That seems pretty harsh. Not getting Shakespeare is hardly the one and only measure of “intelllectual life”.
The problem as I see it is that it’s fine in text form, because there you do get a chance if necessary to stop and think about what a word or phrase means or what’s going on. But in actual performance or film or so forth, while you’re sitting there wondering whether he really meant what you thought with “country matters”, it keeps on going without you. It doesn’t help that a lot of cod-Shakespeare actors have a tendency to speak with a ponderous, lordly cadence that makes everything sound great but doesn’t really betray much in the way of actual acting.
I think it very much depends on the quality of the actor to make up for the bits that aren’t immediately apparent - if you miss a bit, you can still tell what’s going on. But to understand the words and nuances it is pretty necessary to read a script or book form, at least for me. But if you don’t like it, then you don’t like it.
There is a language problem with Shakespeare, and it’s not the problem that Koxinga was talking about, because in its time a play by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, etc., was the cultural equivalent of television today. The problem is that Shakespeare was writing about 400 years ago, and the English language has changed a lot since then. Part of the way to overcome that problem is just to expose yourself to a lot of late-16th-/early-17th-century literature.
The other problem is that those plays were written to be performed, not read on the printed page. Shakespeare worked in the theatre, and did not take part in the publication of his plays (as far as we know). So they are best understood when performed. Of course, there are plenty of good productions of Shakespeare on the stage almost anywhere in the world, but today also we have movies and TV to substitute for the theatre. So I’d second the suggestion that Illuminatiprimus watch some good Shakespeare on film, including anything by Kenneth Branagh. I’d also add Lawrence Olivier’s Henry V (which is very interesting to compare with Branagh’s version) and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (which a lot of people don’t like, but which I think brings the play into a modern setting very well.
If you’re expecting to appreciate Shakespeare primarily for brilliant plots or deep and interesting characterization, I can see how much of his work would disappoint you. It’s true there are some gems of characterization or clever plot development in Shakespeare, but the majority of my enjoyment (and I’m nowhere near his #1 fan) was in the writing itself. Shakespeare was a craftsman of language. If that’s not your bag, no harm no foul.
Our unfamiliarity with the language of his time is the obstacle, but I think a mistake that’s often made is thinking that the archaic prose is an obstacle to recognizing his art. That prose is his art, and he’s masterfully applying it to not brilliant but classic stories. Romeo and Juliet (among many others) wasn’t winning any awards for originality or depth of plot. But I think it’s probably better that he went with the classics and the universals as much as possible, because I think that helped preserve his appeal. While understanding his language is something of a barrier now, the stories themselves remain accessible and we can still relate to most of them.
I understand the feeling of working through paragraphs of obsolete words and twisted grammar, only to find that having deciphered it there just wasn’t much interesting being said. That was pretty much how I felt about Shakespeare through all of our school units on him - and there were a lot of those. It took me reading some other and varied works of literature to twig to what I should have been looking for in Shakespeare.
Reading and enjoying works written in older (or foreign) styles takes some effort and patience, but I’ve gotten to the point that I can read such stuff as The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman almost fluently, though it took me almost a hundred pages to get used to it enough to realize just how funny it is. I had a similar moment reading Gogol, when I reread a passage (one of many that needed a quick do-over) and realized there was a pretty hilarious barb thrown in there. I think a lot of what people miss in “old” literature like those is the humor, and similarly with Shakespeare there’s a sense of humor behind tremendous amounts of his work. His skill with language is accompanied by a playfulness that makes reading him enjoyable rather than a chore. I take Shakespeare in small doses, and there is some great stuff there if you want to find it.
This year, reading all of Shakespeare was one of my New Year’s Resolutions. (I’ll probably finish having read about 30-35 of the plays…which is still pretty good.) There are some clunkers in there. On the other hand, there are some plays that have been absolutely wonderful that I will read again and again.
Illuminatiprimus, do you like reading other playwrights? Also, which adaptation were you watching? Some of them do blow chunks. Some are great. Unlike some of the previous posters, I don’t think pointing to a single monologue is useful, because from your OP, it seems that where you don’t understand isn’t on the word-to-word level or what this speech means, but what that means in the context of the story and how everything in the entire play fits together.
Try No Fear Shakespeare, all available cheaply in print or free on the Internet. Excellent modern side-by-side translation.
I used to hate Shakespeare. Now I think he was a demi-god. Not sure when the veil raised, but living close to a Shakespearean theater and seeing him performed by quality cast probably helped. I find myself wanting to remember about 124 different quotations from every show I see.
Of course reading Shakespeare is something akin to reading about the Sistine ceiling; he’s meant to be watched and heard and experienced. OTOH, to do this it’s best to at least read a summary of what they’re talking about first because it’s not at all ignorance to not understand 400 year old dialogue. Best combo- read an overview of the play’s plot, then see it.
This is exactly what I see as an English teacher (though I don’t teach any Shakespeare–I teach American Lit. Very few kids see the funny in archaic texts, and take that out and what you have left is horrendous: Great Expectations is a nightmare when you think the whole thing is just a 400 page lecture on not being too ambitious.
Properly, education should teach you to have an ear for these things. Sometimes, when I teach, I feel like I am looking at a piece and seeing a thousand shades, and my students are just seeing big blocks of red and green and blue, and wondering what the big deal is. My job is to help them start to see all those shades. Not because they can’t be perfectly good lawyers or doctors or mechanics or whatever without it–they probably can–but because there is so much more joy and wonder and flavor in life when you can. Now, there are lots of avenues to joy and wonder and flavor, and the kid that never learns to see it in Shakespeare may learn to see it in physics or on the athletic field or whatever, but I do think the more access to joy and wonder and flavor we have the better (because life is pretty miserable much of the time), and so it’s a good idea to try to learn to see it in as many places as possible.
That said, we’re all different, and sometimes something just doesn’t work for someone, However, I think it’s important to recognize that just because you can’t learn to enjoy something doesn’t make it bad or stupid. Because there is something rare and precious in Shakespeare, an ear for language, a massive sympathy for the human condition, a new way of looking at the world–Shakespeare has colors in his paintings that no one else has ever even used, brand new colors. And I am sorry if you can’t see them, but like the Grand Canyon, it’s one of the few things in the world that really is as impressive as everyone says, and then some. So don’t insult it or say it’s “shit” --which implies those of us that do are all just pretentious, claiming to see the Emperor’s new clothes when really there’s nothing there. There really is. I’ve never had any sort of visual art move me 10% as much as certain parts of Shakespeare, but I don’t doubt that visual art does for other people, so you won’t hear me denigrating it.
I had a big long post written (including an excoriation of Koxinga), but all my points have been better made by posters above.
I would like to point out that this thread is, by several orders of magnitude, better than this column, which is probably the biggest cop-out ever committed by Cecil.
Forget the plots. Shakespeare never came up with a plot in his life, save possibly that for The Merry Wives of Windsor. All his plays are adaptations of previous works: plays, poems, stories, etc. But what magic he worked with them, turning base metal into pure gold by the power of his language.
One illustration of that power. It’s from Cymbeline.
Postumus, deceived into thinking his wife Imogen unfaithful, rejects her and arranges her murder. Imogen escapes that fate and disguises herself as a page to be near the husband she still loves.
In the final act Postumus learns that his wife was innocent. Staggered, overwhelmed with guilt and grief, he strikes his page to the ground for attempting to speak to him.
He then discovers that the page is Imogen herself, who now rushes to him and throws her arms around his neck. The intensity of his feelings at that moment can only be imagined.
He says (and the line brings a lump to my throat every time I read or hear it):
“Hang there like fruit, my soul, till the tree die.”
I can’t explain the power of that image to those who won’t see it, but I urge those who ‘don’t get’ Shakespeare to persevere. He will repay your efforts a thousand thousandfold.
I’d say forget the plays for now and concentrate on his sonnets to capture the beauty of his language and the rhythm of it. But that’s just me.
How about “Twelfth Night”? It’s a comedy/farce. Maybe if you read a synopsis of the play first and then saw it and then read it you might get more out of it. TN was the first Shakespeare play I actually liked on its own terms (not because it was Culture and I was “supposed to”).
Some of the humor is fairly ponderous by our standards–WS wasn’t known for his pwning or snark. He does get off some fairly good ripostes, but you have to be tuned in (so to speak) in order to catch them. That whole graveyard scene from Hamlet is all wit and punnery re the meanings of “quick” and “lies”. In’t is an old contraction of “in it”. We might consider it lame today, but it probably brought the house down in its day…
Some of my favorite put-downs, and one of the plays easiest probably for teenagers to follow, is Richard III. My favorite filmed version is Ian McKellen’s, set in a 1930s alterniverse England ; though it has a fairly graphic sex scene (Robert Downey Jr. and an air hostess), even with the dialogue it’s easy to follow. It has some great insults (not in the “hah hah” sense but in the "you don’t have to be a Tudor-Stewart era nobleman to grasp what’s being said.
Richard courting Lady Anne over the body of her husband who he has killed:
or Queen Margaret (who has lost everything including her husband and son due to the Yorks) gloating at the Queen Mother:
or taking pity on the widow, teaching her to curse (curse meaning closer to hate than *curse *as presently used):
Ah- chills! Great stuff!
Though even with a strong interest in English history and having read many books on the topic I’ll admit I still have to look at family trees to remember who is who; a class would have to have some intro into the times being portrayed and the times in which written (i.e. when the monarchy could do a helluva lot more than give you a bad review if you offended them).
*The dialogue does make a few departures; there’s no “additional dialogue by Sam Taylor” stuff but in condensing it some of the lines are redistributed- Margaret’s teaching of how to curse is abridgedand given to the Queen Mother (Maggie Smith) for instance.
A problem with reading Shakespeare just occurred- the absence of stage directions. For example, in the scene above- even though Richard refers to Anne spitting, it makes a lot more sense with just these simple stage directions [italicized]:
