some pretty fun stories. Or teach the kids the changes in the language, we teach them that for Shakespeare, so clearly it CAN be done, when we decide to teach kids not be dumb rather than teach on the assumption they are dumb.
The problem with pillars in teaching is it encourages ignorance. The skip ahead mentality jumps past important centuries trying to get to “the good stuff”.
The Greeks built up their culture from the two Homeric poems. Hence our own culture was built up from them. That’s fact and can’t be ignored in the interest of fairness to other writers. And I don’t make a distinction between ‘fun’ and ‘attentive study’. Chaucer was taught in my high school.
But Aaron Copland talked critically about ‘Masterpiece Syndrome’ - a mentality that only the very finest of the finest is worthy of our attention...hence pretty much only three composers from 1750-1810 get played (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven). The others from that era have become footnotes (C.P.E. Bach, Gluck, Clementi). Even Haydn has been relegated to also ran status because of how Mozart and Beethoven have been deified. He’s not played nearly as much as he should be.
Well the Greeks built up their culture from the guys wandering around telling tales, some of which were the Homeric tales told the Homeric way. But history says it was really kind of like TV, especially the early days when the tapes were overwritten. We remember the stuff good enough for somebody to save the tape, but there was a whole lot of other crap out there.
Oh there’s a definitely difference between “fun” and “getting it beaten into you by an English teacher who insists all calling him ‘The Bard’”. One of the things school excels at is sucking the fun out of things, just by turning it into an assignment it immediately stops being fun. They could bring it back though, if they would stop the Bard worship, teach these things as the low entertainment they were, point out that they were basically Happy Days, draw that line of continuity from his king plays to the modern biopic. There’s a way to say “yes these are very well written, but they’re still entertainment, and the audience was probably drunk”. Throw a little shade at Shakespeare, dig up some bad reviews from the time period. Some of the best discussions I’ve ever had about great TV focused on the bad episodes, or at least the bad aspects of good episodes (nothing is perfect) a little bit of bubble bursting criticism is good for any subject.
I’m with Copland. I like the continuity of the world. The less than very best is usually a lot more interesting, if only because they were keeping the art alive in between the masters.
Most of his bad reviews (both during and for quite a bit after his life) was about how ‘low’ his plays seemed. It was the German Romantics who started the Bardolatry movement.
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