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My ranking of every Shakespeare play

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Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#151

Post by AlecSchueler »

atchoo wrote: post #150
adamgordonbell wrote: post #54

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 wonder how many of the classic Shakespeare lines were actually popular idioms of the time rather than novel creations. 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.

If that were the case then we'd expect a similar level of wonderful lines in the works of his contemporaries, but he was very clearly a standout wordsmith even compared with other fine writers such as Marlowe, Middleton, Webster and Jonson etc.

It's not that his are the only works to have survived, they're simply the only ones we still speak of in regular conversation.

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#152

Post by dri_ft »

atchoo wrote: post #150
adamgordonbell wrote: post #54

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 wonder how many of the classic Shakespeare lines were actually popular idioms of the time rather than novel creations. 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.

There's quite a lot of work on this kind of thing; any edition of Shakespeare with good notes will alert you where a line resembles something 'proverbial'. One thing you notice is that although he often alludes to proverbial sayings, he seldom includes them verbatim - more often, it is a glancing, passing suggestion of them, or he uses them with a twist, or as part of some more complex figure of speech he is developing.

edit: there's actually a great example in the article: "No man’s pie is freed from his ambitious finger".

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#153

Post by mellosouls »

telmo wrote: post #130
mellosouls wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a supportive word for those of us who just don’t enjoy Shakespeare Speaking as another who loathed Shakespeare at school and worked against that beginning to understand him and eventually revere him, precisely because I (rightly) assumed I was wrong: You have to frame the dissenters you quote in the context of overwhelming literary consensus that he's the greatest writer who ever lived. It's not like there's a roughl…

There is no objective true to claims such as "X is the greatest writer who ever lived". Even if you could objectively determine the best writer for a certain culture and context, there are countless other cultures and contexts. Is Shakespeare greater than Cervantes? Goethe? Dostoevsky? Who knows? Who cares? The world is not only the anglo world. Other cultures have their own literary giants and you can bet that they…

When I have to force myself to enjoy something, I tend to wonder if the thing is really worth enjoying or if I am instead just trying to acquire a taste that I deem prestigious

Whereas I would consider myself rather arrogant to assume the general consensus of hundreds of years to be wrong just because I needed to put a little effort in to understand it and thereafter enjoy it.

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#154

Post by klik99 »

> More interesting is the historical context behind the play. It’s based loosely on events around the founding of Jamestown, Virginia.

The character of Stephano, is likely based after one of my ancestors, Stephen Hopkins, who led a failed mutiny at Jamestown. Shakespeare wrote the Tempest after reading news and hearing about the Jamestown incident. Interestingly, after Jamestown Stephen Hopkins returned to England and then made the trip a second time, this time on the Mayflower, where he was at the first Thanksgiving.

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#155

Post by klik99 »

atchoo wrote: post #150
adamgordonbell wrote: post #54

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 wonder how many of the classic Shakespeare lines were actually popular idioms of the time rather than novel creations. 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.

I recently watch "Upstart Crow" which is full of jokes about this - a running gag is Shakespeare claiming he created all these phrases and another character citing exactly the date and author of an earlier reference. Well - it's funnier in execution than I just made it sound...

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#156

Post by dri_ft »

denton-scratch wrote: post #142
granfalloon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Interesting. 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.

Indeed it should be spoken aloud (or at least 'aloud in your head'). But if it should be spoken as if it were prose, why do you think he took all the trouble to put it in to verse?

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#157

Post by kayo_20211030 »

jonstewart wrote: post #96

This is a surprising ranking. I haven't read or seen every play yet, but I've seen or read a majority. The Tempest is one of my favorites! The '79 Trevor Nunn/RSC Macbeth with Judi Dench and Ian McKellen is incredible! I'd have liked more detail from the OP about all the versions watched, and also which of the plays he'd read.

Yes. Of course, it's the OP's personal ranking, but for me The Tempest would have been higher, in the top 5 for sure.

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#158

Post by dri_ft »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #114
dbtc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. let titles = document.getElementsByTagName('h3') for(let i = titles.length; i > 0; i--) { titles[i-1].textContent = i + ' ' + titles[i-1].textContent }

getElementsByTagName('h3') How do you know all 'h3' is a play title?

getHenriadByPlayName('1h4')

Re: My ranking of every Shakespeare play

#159

Post by denton-scratch »

dri_ft wrote: post #156
denton-scratch wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. 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.

Indeed it should be spoken aloud (or at least 'aloud in your head'). But if it should be spoken as if it were prose, why do you think he took all the trouble to put it in to verse?

I'm neither a poet nor a playwright; I really don't know (but I'm glad he did).

Prosody - the musical, rhythmic quality of speech - is emphasised in verse. If a sentence runs over one-and-a-half lines, you can speak it as a normal sentence, with no pause after the first line and a pause in the middle of the second; the song-like quality will still come through, but it becomes easier for an audience to make sense of.

I think this applies to a lot of verse; not just Shakespeare's plays. If you read a sonnet like Ozymandias as a set of distinct lines, it sounds boring and stilted. If you speak it as a tale told by a traveller in a bar, it's much more engaging and exciting. The metre is carried by the words, they don't need help from the speaker.

Some of the best political speeches have that kind of song-like rhythm, although they aren't verse. I'm thinking of e.g. Churchill, or the Gettysburg Address.

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