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Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

elizabethandrama.org

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Re: Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

#151

Post by Suppafly »

recursive wrote: post #136
graemep wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thin you are right (and this is reflected in other comments) that some people find Elizabethan language hard and others do not. There are lots of things that prevent some English speakers understanding others. Dialect, vocabulary and culture for a start. I often hear or read (and use) words in some places that I would not use in others (a huge range from lakh to orthogonal). I often read things that other people mi…

The first line looks more approachable than in R&J. But in addition to revenue, I'm at least unfamiliar with step-dame and dowager. My phone's autocomplete also thinks that latter one is not a word.

Dowager is essentially widow, I think it comes up in UK english still. I wasn't familiar with step-dame, but understand step from stepfather and other step relations, and obviously knew dame was a female, so assumed it was stepmother or similar. I feel like most people would have similar thought processes to figure those words out.

Re: Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

#152

Post by Suppafly »

carterdmorgan wrote: post #130
graemep wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shakespeare is modern English and perfectly comprehensible. Beowulf is not. Yes, there are some words that have changed (like his example of "character") but those are few. There are always difficulties. There are lots of words that have different meanings in British, American and other forms of English ("bum", "fag", etc.), or that are offensive in some places but not others, different usages..... The way to make Sh…

You can argue that Shakespeare is comprehensible to a modern English speaker, but I don't think you can argue that it's modern English. The different "you" forms alone are enough to make it difficult to understand for most modern speakers.

Different 'you' forms?

Re: Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

#153

Post by Suppafly »

karaterobot wrote: post #51
kens wrote: post #13

The well-known linguist John McWhorter argues that Shakespeare's plays should be translated into modern English since they are written in a language that we effectively no longer speak. "Indeed, the irony today is that the Russians, the French and other people in foreign countries possess Shakespeare to a much greater extent than we do, for the simple reason that unlike us, they get to enjoy Shakespeare in the langua…

McWhorter's a fun, cantankerous guy, always ready with a hot take. This one is wrong. We do have access to Shakespeare! Even ignoring productions, which are immediately understandable, a regular person, with no special education, and only a tiny bit of patience, can just sit down and read all of Shakespeare, and understand it. Right now! They may have to look up some of the words, but that's exactly what people have…

>a regular person, with no special education, and only a tiny bit of patience, can just sit down and read all of Shakespeare, and understand it

It's amazing how many people commenting here are pretending otherwise. I get that it seems unapproachable until you've done it once, but that's why we do in school, so you realize how approachable such works really are.

Re: Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

#154

Post by Suppafly »

GolfPopper wrote: post #133

I do not think the difficulty with understanding Shakespeare is that they are "written in a language we no longer speak" but rather that they are written for a culture much different than our own. Shakespeare is loaded with wordplay, sly and overt references, callouts, contemporary jokes and in-jokes. How do you "translate" that? He references a Western cultural history that we don't spend a lot of time learning anym…

Honestly, I bet the bulk of his audiences, aka the common folk, didn't grasp all of his references and allusions, but you don't need to when watching a play. Consuming Shakespeare as a play vs reading it is a very different experience.

Re: Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

#155

Post by eszed »

jfengel wrote: post #129
eszed wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything you say. Are you North American? I found OP largely to be a curiosity to American performers and audiences, but a revelation and a revolution to people in the UK who have only ever associated Shakespeare with RP. At least, that's how it was over a decade ago when I first performed in OP there. I remember once being in a workshop with a Scottish actor who did a creditable job at a speech from M…

Fascinating! I'm glad that they're breaking that RP grip on Shakespeare. It's certainly a valid way to do it, but Shakespeare himself wanted a diversity of accents, especially for his lower-class characters. It's funny that you mention Mack. A few years ago I was directing a Maccers whose native accent was Pittsburgh. Not very different from the general American, but Mac has a line, "I have supped full with horrors".…

Heh. When I try the line out in OP I'm convinced that pun was intended. It's in response to the women's cries inside the castle, no? That Mac, at this point in the show (and consciously or not), associates all women with whores is a fascinating character note. Not that you were wrong to cover it up - if the word had distracted the audience right then it would have been unfortunate - but I like your story as an example of how being aware of OP can help open up the text.

You're absolutely right about diversity of accents, and "OP" (in its time) was never at all only one thing. David Crystal - I hope I'm not doxxing myself other than to my friends to say I worked with his and Ben's company - was adamant about that. We were a crazy-diverse crew, with our own underlying patterns of speech - Standard American, all sorts of regional UK dialects, Indian English, and various second-language speakers - all of which brought welcome individual "flavours" to our OP palettes. (Then David got to go really nerdy with his suppositions about what 16th-century cod Welsh and cod French accents might have been, and overlaying those was a hoot!)

It's only RP that enforces standardization - which is why all of us from elsewhere (more accustomed to hearing and performing Shakespeare in our own voices) sometimes had a hard time grokking the immense effect of OP on UK performers and audiences.

Re: Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

#156

Post by recursive »

Suppafly wrote: post #146
ipnon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I find most people who find Shakespeare incomprehensible suddenly find it clear and simple once they read it aloud

>Yes I find most people who find Shakespeare incomprehensible suddenly find it clear and simple once they read it aloud That but also, it becomes a lot easier once you stop pretending it's incomprehensible and put forth even a tiny effort into understanding it.

You might not believe me, but I'm not pretending. Maybe I just don't know how to apply the effort, but you're wrong, whether you believe it or not.

Re: Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

#157

Post by qohen »

saghm wrote: post #140
goosedragons wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not actually Shakespeare. Enough word meanings have shifted and other words that were once common becoming rare that it makes it much harder to read. A lot of context has been lost too because we're not 16th century English people. It's particularly bad in the "comedies". If every joke has to be pointed out and explained is it really a joke still? Like here's some real random Hamlet: "My lord, as I was sewing…

"Down-gyved" sounds more like it's gibberish from the Jabberwocky than actual English, and that's honestly true of a lot of Shakespeare nowadays.

"Ungart’red, and down-gyved to his ankle" -- seems pretty clear that it means something to the effect that his unfastened stockings have fallen down to his ankles, no? And the context seems clear, that Hamlet's clothes are in disarray, as is his emotional-state.

Re: Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

#158

Post by forgetfreeman »

joshstrange wrote: post #116
hnfong wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markest thou well, good sir, thy words are naught But foolish prattle. Forsooth, for many a year, The younglings of sixteen winters have grasped This very material with ease and little fear. If thy premise held water, then, by the stars, A woeful decline in linguistic arts Would manifest itself in tests of old, A downward trend that would not be untold. But nay, 'tis not the youth that falter here, But rather thou, d…

If ever I was ok with an AI generated comment on HN this is it. I’m firmly in the “the cognitive load to read/understand Shakespeare far outweighs leaving it in the ‘original’ form”-camp and this further confirms my view point. I love reading, I always have, but I never loved reading Shakespeare and probably never will. I maintain that teachers do their students a massive disservice by shoving dry or hard to understa…

It's telling that AI generated mediocrity in lieu of an actual thoughtful response would be cheerlead by the same crowd that suddenly can't read Shakespeare despite it being an uncontroversial curriculum topic for what, a dozen generations or so? Eh, water finds it's level I suppose.

Re: Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

#159

Post by saghm »

qohen wrote: post #157
saghm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Down-gyved" sounds more like it's gibberish from the Jabberwocky than actual English, and that's honestly true of a lot of Shakespeare nowadays.

"Ungart’red, and down-gyved to his ankle" -- seems pretty clear that it means something to the effect that his unfastened stockings have fallen down to his ankles, no? And the context seems clear, that Hamlet's clothes are in disarray, as is his emotional-state.

> "Ungart’red, and down-gyved to his ankle" -- seems pretty clear that it means something to the effect that his unfastened stockings have fallen down to his ankles, no?

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on whether this is "pretty clear" or "only passably comprehensible due to the surrounding context". It's hard for me to consider something "pretty clear" if I could replace one of the words with actual gibberish and the meaning wouldn't change to me; "Ungart’red, and down-barboodled to his ankle" is equally "clear".

Re: Making Elizabethan plays understandable and fun to read

#160

Post by bryanrasmussen »

saghm wrote: post #142
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This sounds like even more of an argument to translate it for modern audiences when speech is uttered in an unnatural rhythm it is harder to understand what is being said then when reading the same text at one's leisure, it is not quite the argument you imagine.

The point is that modern actors struggling to deliver the correct rhythm is a pretty good sign that the language is hard to parse for a modern person, and that will affect the ability of students to be able to read and understand it.

Well, there are students who are able to read and understand it, and my experience is that the students who can do these things get offended when you dumb things down for them.

I suppose these are incompatible viewpoints of the point of education.

My viewpoint is that the system should help students get to the point where they understand the more complicated Shakespearean texts and not offend the students who already handle those texts for what I am loathe to describe as the "benefit" of the students that don't.

I have to ask a question - what do you see as the benefits of teaching Shakespeare as literature?

I see the following: learning classics of the English Language and why they are classics, learning foundational parts of the English language that will often be referred to by other authors.

The first benefit seems to be removed by not teaching the original text - Shakespearean plots are seldom the reason one thinks the plays are so impressive, Shakespearean language is. Remove the language you remove a benefit for the student, albeit giving them another benefit, allowing them to pass this stupid English class with less work.

I can understand the urge to have a simpler version of stories for helping those who are not yet advanced enough to read the original, when I was 8 I had some simplified versions of Mark Twain and Dickens to read that I am grateful for, but on the other hand High School is pretty close to the point where students might never get the benefits of Shakespeare conveyed to them by a teacher who hopefully is adequate to convey those benefits (I have to admit I am not especially optimistic about these teachers existing, based on the Utah high schools I attended, but such is the American educational system)

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