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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think Shakespeare is boring and crap !

331 replies

Lardlizard · 01/06/2020 19:22

Bloody hate it

OP posts:
EvilTwins · 01/06/2020 19:22

Yes YABU. Shakespeare wrote loads of different plays. Some of them are a bit boring and crap but a lot of them aren't.

Love51 · 01/06/2020 19:24

Yeah but, iambic pentameter!
Have you seen the Inside number 9 done in iambic pentameter? Worth a watch!

Alsohuman · 01/06/2020 19:25

Massively, massively unreasonable. You’ve obviously never seen a good production. Get yourself off to Stratford when theatres reopen, you’ll soon change your mind.

BumpBundle · 01/06/2020 19:25

I agree. Shakespeare was brilliant in the 1500s/1600s because his jokes made sense and what he wrote was easy to understand. Now, we don't live in that society so we don't understand the context of his jokes so they aren't funny to us. Equally, it's very difficult to understand what he's trying to say because of the developments in language. It's interesting from an academic perspective once you have sufficient contextual understanding - otherwise, you may as well be reading computer code. In 500 years time they'll say the same thing about all the things we love too.

MrsWooster · 01/06/2020 19:25

I'm sure lots of his stuff is a bitshit but the top plays, top poems, the ones still in our heads after 500 years are stunning.

Chillipeanuts · 01/06/2020 19:25

YABU. Watch the Hollow Crown. Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III. Spellbinding.

iklboo · 01/06/2020 19:26

If it's not your thing that's fine. But (to me) it's not boring & crap. I really enjoy watching some of his plays. The Hollow Crown series was really good.

heartsonacake · 01/06/2020 19:28

YABU. Sounds like the issue is that you don’t understand his work and therefore proclaim it “boring and crap”.

MeglaFlop · 01/06/2020 19:29

Speak on, but be not over tedious

Should have listened to,well.. himself.

madcatladyforever · 01/06/2020 19:30

hahaha I agree I loathe them all. They are super boring and irrelevant to today. I spent years studying them and I have come to the conclusion that I must be a pleb. Chaucer is much more fun.

SophieB100 · 01/06/2020 19:30

The OP doth protest too much, methinks Wink

endofthelinefinally · 01/06/2020 19:30

My dc thought that, having been turned off it at school. I took them to see A Comedy of Errors, starring Lenny Henry amongst others. We were all in stitches, it was brilliant.

rooarsome · 01/06/2020 19:31

I think if you can't name a single play which has a good story then you don't really "get" Shakespeare.

Floralnomad · 01/06/2020 19:33

If you don’t like it then that’s up to you but to say it’s all boring and crap is just ridiculous . We are actually just going to watch the Globe performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor on the YouTube channel , we went to see it last year and it was excellent .

Sparklingbrook · 01/06/2020 19:33

Are you being made to read it or something? Confused

cardibach · 01/06/2020 19:33

It has some dull bits, much like the writing of anyone else. I’m not a big fan of the history plays (not sure why) but most of it is entertaining and some of it is unmatched in fabulousness. It really is t like ‘computer code’ as PP put it - some historical knowledge does deepen your enjoyment (as knowing something about the setting of any piece of literature - or film, or tv - does) but he wrote about people. People’s motivations and characters really haven’t changed that much. Neither has the language, really - the word order is sometimes a bit odd, but most of the words are still used and still mean much the same.

MashedSpud · 01/06/2020 19:34

You need to try a good murder mystery like Macbeth first to ease you in.

UnderTheBus · 01/06/2020 19:35

I thought that was a universally accepted truth Grin

SomeoneElseEntirelyNow · 01/06/2020 19:37

That's a very common complaint among people who don't understand Shakespeare.

gwenneh · 01/06/2020 19:37

Chaucer is much more fun.

There are just as many dirty jokes in Shakespeare as there are in Chaucer! :D

EineReiseDurchDieZeit · 01/06/2020 19:37

Away, you scullion! you rampallion! you fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe

Saturdaysnotforexercise · 01/06/2020 19:38

If you don’t like Shakespeare, I wonder what he’d think of you?

TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince · 01/06/2020 19:38

I hate them too.

I read all the time, did A level Eng Lit, and really did not like it. And l find Shakespeare boring, but to think like that is a crime against a national treasure. I had one of the highest reading ages in the school in primary, but Shakespeare was just a killer. Although weirdly l liked Chaucer.

Reading Henry IV was like watching paint dry😴

FudgeBrownie2019 · 01/06/2020 19:40

YABU to claim all of it is crap. Parts, yes. Not all.

recycledteenager24 · 01/06/2020 19:40

a lot of modern stuff on tv etc is boring and crap but many people still watch it.