To think Shakespeare is boring and crap !

[Lardlizard]

Bloody hate it

Can be boring to read but they are plays and a really good production makes them come alive (except the Tempest which I hate thanks to A levels)

Shakespeare helped me understand something that I couldn't quite grasp in another class, although it was nothing to do with literature, very much a language thing!

In Latin, we were studying the Aenaid and had learned about spondees and dactyls, but if you read the original, the rhythm is right but you don't understand it, and if you read it in translation, even if they've been careful with the meter, it isn't what was originally written.

So Shakespeare and his iambs were actually really helpful — to read something written in a meter, and that I could understand in its original words.

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

I think there's a case for the importance of both, and I get your frustration with sport being a permitted truancy, but not Literature.

I hated team sports and creative sports too. I was pretty happy exercising for the sake of it or playing dodgeball or eurohoc without any meaningless rules or specific skills that got in the way of enjoying it (especially as a dyspraxic).

Like how in English, people need to come away from education able to construct a decent sentence, I think people need to come away from PE education with a basic understanding of bodily health and an enjoyment of movement (which is helped a lot more by dodgeball than by hockey - people never skived dodgeball, and kit would miraculously appear!).

I'd say that literature's most important contribution to a rounded adult is the ability to understand perspectives outside your own immediate experience - including perspectives that are outdated, poorly founded, or just plain different to our own. It was hugely important for me in my study of history, but much more useful on a practical level day to day for the general purpose of engaging with the world.

(three quarters of AIBU threads would disappear overnight if the OPs had even a tiny appreciation of other people think differently to you and that's ok...)

I really love it, but as a French speaker it can be very challenging. I began to read it 1 year ago when I took 4 month off work to reboot myself, mostly the historical plays, and I really liked it. For them, I would recommend reading one at a time, in the historically chronologically order, and read the chapters dedicated to it and the historical truth in John Julius Norwich's "Shakespeare's Kings". It's a great way to learn more about the context of the plays, and the artistic "license" that Shakespeare took. Truly a rewarding experience.

I am an English teacher. I love watching Shakespeare and discussing his messages and language. I actually dislike tearing it apart and the painful in class reading. Money would be better spent taking every child to watch a performance in a theatre (globe or other) and then talking with the actors.

@thecatsthecats

I accept all of your points, and oddly enough, the perspectives issue is rather pertinent to me as I'm autistic and find it almost impossible to empathise with things which I have no practical experience of.

That's not to say I don't have imagination or creativity, I just view fiction and poetry as things that are entirely whimsical, trivialities, and of no value in a world that for me is entirely about practicality. I do appreciate creativity in engineering solutions, love studying philosophy, the humanities, history, etc, etc, and anything that is 'real' or substantial. I also dislike mathematics, but mainly because I struggled with it academically, not because I don't believe it serves any worthwhile purpose.

I left school with a full house of passes, including English, and I genuinely have no idea how because I did roughly one and a half pages of written work in 18 months, and as I said, for the last 6 months I didn't even bother going to Lit class. I never truanted from other subjects because even if I struggled with them a bit I never found them mind numbingly boring in the way I with Lit. Even with Maths, I found it difficult and had to put in extra work to pass, but it never made me contemptuous the way being forced to wade through Shakespeare did. Similarly, I breezed sciences because as well as being interested I could actually see their practical purpose, and so I felt that it was something worthy of devoting some attention and effort to.

I think if anyone with a passing interest saw my personal book collection they'd realise they're not looking at the hoard of somebody NT. I have practically no fiction, yet countless biographies, historical non-fiction coming out of my ears, and umpteen boxes of hobby-related works, limited print runs etc.

Bizarrely enough, I absolutely adore Voltaire, and if you pushed me I'd probably say that Candide is my favourite book. I think that's in part because it does actually deal with significant historical events, but the humour is my sense of humour to a tee. I love the absurdity of his characters and their situations, and also the sarcasm, sardonic wit, and the way he both manages to openly mock the common thinking of the day, but do so it a way that would ultimately be entirely deniable. I think I can appreciate it because it's a work of satire, so it's relatively easy for me to grasp it an laugh along, whereas I just don't 'get' subjective things that are more obtuse, like most poetry. I really struggle with allegory most of the time, but not at all with Voltaire.

Shakespeare genuinely helped me understand the world. I was reading Winter's Tale and Taming of the Shrew and Shakespeare was telling me that these appalling men who behaved like my dad were tyrants and that this behaviour was not acceptable. no one else ever stated it that clearly. I remember in my teens sitting listening to my dad ranting and insisting we agree out loud with his crazy logic, and I thought of the moon is the sun scene in Taming of the Shrew and felt like Shakespeare was on my side, helping me see clearly in a mad world. I've loved him ever since. And still today he is the most psychologically kind and astute writer I've ever read. Even if his jokes are dated and shit.

dunno, but i will say that:

(a) reading a play or script from a book is pretty much always bad, without exception, not Shakey's fault - they're meant to be performed. e.g. I love, say, the Godfather Part II but would much rather read the day's newspaper than the movie script. I dread to think why we, as a country, labour under the ridiculous misconception that Shakespeare is somehow an exception to this rule.

(b) Shakespearean 'comedy' is mostly very unfunny to modern tastes unless performed exceptionally well.

@MarieIVanArkleStinks
@user

Not the ‘thorn’ letter but the ‘eth’?

Presumably then that is also a German derivative?

I’ve only ever seen it written in Icelandic text. (Modern)

Yes, it's eth, and it's standard in Anglo-Saxon. It drops out (around the 11th-12th century) whereas thorn and yogh remain.

One of the things that makes people think Chaucer and Shakespeare are 'familiar' but struggle with other medieval texts is that editors regularly modernise these letters. But people were still using them until very late on.

And does it matter, @safariboot? It doesn't seem like it's a conversation that's hurting anyone. So what if the OP didn't come back?

@serenada - told you my Anglo Saxon was crap!

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

Funnily enough I skived a fair bit of my Eng Lit A Level myself! I would always schedule music lessons opposite them. I think I missed up to half the content given that our teacher was prone to ducking out herself... But I got top marks (I mean, top in the country marks). The teacher was awful.

To an analytical mind, the deconstruction is second nature, I think. I am NT, but if you believe in personality testing, I come out as a very niche type, especially for a woman (less than 2%), so I struggled a fair bit with understanding others as a teen. (though on the other hand, being analytical meant I was less likely to be overwhelmed by superficial differences of language to understand that a character in an Early Modern piece was expressing the same sentiment as a modern one).

I saw a production of Titus Andronicus.

Never seen a play since.

It's the pulling apart of the text that I love. I think everyone who likes Shakespeare appreciate a different thing about him.

I mean I also like The Duchess of Malfi, but that definitely finds it s power on the stage.

I am actually grateful for the thread; it's given us something else to discuss!

Given the amount of Shakespeare that has been adapted or outright thieved for films and TV, YABU.

I’m sure loads have said this but, it’s meant to be watched, not read. I think parts of it can sound a bit tedious but it’s just because the language is outdated and references which would have been timely then obviously aren’t now, and require a bit of research. (Hence why we often read it first now, even though it’s a bit dull that way, then watch it after)

It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea and I am not going to profess to know all of his work, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve experienced.

this thread alone is interesting in highlighting the differences in experience. I wish a teacher had pointed out to me that the sentiments were essentially the same but it was the delicacy of expression that changed. We were led to believe that we were distinct from these characters and that they had thoughts and ideas we couldn’t possibly know and we had to try and understand.

Not the same as centring it on the human experience over time and Shakespeare’ ingenious use of language.

And it is his use of language I applaud.

Are you 15, OP?

Read it when you're older, and you'll get it then.

We were led to believe that we were distinct from these characters and that they had thoughts and ideas we couldn’t possibly know and we had to try and understand.

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.

One of my favourite quotes from one of my favourite films, The History Boys.

(I used to get so riled up by unbearably smug atheists in my Reformation seminars at university, because they refused to understand the importance of religion to the lives of those they were studying - a fundamental and obscene mistake to a historian!)

Read it when you're older, and you'll get it then.

Nope. I did my A level English when in my 30s - King Lear. Still didn't "get it". And yes, we went to the theatre to see it performed professionally too - still didn't "get it".

Do the Shakespeare haters like other types of drama? Because it would be quite odd to expect to like a performance of Henry V or Julius Caesar if it would never occur to you to go and see a Shaw or Ibsen or Beckett or Caryl Churchill play.

For anyone who thinks that people who like Shakespeare are pretending for cultural clout, one of the best pieces of theatre I have ever seen was a Globe production of Henry IV Part 1 with Roger Allam as Falstaff and Jamie Parker as Hal from about ten years ago -- it was one of the last performances of the season and it started to pour chilly rain not long after the start, and continued to pour, and DH and I were standing in the yard, soaked through, as were most of the cast. It was absolutely mesmerising. I was as miserably wet and cold as I've ever been in my life, while standing up outdoors for several hours, but it was one of the best experiences I've ever had in a theatre. Neither of us was pretending to like it.

Are you 15, OP?

Read it when you're older, and you'll get it then.

I cant speak for the OP but I'm 47 and I still think shakespeare is awful, a PP above suggested that schools should be viewing the plays but as for reading it and analysing it with no frame of reference to not only their language let alone with their lifestyle.

How long till I get it then xxyzz?