To think Shakespeare is boring and crap !

[Lardlizard]

Bloody hate it

Shakespeare was a genius. He really understood human nature. The themes in his plays are universal and repay the effort to understand the language. Go and see some really good theatre, as others have said. If it still exists after lockdown.

he still deployed more words and a richer variety of language than any other writer ever.

Could you show me the source for this?

I know he had a big vocabulary, and his language is rich.

@janet1267 - I don't think that follows. I appreciate Shakespeare's language hugely, but I don't feel the need to pretend it's super-startlingly original. Levin is just talking nonsense with most of his claims. He's way out of date, and even when he was writing, he should've known better.

It does matter, in my view, because it tramples all over other writers who've made contributions to the language and to literature, and sort of blobs everything together as 'Shakespeare'.

I don't think anyone, these days, would be insulted by the idea Shakespeare's plots aren't original - people tend to say 'yes, but look what brilliant things he did with old plots'. So why can't we do the same with language? Why are we so invested in the idea he must have invented it all?

What Sarah and others said about the language. Basically, if you are a dictionary-maker, particularly in the days before the internet, and you need an early example of the use of a word, what are you going to do? Spend the next 10 years in archives trying to pin down the absolutely first surviving recorded instance of the word (and even that is unlikely to be the first actual instance) or just reach for your collected works of Shakespeare on the shelf?
There is a project in Munich trying to pin down every single usage of every single Latin word in a limited time period from which only a very limited number of written evidence survives. They've been at it since 1899...
Now imagine trying to do that to English, where there is so much more written work to deal with. Wouldn't you just take the easy way out and grab your Shakespeare?

@Lardlizard That's your argument? Boring and crap? No supporting statements? Jeez.

@Piggywaspushed

Nope, enjoy most types of art, especially fond of renaissance, dutch masters, Bosch, Holbein portraits. Also love Romantic era classical music, I just happen to find Shakespeare utterly tedious and don't particularly enjoy fiction.

The world is full of amazing people with amazing stories to tell. I'd sooner read about those than an entirely fictional life/fictional events any day of the week.

I had one of the highest reading ages in the school in primary, but Shakespeare was just a killer
I dont think shakespeare is really meant to be read.Although i did love Romeo and Juliet for O level
My DD took part in the Schools Shakespeare festival several times and this included primary schools and they all seemed to having a wonderful time. They were not doing whole plays but shortened versions but one of the best was a primary school doing Mcbeth
Seen some brilliant productions of Julius Caeser at The Bridge and Much Ado About Nothing at Stratford many moons ago

sarah , source is James Shapiro. Not going to trawl back through his book to find the bit if that's OK! But definitely the case and explains the richness of his plays compared to many with more limited lexical fields.

I am personally not into the histories, but I love the comedies and tragedies. I can still recognise the histories as excellent works of art though - they just don't do it for me.

SarahandQuack I think anything that helps people engage with Shakespeare is helpful. My friends who work at the Globe use the Bernard Levin piece and I have also used it in a professional capacity. People love it, and if it encourages them to want to read more or see a play, then I think that's a good thing.

Literature is very subjective. I can't bear anything written by Jane Austen!

@Piggywaspushed - thanks. Shapiro isn't doing the kind of work that would allow him to support that claim, though.

Oh Lordy the Polanski Macbeth is tripe ! Oddly, my cynical 21st century students always like the 1970(?) Romeo and Juliet. The Michael York Tybalt is amazing.

I thought Shakespeare was dull until DD2 fell in love with his plays. I was reluctantly dragged to Stratford at first but now I love it.

Thought anyone who laughed was just showing off when I first went but their recent production of As You Line It was hilarious!

I love it now and really wish I hadn't been forced to read Henry iv part one at school which was what put me off in the first place.

Bit snobby to suggest anyone who doesn't like Shakespeare doesn't 'get it'. Shakespeare wasn't exactly high-brow in his time.

I've seen many performances of his stuff and I just don't like it. Simple, uninteresting stories (he didn't come up with most of his stories anyway, they are bog standard tales as old as time) unnatural dialogue, hammy acting. I actually love Othello on the written page but watching it at the Globe was just watching a bunch desperate to show what good actooors they are. Same goes for Julius Caesar, Midsummer Nights Dream, Richard III and many others. I don't find them funny, the humour to me is dumb and often bawdy and unsubtle, as again, it was the popular entertainment of its day, not some arthouse production. I appreciate his technical skill with language, but if all I can say about something is that it is 'technically impressive' then to me it has failed as a form of entertainment.

What kind of work would that be sarah thatvwoukd be the right work? I pretty much thought he was an expert in his field! I am not sure it is his sole claim either. I think Emma Smith also cites this.
I do think you'd be hard pushed to find a writer with a richer variety. Possibly Dickens, maybe Mantel ( but doubt it?).

Actually, I'll tell you what's can be really off-putting about Shakespeare in an English Literature study way. The things it's combined with.

For GCSE I studied Macbeth, The Crucible, To Kill a Mockingbird and Oliver Twist. I know that it's easier to write in better depth about jealousy and betrayal and more "complex" feelings, but it was a miserable two years. Yes, they all have some lighter bits (except possibly The Crucible, I think I've blocked it out. I know I should read it again, but I just can't bring myself to!), but overall I remember it as two years of mainly horrible people doing mainly horrible things!

I think I'd have much more positive feelings about my GCSE Shakespeare play if we'd done a comedy.

If like me, it was a chore to read through Macbeth and The Tempest etc at school and annotate and essay write - I understand why you wouldn't like it.

I began to enjoy his work once I went to drama school and became invested in the characters and the plot through acting.

He'd probably be horrified that his entertainment is now shoved down the throats of all teenagers for the purpose of exams!

@piggywaspushed - no, I think he's an expert in Shakespeare. He'd have to do massive statistical work on big data sets to establish anything much about the variety of words and use of language.

It was really fashionable in the 80s/90s, but I think people just gave up after a while.

Actually (sorry for the derail) I have re-read TKAM and Oliver Twist since then, and have seen Macbeth, but with months/years in between. I can appreciate them all individually, but together was almost too much for me. It's left me with bad feelings about The Crucible, but I can see why others would disengage from Macbeth, because the language is the hardest.

But definitely the case and explains the richness of his plays compared to many with more limited lexical fields.

How can people know it is definitely the case, given that so much earlier literature has not survived and a lot of it is still sitting around unpublished in archives?

And some claims are manifestly absurd. According to one online "source" I just pulled up, Shakespeare is supposed to have invented "skim milk". Does that mean he invented the concept? Clearly not: cream has been around for a long time and you can't have cream without skim milk. So was there a different word for it before then? If so, how on earth did people know what he was talking about when he used this newfangled invention in his plays? Now I imagine there is a fair bet that you could actually find an earlier instance of the word by trawling through monastic records, coroners' reports (often very informative about daily life) etc etc. Am I prepared to give up the rest of my life to do that one thing? Nope.

Yes, @corythatwas, or you could plug half of the into the MED!

Not worth a comment but am bored

Out of interest sarah(genuinely) , as an academic, who do you think is a more accomplished writer, with a greater (or equal) legacy or impact than Shakespeare? As a Scot, even I wouldn't match Burns up against him!

Shakespeare had a huge input on English language. He invented over 1700 words...

30 or so years ago so I had the opportunity to see Kenneth Branagh in a theatre production of Much Ado (which we were studying for A level) and Hamlet.

He was absolutely amazing, my entire class came away absolutely smitten with him, and with Shakespeare.

That said, a poor dramatisation of Shakespeare is worse than none at all. I've seen some (particularly student productions) which were awful.

It should be entertainment; at the heart of Shakespeare the themes are really simple - ambition and power, love, hate, revenge, racism... it's all there. Any modern day drama will always have the same basic themes to it.

Marlowe, is that you?

IMO Marlowe was a much better writer and funnier than Ol' Willy