Ok, Ol’ Scrimmy is gonna put his neck on the chopping block. I’m new and I have the cojones to start a thread, about a topic that’s gotten me into trouble before, even.
First, let me say I do not claim to be an expert on the man or his work, but from all the Shakespeare I have read, I have come to what many characterize as a near blasphemous conclusion:
Shakespeare was the Quentin Tarantino of his day.
Oh yes! I’m saying it! It is my firm assertion that all these “deep meanings” in most, if not all of Billy’s work, are fabrications of the snobby artistes making the claims. I think Will could write, write well, but I think that the bulk of his work is on par with pop culture movies today - with an emphasis on sex and violence over substance.
Granted, it’s not fair to get all upset about one person’s interpretation of literature, but I think the psychoanalytical baggage Shakespeare’s work has acquired over the years is more than a little excessive. Worse still, all of this “meaning” becomes gospel, to be spewed at you ad nauseum. Then, you end up with intellectual elitists getting in your face when you either refuse to accept, or disagree with, all the BS these great minds have divined.
This madness doesn’t stop at Shakespeare, but in my view his work suffers the greatest infestation of these parasitic musings. His stuff was good, but I think it was a lot more base and vulgar than many want to admit.
I am posting this in the pit so I can suffer the slings and arrows of those who think differently without any more pretension than will come naturally from this topic. Lay it on me.
A lot of Shakespeare’s work was base and vulgar, which is one reason it was so popular. All of his plays, even the tragedies, are full of sly (and not so sly) double entendres and wordplay. There have been many essays, books, etc. written about vulgarity in Shakespeare (I’m at work now, so I don’t have any references in front of me at the moment). But I can’t agree with your claim that the deep meanings in his work were mostly the result of elitist snobs reading too much into his words. He often dealt with cosmic topics - death, whether or not to commit suicide (which Camus took a whole book to talk about), love, madness - and did so in a manner that was to the point and poetic at the same time. Besides, even if some of his stuff was vague and open to interpretation, some might argue that that’s a sign of a good writer - one who allows the reader to draw his/her own conclusions, rather than beating you over the head with the work’s “significance”. Hey, it’s worked pretty well for the bible, eh?
Hey, I love it when an author provokes thought, all I’m sayin’ is I really don’t think Will was the kinda dude that was gonna write a bunch of stuff that takes a few hundred years and an army of scholars to figure out. I’m at work too, so I can’t give you a specific here, but I think it to be fairly common knowledge that Shakespaere’s work is thought to be innundated with hidden meanings. I just don’t believe it. I believe his work was, at it’s heart, good but not incredible, with a strong but not Jungian plotlines full of symbolism.
Wait, I’ve come for an argument!
Oh, well this is abuse.
Great Debates, third door on the left. We just throw our feces at each other around these parts.
With that out of the way…Shakespeare was a starving artist who pandered to the masses and sucked up to the royals. He was damned good at it too. British royalty could do no wrong. Those screwed up folk? Oh no, they were Danish, not you m’lord.
Why is there some clown in his stories? Someone who can’t help but make a snide, sarcastic, or funny comment every chance he can? Well, because it’s funny. The audiences liked it. He learned what audiences liked and gave it to them.
Romeo and Juliet? Some may say that it’s complete crap from the perspective of an actual story. Thirteen year olds meet each other, absolutely know they’re in love, marry and then die for each other within the week? Fuck that bunch of tripe.
I think you’re right and you’re wrong, SCRIMMY. There are A LOT (and I can’t possibly stress that enough) of educated guesses on what his plays mean, what his words mean, that make me want to roll my eyes and gag. First of all, if you take the time to study any piece of work, you can turn anything from a molehill to a mountain and back to a molehill again. This is regardless of whether the “intention” was even intentional in the first place. Secondly, there comes a point where putting too much meaning into something makes it lose its meaning. If you eat too much filet mignon you’re gonna throw it up just like you would Spam.
OTOH, it would be insane to believe that Shakespeare didn’t put any meaning into his works. Look at the sly jokes he slipped in there. The double meanings. Heck, study all the inside jokes Tarantino threw into his films sometime. Lots of people do it. It adds nothing to the story to those that don’t get it, but it doesn’t take anything away either. To those that understand the joke, it makes them appreciate the source even more.
I admit there’s alot of sly wit tossed about…my bitch is the folks who try and find the theory of general relativity in his stuff when the scene is a guy talking about how his dick itches.
It’s kinda like the snotty jazz musicians that say stuff like “jazz is a thinking man’s music.” - I guess I do don’t have the intellectual power to listen to a guy trill 64th notes off beat and out of key for an hour and a half and call it “talented” or “music”.
2 Simpsons references as replies to a post of mine…I feel at home here…
Anywho, I just wanted to make myself clear about the jazz comment before being brutally assaulted by an enraged sax machine:
The fact that I find jazz music to be unadulterated pap is my opinion, one that I don’t believe requires a masters degree to have, unlike the oh-so bourgeiouse “jazz is a thinking man’s music” comment seems to imply.
A direct quote from a jazz musician, by the way (I saw it on PBS, I guess I should have expected such impertinence, neh?)
This thread reminds of something I told my wife, who fell asleep while watching Titus. She asked how the ending went. I said, “Once Titus got them all to dinner, it was just your basic Shakespearean slaughter going on.”
Interesting. Could you elaborate? Are Jules, Vincent and Butch the three daughters?
The only connection I could find is that Tarantino lied about appearing onscreen in Jean Luc Godard’s 1987 film King Lear on his CV back when he was a nobody.
I did find one site that attempts to draw paralells bewteen Reservoir Dogs and KL.
I don’t know about Tarantino being a contemporary version of Shakespeare. How about Francis Coppola and/or Oliver Stone? (I’m half-joking, of course, but I can’t think of any others in the movie industry that might compare.)
Arguments like this are the reason I got a C- on my Literature exam… English teachers just aren’t willing to listen to any essay that isn’t about the author’s comment on the human condition. There’s no story writing anymore! We analysed the Matrix fer chrissakes!
deep and heavy stuff, man.
Per whoever complained about whatever- I participate occsiaonlly in my alumni digest. i was pretty amused when someone claimed Dave Barry was just too puerile to be funnny, but the person laughed out loud when he read Aristophones. Aristophonese was big on fart and impotency humor. Very un-puerile.
I guess classical farts are more amusing than modern boogers. Well, you know some people.
I’m with the Scrimster but Billy just harnessed the age old problems, human problems we still deal with. Love, succession, all that gooey, lovely, horrid, intractable business of society. Just look at his audience. He wrote to his audience. Simple, dentally challenged illiterates for the most part. But compare Ian Maclellan’s (sp) Richard to Pulp Fiction. Come on. Il Bardarino is still hard to top. We haven’t come far…
