To think Shakespeare is boring and crap !

[Lardlizard]

Bloody hate it

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

ARGH!

@Piggywaspushed - I dunno, never really thought about it much. It's not really a question you get much as an academic in English Lit. I reckon if you could award it jointly to the translators of the Wycliffite and KJ versions of the Bible, probably that.

I'm not claiming that's a good thing, btw - just the English Bible has such a profound influence (including on Shakespeare) that I can't see what else would have more.

I get that question all the time as an A Level teacher! I also discussed it and heard it disucsses a great deal at uni (where, for some bizarre reason, I swerved the Shakespeare module)

I have read the Bible from cover to cover as it goes (including the Scots Bible!). But that's not one writer is it, but many iterations... also, what Shakespeare (and others) do with the Bible and its imagery is remarkable. But , of course the Bible is influential : I don't think of it as a writer. And it hasn't contributed vastly to our tourism coffers, on a practical note!

I like his poetry better than many of his plays.

It obviously is of merit, but I do wish the syllabus hadn't been so choked up with Shakespeare and other classics for that matter.

Sure, it's critical to understand the diversity of authors, including authors over time. He's just not that much more important than every other author that he needs covering at the rate of a play a year from Y7 up. That's ridiculous.

For me, it was poorly contextualised also - I'd rather see more integration between old texts and new, rather than keeping Shakespeare in his neat little box of 'we have to do a Shakespeare each year'.

So literature is represented as a great big masculine genealogy, constructed by 'great minds'

Aphra Behn was pretty cool too.

I remember way back before teh intarwebs were invented and I saw a play by Aphra Behn advertised and it was like WOW! I didn't know that women had such a history. It was a real revelation.

Find the comedies boring and a bit twee but the tragedies can be amazing. A good production of Hamlet or Macbeth or Othello ... up there with the best.

I love “never was there a tale so filled with woe, than that of Juliet and her Romeo”

YY, that's why I said if the Bible translations can be counted, I'd say that.

But you might as well say Shakespeare is 'many iterations,' too, right? I remember doing Midsummer Night's Dream at school and learning about the slapstick with the wall, and being told it was 'Shakespeare'. It's ancient - not just the plot, but the actual details of jokes.

I don't think that is any bad thing, but I think you'd be hard pushed to say why the Bible is qualitatively different from Shakespeare in terms of originality of plot.

I get the impression from my students that they do ask this question a lot at A Level! It drives me bloody nuts. I spend half the first year training them out of it. And you still find people writing essays that start by explaining that 'Shakespeare was the best author because ...' or concluding 'and this is why Shakespeare is such a genius and the most important author ever'.

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.

But as others have said, Shakespeare didn't coin those themes. They have been part of human storytelling since the beginning of our history. The Bible is definitely an example of this, in literary terms it certainly has all the themes that Shakespeare is lauded for here, but with a few less bum jokes.

I remember way back before teh intarwebs were invented and I saw a play by Aphra Behn advertised and it was like WOW! I didn't know that women had such a history. It was a real revelation.

YY, me too! Not with Aphra Behn, but other women writers. I was really lucky in my teachers at A Level and they were big on women's writing, but even so, I had absolutely no idea that women wrote things before the age of novels. I thought it would be Jane Austen and maybe one or two randomers before that.

YANBU to say you find Shakespeare boring and crap

But how about putting a list up of the things you really love because i am pretty sure 90% of the population will find them boring and crap

We all like different things - so what?

I agree with the comments that the way Shakespeare is taught at GCSE and A' Level is a big part of the problem. It's rarely if ever taught in any kind of context, with the result that Shakespeare is seen as 'stand alone' - which, of course, no author is: they and their work are products of the culture from where they originate. Shakespeare, J B Priestley and Steinbeck: what, exactly, do they have to do with each other? Where can meaningful links and distinctions be made?

There's no criticality. Othello and Merchant have definite shades of racism and anti-semitism. 'Taming of the Shrew, by today's standards, is sexist. A Midsummer Night's Dream is completely kooky and a hoot from start to finish, with definite links to the epic tradition. How do you square contemporary attitudes on these issues with those of today? Also highbrow -v- pop culture: Shakespeare is Take That compared with Marlowe's Beethoven. These are some of the questions the syllabus should be asking, at least in some kind of straightforward form.

The National Curriculum is unfit for purpose IMO and the texts being taught today are exactly the same ones that were being taught in 1988, when the GCSE was first introduced. Where is the work on refreshing that curriculum, of making it more relevant and fun? I suspect where: it's all gone into politicking. If I'm honest, I'm not surprised people have retained a dislike for Shakespeare as a result.

When I studied Elizabethan undergraduate modules on the Italian Renaissance tradition and its later English counterpart, the whole period came to life for me. The sonnets on their own are a fascinating story with major stories to tell about English culture. I'll never be a Renaissance expert, but I know enough to teach it at undergraduate level and it will always remain a pleasure rather than a specialism.

People who think Shakespeare is boring are the ones who tend to view Downton as the height of culture.

If you happen upon an amazing production, Shakespeare is fantastic - I find it depends enormously on the acting and the production. I’ve seen an incredible modern Hamlet and a truly amazing Midsummer Nights Dream that was in various Indian languages - couldn’t understand a word that was said but still incredible (do know this play very well - might have been trickier of you didn’t). Love the Branagh Much Ado and Leo DiCaprio R&J too.

A crap production with crap acting is really boring.

People who think Shakespeare is boring are the ones who tend to view Downton as the height of culture.

People who come out with statements like that ignore the fact that Shakespeare has more in common with Mrs Brown's Boys than Downton - fart, bum, willy jokes, in Early Modern prose.

I love “never was there a tale so filled with woe, than that of Juliet and her Romeo”

My fan theory on that one is that Shakespeare was supremely taking the piss with that line at the sheer melodrama of a pair of teenagers who were in luuuuurve.

I had Sonnet 130 as a wedding reading - now there is a masterful deconstruction of airy fairy romantic idealism that shows a true understanding of love!

@MouthBreathingRage

His work is not written in very old English. Fair enough if you don't enjoy it and struggle to understand it but it's not ' a form of very old English.'

Well it is old English. It may be recognised English, but it was still in the very early transition from the English of the Middle Ages. It’s like saying you recognise a house, even though only the foundations are built.

Saying all the stories are utterly boring, including modern retellings, is just ridiculous. What, all of them? Just utterly boring? Ok.

I said most retellings are boring. For such a great reader, you unfortunately didn’t manage to read my post correctly .

Goodness, people really get shirty when you dare diss old Will, don’t they? The modern equivalent is telling people you don’t like The Big Bang Theory. They like berating you for not being smart enough to find it funny, when the truth is underneath all the smart jargon is nothing but crassness. If it makes people feel a bit more clever liking it though, each to their own.

It's not Old English and it wasn't written in the time of very early transition from the English of the Middle Ages. It's officially known as Early Modern English and, yes, it takes some getting used to but, as someone said above, teenagers manage it each and every year. There is the odd unfamiliar word and the syntax takes some adjusting to but pretending it's some kind of ancient incomprehensible language that needs translating is just silly.

On the subject of the curriculum - why make teenagers read Romeo and Juliet?! Ok, I know some like it. There's a film of it that was trendy at the time (though it must look bloody dated now - I'm talking about the DiCaprio/Danes one). But it's just cruel. Especially when you've got to act it out. I can't imagine anything more excruciating.

You sound likely 12 and 16 year old op!
16 yr old never did enjoy Shakespeare at school, spent a large part of high school English lessons studying Shakespeare and hating his works only for covid 19 to cancel all exams so he argues it's wasted loads of his highschool time on it.
12 year old is trying to home study Shakespeare's works and so doesn't understand much of it and argues that it's time wasting.
I do think that Shakespeare's works have to be seen/ watched to be appreciated and you need an excellent English teacher who has themselves viewed his works to be able to teach it properly.

We all like different things - so what?

Of course we all like different things, as well as dislike them. The trouble with disliking Shakespeare though is that (as shown here) it does ignite both smugness and faux-shock from his fans.

'Oh how could you possibly not like his work? You evidently haven't enjoyed it or read it properly properly. You simply must spend £££ and time going to see Super Serious Actor performing X, it will change your mind!'. It's like a cult or religion who must not be disagreed with otherwise you're 'ignorant'.

Well, this has turned into an accidental teacher bash by proxy!

I am actually very good at teaching Shakespeare ,as it goes, and know a lot about him.

The curriculum has not changed 'since 1988' (not entirely true) mainly because of Gove. But ,since Shakespeare has been around for many many centuries, I am not sure why he would have needed to be knocked off his podium in the last 30 years! But he now sits happily alongside Duffy (a definite Shakespeare fan!), Roy , Williams, Marvell, Faulks in an at least reasonably rich selection of A Level texts. the GCSE is more restrictive, although one exam board is trying to ensure more diversity in text choices. That really is Gove's fault.

One writer that has more or less vanished since the early 90s is Chaucer.

I personally think the English curriculum needs to be changed, it focuses too much on Shakespeare and poetry and many children don't understand why there is such a focus on Shakespeare's work in contrast with more modern works

We don't have to act it out sarah...

Students like Romeo and Juliet. It does resonate. They like the rivalry, the nastiness, the bawdiness makes them laugh (and how great it is to see young people actually laugh at Shakespeare( and it actually opens up really interesting conversation about patriarchy and misogyny.

It probably depends on the format! I've taken my children to outdoor Shakespeare plays since they were tiny. Usually a comedy and a tragedy each year.
They're performed for donations only, outdoors, moving around the park for each scene, so they're really accessible financially and to families with children who love this format.
The company who perform them are brilliant and they're a highlight of our summer.

What modern works would you recommend sh? Most modern writers are actually (if good) oddly inaccessible.

Reading the merchant of Venice around the class for GCSE was a whole different experience

Nobody says you have to like Shakespeare so what's the problem? I like it or most of it but don't expect us all to have the same tastes.