# Did ordinary Elizabethans understand Shakespeare's plays? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 2, 2011, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671 "2011-11-02T19:33:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/21 "2011-11-03T01:03:43Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Off-topic, why on earth would you start with angsty Hamlet? Please try Midsummer Night’s Dream, or Much Ado about Nothing. I’m sure that’s what the common folks liked - comedy and sexuality and young people being silly. > Er…I am not calling you common, just FTR! 🙂 Oh yes, when I was in school we had Julius Caesar, MacBeth, and Romeo and Juliet. Heavy tragedy and history, and we never saw them performed even, just read them out of books. I though Shakespeare sucked. Then I saw one of the comedies performed on TV, _Measure for Measure_. OMG, I didn’t know Shakespeare could be funny, with cross dressing, illicit sex, naughty jokes, and so on. I then watched other plays, the funny ones, and got back into the more serious plays, and learned to love Shakespeare. I think in high school they should include at least one of the silly plays, like _Measure for Measure_, _Twelfth Night_, or _Much Ado About Nothing_. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/22 "2011-11-03T01:13:22Z")
Are you sure you meant to categorize _Measure for Measure_ as one of the “silly plays”? A guy in a position of power trying to coerce sex from someone by abusing the justice system hardly meets my standard of silliness. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/23 "2011-11-03T01:40:03Z")
> [@kenetic](#): > > Part of the problem is that for the last 200 years or so (at least), Less than that. Shakespeare was the most popular playwright in the US in the 19th century, and probably well into the 20th. If you went to the theater at all, you saw Shakespeare. It was so common that political cartoonists could draw cartoons with references to Shakespeare that few would get today, with the assurance that his audience would (e.g, when Chester Arthur became president there was a cartoon of him saying to his corrupt political boss, “I know thee not, old man” in the hope he would do so). ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/24 "2011-11-03T01:55:58Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I don’t think I’d go as far as saying he’s like the Stooges, but there are plenty of funny lines in Hamlet. I think “A little more than kin and less than kind” is funny, and there’s a line where Hamlet refers to Claudius and Gertrude as “my uncle-father and aunt-mother.” It’s the humor of a guy who’s angry and depressed, and it’s funny stuff. Actually Hamlet is kind of the ultimate Stooge. He has all of these plans, and he runs around accomplishing absolutely nothing. Plus, there is some great humor in his exchanges and soliloquies, especially those that express his anger. _Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak’d meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables._ And I just realized another Hamlet reference in _Arrested Development_: Buster refers to Oscar as “uncle-father” when he is staying with Lucille. And I was always thinking of Michael as being Hamlet, but he’s actually somewhat reluctant Cordelia figure with George Sr. as Lear. > [@Chronos](#): > > Are you sure you meant to categorize _Measure for Measure_ as one of the “silly plays”? A guy in a position of power trying to coerce sex from someone by abusing the justice system hardly meets my standard of silliness. Of course, Angelo is set up by Vinctenio, who both recognizes Angelo’s weaknesses and plots to “rescue” Cladio and woo Isabella. Angelo is at least straightforward in his perfidy; the Duke is utterly creeptastic in his machinations, and his treatment of Lucio is jerkish to say the least, even if Lucio is a total cad. The whole thing is basically a satire of what would now be regarded as “romantic comedy”. But yes, it is a “problem play” that is neither tragedy nor simple comedy, and in my estimation greater for the complexity. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/25 "2011-11-03T02:05:40Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > This is very silly. That’s okay; I also recently characterize _Gilligan’s Island_ as being the American equivilent of McGoohan’s _The Prisoner_. And my position on _Casablanca_ as being not the bittersweet romance that it is commonly held as but rather a cynical film noir of deception and deceit matching anything written by Mamet has endured through much criticism. I maintain that _Hamlet_ is a farce of an ineffectual young prince who is utterly incapable of carrying out the simple assassination of his father’s murderer despite the support that would have doubtless emerged from the court that justice was being served (including by Gertrude, who at least tacitly acknowledged the strong possibility that the “uncle-father” murdered his brother), and instead allowing Denmark to fall into the hands of Fortinbras of Norway, whose father was honorably defeated by King Hamlet. The Marx Brothers couldn’t come up with more absuridty. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/26 "2011-11-03T02:09:32Z")
The tragedies were popular stuff for the masses too in their day, because they were incredibly violent, fullof sword fights and death. They were their time’s equivalent of todays blockbuster action adventure movie (though with a rather blacker sensibility than most modern action adventures, one that today is mostly to be found in what we call black comedy). What was so special about Shakespeare originally was that he managed to seamlessly integrate into his plays both lowbrow stuff with mass popular appeal, _and_ clever stuff that the masses would not get, but that spoke to the educated intellectual elite. Unfortunately,with the passage of time, and changes in the language and culture, the mass appeal stuff does not work nearly as well a sit used to (who wants to watch a sword fight when you can watch robots exploding in space?), but the stuff for the intellectual elite has worn much better. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/27 "2011-11-03T02:21:25Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Actually, the work of Shakespeare (the comedies, at least) is probably closer to Arrested Development. Seriously, you can find nearly every Shakespearean theme in Arrested Development; mistaken identities, compulsively clever word play, subtle and not so subtle allusions to current references, early setup of later jokes, self-referential and play-within-play plotting, et cetera. With only a very modest amount of mental gymnastics you can also find many of the themes or plot elements of the tragedies (Hamlet, Lear, MacBeth…enough for at least two or three semesters full of comparison/contrast essays). The comparison I was going to make was _The West Wing_. Shakespeare’s plays weren’t lowbrow but they were aimed for a mass audience - they were considered intelligent popular entertainment. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/28 "2011-11-03T13:50:56Z")
I’m sure ordinary Elizabethans understood Shakespeare’s words. I doubt any of them, even the nobles and scholars, understood enough history to catch his howlers. Well, **almost** none of them. SF FAN’S ELIZABETHAN ANCESTOR: 😛 Ha! Forsooth! Strikes a clock in Caesar’s Rome?! Does the water drip upon the bell?! Doth the sun-dial’s shadow strike upon it?! Ha-Ha! . . . Errmm, well see, good sir, that which we call a clock . . . To Hell with it. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/29 "2011-11-03T14:10:19Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Latin wouldn’t have been used in the Church sermons in Shakespeare’s time. One of the changes instituted by the Anglican Reformation was that services were to be conducted in the vernacular, as set out in [Article XXIV of the Articles of Religion](http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/articles/articles.html#24): > Of course, a knowledge of Latin would still be considered essential for the clergy and educated gentlemen of the time, but it wouldn’t have been used for sermons. Sermons had already been in the vernacular previously, hadn’t they? It’s the rest of the Mass that wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/30 "2011-11-03T14:19:33Z")
Anyone who went to grammar school at the time would have known Latin and Greek. That probably wasn’t a big percentage, but it’s probably greater a percentage than it is in the US today. But you don’t need to know any language other than English to understand Shakespeare’s plays. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/31 "2011-11-03T14:37:21Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Sermons had already been in the vernacular previously, hadn’t they? It’s the rest of the Mass that wasn’t. Yes. The sermons were meant to reach the people. Somebody else called the lower classes in those days “peasants.” In the countryside, sure. But even illiterate Londoners had a pretty good grasp of what was going on. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/32 "2011-11-03T14:42:38Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Hamlet, one of the bloodiest if not grimmest of the tragedies (that honor probably belongs to _King Lear_) is full of humor, some of it in absurdist fashion. Hamlet’s reluctance to kill Cladius during his toliet prayer for fear of sending him to heaven is the height of the titular character’s complete ineptitude; he plays like all three Stooges rolled into a single character, who has the unfortunate (and mostly unintended) effect of getting nearly every other significant character in the story killed, other than friend Horatio and rival young Fortinbras > > Stranger In fact, I generally find Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories much funnier than his comedies. The comedies tend to rely on over-broad humor for my tastes - but the tragedies and histories have great, sly moments. Richard Gloucester is _funny_, in a twisted way - and Edmund’s monologues in King Lear are masterpieces of sardonic wit. ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/33 "2011-11-03T15:04:12Z")
I remember one of my high school English classes we read “Julius Caesar”. Our teacher told us that Shakespeare’s audience was laughing hilariously over lines like the cobbler saying “All that I live by is with the awl”. We were not impressed by what 16th century audiences thought was funny, even when she except what cobblers and awls were. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/34 "2011-11-03T15:43:47Z")
The best example, IMO, of a Shakespearean play demonstrating that a “comedy” then was not the same thing as now is _Merchant of Venice_. It’s best not to play that one for laughs. Contemporary audiences considered Shylock’s forced conversion to Christianity a happy ending. I don’t think pointing out that \*Hamlet \*has jokes proves much - it’s hard to think of a modern serious movie that doesn’t have at least some humor in it. That hasn’t changed. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/35 "2011-11-03T16:01:52Z")
Shakespeare was full of [dirty jokes](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=240952) for the groundlings. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/36 "2011-11-03T16:23:08Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > The real barrier for most modern-day students, in my experience, is anxiety. They _think_ it’s going to be hard to understand, so it is.) This, IMHO, is the same problem the King James Version of the Bible has, reinforced by newer translations loudly advertising their “modern, easy-to-understand” language. In reality, the KJV isn’t that difficult to read. > [@kenetic](#): > > Part of the problem is that for the last 200 years or so (at least), Shakespeare’s plays were viewed exclusively as a highbrow entertainment for the educated cultural elites only. And that’s the way most people are exposed to it - dry and sucked of all life. In school I was actually taught that _comedy_ didn’t mean the same thing it meant today, but was merely meant to distinguish from _tragedies_. This is total horseshit. > > Seeing some of his plays performed by good actors who understand the material will change your perspective on Shakespeare, permanently. The comedies are full of bawdy jokes that lowest brow of the audience no doubt got, and even the dramas and histories are quite watchable if done right. I remember my 10th grade English class going to see a production of _A Comedy of Errors_, and expecting to be bored by outdated jokes we wouldn’t understand. It turned out to be hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/37 "2011-11-03T16:44:35Z")
I’ve formally studied Shakespeare at the college level and yes, Shakespeare is pretty much at the level of modern “adult cartoons”. This was, literally, the Simpsons and South Park of the day. Take a look at one of those “annotated” versions of classic literature sometime. It’s surprising how much pop-culture parody and current events satire is in there. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/38 "2011-11-03T16:48:54Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > And I just realized another Hamlet reference in _Arrested Development_: Buster refers to Oscar as “uncle-father” when he is staying with Lucille. And I was always thinking of Michael as being Hamlet, but he’s actually somewhat reluctant Cordelia figure with George Sr. as Lear. I was going to scoff but I can see a little bit of a similarity there. But if I was going to draw parallels between Arrested Development and anything in Shakespeare it would be through GOB, who is a textbook example of the kind of pompous buffoon you see in lots of Shakespeare’s comedies, although that kind of character predates Shakesepare. If you really wanted to push your luck you could say Buster is sort a twist on the coward/soldier type, since he is both but is missing the key attribute of being a braggart. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/39 "2011-11-03T18:32:17Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > But if I was going to draw parallels between Arrested Development and anything in Shakespeare it would be through GOB, who is a textbook example of the kind of pompous buffoon you see in lots of Shakespeare’s comedies, although that kind of character predates Shakesepare. On first blush GOB might seem to be a sort of Falstaff-ian character, but whereas Falstaff is self-assured about his buffoonery GOB is constantly seeking approval and validation. Mind you, I’m not saying that _Arrested Development_ is drawn directly from any particular Shakespearian plot; merely that there are distinct parallels between its storylines and those in many of Shakespeare’s plays, both comedies and tragedies. (Speaking of _Measure for Measure_, George Sr.'s use of J. Walter Weatherman is very Vincentio-like, especially in later renditions.) This, of course, highlights how enduring and universal the themes in many of Shakespeare’s plays are, and how accessible they can be when presented with good acting, staging, and direction. If you have problems grasping Shakespeare in the original settings, try the BBC ShakespeaRe-Told series, which resets four of Shakespeare’s popular plays in the modern era and using somewhat modernized dialogue. (I’m personally not a big fan, but if it gets people more interested in the works of The Bard, all the better.) Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671/40 "2011-11-03T18:47:57Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > Richard Gloucester is _funny_, in a twisted way Richard should be funny; he’s a self-categorized villain of the moustache-twisting variety. His famous opening soliloquy is nothing but boasting about what a dork he is, and how he’ll show everyone. _Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity: And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain And hate the idle pleasures of these days._ _Richard III_ could be easily set in any high school with the class geek as the titular character. In fact, I’m surprised Hollywood hasn’t done just that. Stranger [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ordinary-elizabethans-understand-shakespeares-plays/601671.md?page=3)