141–150 of 179 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shakespeare has such influence that’s it’s almost more correct to say he wrote English than that he wrote in English.
150+ words are said to be coined by him
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Tolstoy: ... "but having read one after the other, ..." Do not read Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote plays, not books. Shakespeare should be watched, either on stage or on screen. Reading a Shakespeare play is like deciding to listen to the Beatles by downloading MIDI files and playing them through software. Maybe you get the broad strokes of the song, and maybe you even like it, but you're not listening to the Beatle…
I never enjoyed Shakespeare UNTIL I started reading his plays, and now he’s one of my favorites. The drama and stories in his work don’t do much for me, I view them more as a vehicle for his poetry (which is some of the greatest ever written). And I enjoy it more on the page than spoken by others. I know there are at least some others out there like me! Nabokov cleverly said something along the lines of “with Shakesp…
I also see the plays as vehicles for the poetry; but like a lot of poetry, it's made to be spoken aloud. In particular, it should be spoken as if it were prose - the metre is in the words, and comes through on its own. It's clunky to speak it as lines of verse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shakespeare and Tolkien are similar to me. If you ever say you did not like them, you have an army of defenders calling you names about your lack of education and literary maturity, you always get attacked for who you must be as a person. Read both, not impressed.
You can use one to deflect the other; Tolkien was so disappointed by the twist in Macbeth that he wrote the Ents.
Not trying to start any debate here with Shakespeare fans, just intend this as a supportive word for those of us who just don’t enjoy Shakespeare - Voltaire declared Hamlet a ‘vulgar and barbarous play’ and that ‘one would take this work to be the fruit of the inspiration of a drunken savage’ - George Bernard Shaw: ’. “There is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I despise so entirely as I despise Shak…
Shakespeare and Tolkien are similar to me. If you ever say you did not like them, you have an army of defenders calling you names about your lack of education and literary maturity, you always get attacked for who you must be as a person. Read both, not impressed.
> Another classic reading assignment that requires no description. A beautiful play, but I just don’t connect with its romantic core.
I do this because so many completely miss the point of this play (as the author appears to). First and foremost, it's not a tale of romance but one of agency. It's one of the few plays that specifically mentions age. Juliet is 13 years old. That's not an accident. Shakespeare did this for a reason.
Some will argue it was just a different time. If so, you're seeing the play through the lens of it being a love story.
Juliet takes back her agency by choosing not to marry Paris, to marry Romeo and ultimately to end her life. Remember this was at a time where a queen (Elizabeth I) ruled in her own right rather than as an extension of her husband's divine right. Women at this time were largely extensions of their father's then their husband's autonomy.
So if you see this purely as a love story (involving a 13 year old no less) I can see you having issue with it or not connecting with it. But look a little deeper and you see Juliet as someone who asserts her autonomy as a person, ultimately to tragic consequences.
They can do this by several methods. You can compare rhymes in the works -- e.g. loved and proved rhymed. You can study what people at the time documenting pronunciation wrote. You can compare existing accents to uncover ways in which pronunciations of words have evolved and diverged. You can apply and reverse sound changes in the words, such as reversing effects of the Great Vowel Shift.
Doing this gives some interesting puns and plays on words that are not readily apparent when reading the plays with modern accents.
The OP accent has elements from other accents, as those have retained some of the historic qualities. For example, OP is a rhotic accent (the Rs are pronounced) which is a feature that is present in several modern accents like Scottish, American, and parts of England.
I can certainly see the value of reading Shakespeare, but I'd almost need a long vacation to devote to picking up the language.
It makes me wonder how much of my school years I wasted, because I probably could have mastered Shakespeare at the time and still have that tool in my toolbelt today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can use one to deflect the other; Tolkien was so disappointed by the twist in Macbeth that he wrote the Ents.
Ah, I didn't know that. "I guess you are referring to "Burnham Wood is come to Dunsinane"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_influence_on_T...
As a kid having to read Shakespeare what was lost on me, because of the language, was the language. Will worked hard to turn a phrase. "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." "The very substance of the amb…
Shakespeare has such influence that’s it’s almost more correct to say he wrote English than that he wrote in English.
As a kid having to read Shakespeare what was lost on me, because of the language, was the language. Will worked hard to turn a phrase. "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." "The very substance of the amb…
I imagine if the works of only one contemporary cliche ridden author survived in 500 years time, they would appear to be a literary genius without the context that shows them to be mediocre.