What's the Big Deal About Shakespeare?

[Jim_B]

Even to this day he seems to have an almost godlike status in literature. But why?

William Shakespeare.

I must say I find his quotes rather flowery and perhaps concise at times. But he doesn’t impress me at least anymore than many other authors, esp. of that time.

:):)

[silenus]

Yeah! All his plays are just a bunch of famous quotes strung together! What’s with that?

[eenerms]

@silenus

Yeah! All his plays are just a bunch of famous quotes strung together! What’s with that?

Heh heh
All his word are plays…

[Dropo]

"*…I should like to salute William Shakespeare.
In this language he’s called Willie the Shake.

You know why they called him Willie the Shake?
Because he shook everybody.
They give him a nickel’s worth of ink and five cents worth of paper,
he sat down, wrote up such a breeze, brrt, that’s all there was, Jack, there was no more.
That’s all she wrote! Ever’body got off!

Got so many studs arguin’ about findin’ about who he was
they blew his right name.

Understand what I mean?

Here’s a stud that’s so powerful and so great
they dig him up every six months, say,
“Yeah, dat’s him, put him back. He’s alright…*”

–Lord Buckley, excerpted from Willie The Shake
ETA: I thought Mr. Shakespeare did an excellent job helping to write Forbidden Planet (1956).

[RealityChuck]

I guess you really hate Shakespeare.

Shakespeare has never been topped as entire package: great use of language, strong and memorable characters, psychologically astute characterizations, and stories that still are relevant today. He went beyond what any other writer has ever achieved.

The main reason he’s still being performed today is that people see the universality of his plays and characters.

[Sherrerd]

The scholar Harold Bloom famously claimed that Shakespeare did no less than inventing our conception of what it is to be human:

… When Bloom claims that Shakespeare invented the human, however, he doesn’t merely mean that he pioneered these psychological fields in literature before they became established in what gradually became our modern disciplines. According to Bloom, Shakespeare-especially in his creation of Falstaff and Hamlet-so utterly altered human consciousness that after him the world was a different place and we were different creatures. …

…Bloom claims that if Shakespeare had died at twenty-nine, like his friend Christopher Marlowe, the world would be a different place: “we would be very different, because we would think and feel and speak differently. Our ideas would be different, particularly our ideas of the human, since they were, more often than not, Shakespeare’s ideas before they were our own.”

http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR24.1/atwan.html

A sweeping claim. But the book expressing it was a best-seller, and its theories widely accepted by many.

[Sherrerd]

The scholar Harold Bloom famously claimed that Shakespeare did no less than inventing our conception of what it is to be human:

… When Bloom claims that Shakespeare invented the human, however, he doesn’t merely mean that he pioneered these psychological fields in literature before they became established in what gradually became our modern disciplines. According to Bloom, Shakespeare-especially in his creation of Falstaff and Hamlet-so utterly altered human consciousness that after him the world was a different place and we were different creatures. …

…Bloom claims that if Shakespeare had died at twenty-nine, like his friend Christopher Marlowe, the world would be a different place: “we would be very different, because we would think and feel and speak differently. Our ideas would be different, particularly our ideas of the human, since they were, more often than not, Shakespeare’s ideas before they were our own.”

http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR24.1/atwan.html

A sweeping claim. But the book expressing it was a best-seller, and its theories widely accepted by many.

[Sherrerd]

duplicate

[Sherrerd]

Apologies for the unintentional triplicate post.

[silenus]

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in these petty posts from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time…

[Sherrerd]

Too good, silenus!!!

[Two_Many_Cats]

@Sherrerd

The scholar Harold Bloom famously claimed that Shakespeare did no less than inventing our conception of what it is to be human:

http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR24.1/atwan.html

A sweeping claim. But the book expressing it was a best-seller, and its theories widely accepted by many.

Yup, if Shakespeare had died as a child, nobody today would know who the fuck they are. Sounds about right. I probably would mistake myself for a camel or something.

[Ukulele_Ike]

What a piece of work is Jim B…

[Ukulele_Ike]

…and what to me is Two Many Cats, — this quintessence of dust?

[kayT]

OP, Have you mainly read Shakespeare or have you seen a play or a film of a play? On the printed page much is lost. I can read the plays now because I have seen them performed and can visualize. You might try renting a film version of Julius Caesar (with Marlon Brando maybe?) or Hamlet or MacBeth. Then you might begin to get it.

[Ukulele_Ike]

The comedies will snap yer stix. My favorites are As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing.. Everyone seems to love the 1993 movie of the latter, with young Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson as Benedick and Beatrice.

[Tamerlane]

@Jim_B

But he doesn’t impress me at least anymore than many other authors, esp. of that time.

Just out of curiosity what other authors “of that time” do you consider just as good? And please don’t say Edward de Vere :).

[Sherrerd]

@Two_Many_Cats

Yup, if Shakespeare had died as a child, nobody today would know who the fuck they are. Sounds about right. I probably would mistake myself for a camel or something.

“What it is to be human” isn’t the same thing as “human as compared with other animals.”

Bloom’s theory isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, of course. But it was influential, nonetheless:

… [Bloom] acknowledges that there were great, creative writers before Shakespeare; indeed, “The idea of Western character” defined as “the self as a moral agent” came from many sources. But, he contends, die predecessors created “cartoons” and “ideograms” rather than developing personality. " …

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/459905

… Bloom argues that no author rivals Shakespeare in the creation of personality, that Shakespeare went beyond all precedents and “invented the human as we continue to know it.” According to Bloom, Shakespeare not only invented the English language but also created the concept of human nature as we know it today-before Shakespeare there was “characterization,” and after, there were “characters,” men and women capable of change, with highly individual personalities. …

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674370004500911

[Baker]

I hated Shakespeare when in high school. I too wondered what was the big deal. We were poorly taught, only reading the plays, not even out loud. Never saw a performance. One teacher wanted to take us to see the 1968. Whiting/Hussey version, and some parents nixed it because of a brief flash of Romeos butt, and a one-half second flash of Juliets breast.

Then I was house sitting for my grandmother, and for whatever reason sat to watch the BBC production of Measure for Measure. I had never known the plays could be funny, that one could laugh so hard. This is the play that should be used to hook high schoolers. It has illicit sex, trash talk, hidden identities, bad government officials, and, at the end true love and a happy ending! Then I read/viewed other comedies, and re-read the tragedies from high school, gaining a new appreciation for the universal themes they have. Now I love Shakespeare.

[Voyager]

As Dr. Porter put it:

Brush up your Shakespeare
Start quoting him now
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the women you will wow