why did he write like that? I thought it was just normal for the time but I read marlowes faustus and it was very easy to read and hardly "shakespearean"
>>24676017He was on another level.
iirc it's because he read a lot of roman poets and applied latin prosody to english
>>24676017>I believe Shakspeare was not a whit more intelligible in his own day than he is now to an educated man, except for a few local allusions of no consequence. As I said, he is of no age—nor, I may add, of any religion, or party, or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind: his observation and reading, which was considerable, supplied him with the drapery of his figures.— Samuel Taylor Coleridge>>24676050Prosody has nothing to do with intelligibility, and Shakespeare wasn't fluent in Latin. You're thinking of Marlowe, who translated Ovid and whose poetry bears the strong impress of Latin quantitative metre, which then influenced Shakespeare's and all later verse.
>>24676084>and Shakespeare wasn't fluent in Latinimagine believing this
>>24676017He wrote in shakespearian language
>>24676360According to Ben Jonson he wasn't. Furthermore there's no evidence of Shakespeare being fluent in Latin in his writings, whereas there is ample evidence in his writings of him depending on translations of Greek and Latin.
>>24676372>there is ample evidence in his writings of him depending on translations of Greek and Latinsource?
>>24676427The influence of North's Plutarch and Golding's Metamorphoses is well established, you can look it up and find plenty of information. It is also supposed that Shakespeare relied on Chapman's Homer, but is hard to determine in that Shakespeare didn't seem particularly influenced by the Greek poets or dramatists.
>>24676538I always see this point made by Stratfordians as if it's a strong piece of evidence, but do you think educated latinists and grecians of the era didn't enjoy the most famous recent translations of classics? At the time, stuff like North's Plutarch and Chapman's Homer were big works in their own right. And this is especially true when we consider hypermodern writers like Shakespeare were primarily interested in exploring and bolstering the nascent English literary idiom, _not_ in adhering to the classical canon for the sake of whatever vague anachronistic notion of the literary spirit we now have.
Not saying he didn't write good stories. But as I get older, I think a lot of the Shakespeare hype is Peggy Hill-esque midwitdom. Where touting Shakespeare is seen as intellectual and a kind of entry into a cool kids club because you all pretend to believe the bullshit. Not much different from Andy Warhol fandom in visual art.
>>24676593pretty sure this is the more fashionable take with middlewits these days but ok
>>24676598Perhaps I took too many theater classes in college and my opinion is tainted by hatred of theater geeks marking out for Big Willie. I like him, don't get me wrong. I acknowledge the genius. Big Willie just isn't in my favorites. But not calling others bad or wrong for enjoying his works.
>>24676593What's midwit is constantly thinking about writing in terms of whether it's overrated or underrated.
>>24676561I suppose it's lent credence by the fact that Shakespeare, as far as I am aware, was not greatly influenced by anything not translated. One would assume that Shakespeare would be as creatively responsive to many other poets and writers as he was to Ovid if he could read Latin.
Because he was a poet while Marlowe was merely a playwright. Levels.
>>24676084that moist blubbery face always cracks me up. he looks like a seal.
>>24676706You have an obnoxious way of speaking
>>24676715>t. poetrylet marlowe fan
>>24676372NTA, but I also believe he knew at least some Latin. It just seems to make sense.>Iago the liar>Iaceo means to lie(There's also a little thing about the pronunciation of the Latin c, but you see my point.) Dunno if he was crazy fluent though.
>>24676706This is a ridiculous statement. Marlowe was a truly great poet and one of the few playwrights from his era to always be a poet proper in the writing of his plays. Other examples include Chapman, Johnson and of course Shakespeare, who all wrote poems as well as plays, and whose verse was written at the highest levels of originality and skill. Most playwrights of the era were only poets secondarily, never writing poems, their verse always having something generic and makeshift about it as the dramatic medium of the day, with at best occasional flashes of poetic brilliance.
>>24676743Jonson doesn't say Shakespeare couldn't read Latin, he says:>thou hadst small Latin and less GreekWhich implies that he wasn't fluent. I don't believe he knew enough to read Ovid or Virgil without trouble.
>>24676017I really REALLY like it when he breaks out the rhyming couplets
Tolstoy unironically was right. I actually do love some of Shakespeare's poetry but him being hardly intelligible half the time does detract from the experience (how could it not?) He also does this thing I've noticed that I for some reason connect with Updike too, where he uses unusual word choices or metaphors to describe things that is only tenuously plausible, and sometimes it works to great effect but other times it falls very flat. Like an example that immediately comes to mind, but there are probably better ones, is this excerpt from The Tempest:Thou shalt be pinchedAs thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stingingThan bees that made ‘em.
>>24676724Florio's Montaigne > Montaigne
>>24676901>him being hardly intelligible half the time does detract from the experienceAmerican education really is that bad, huh?
>>24676940>yeah bro I understand all the references and puns and proverbs first try, which is often literally impossible without previous encounter with the specific esoteric knowledge being alluded toWhy lie to yourself?
>>24676901Would you mind explaining what is 'unusual' or 'tenuously plausible' or 'falls flat' in the excerpt you posted? You seem to have no familiarity with, or sensitivity to, the imaginative language of poetry.
>>24677124Neither pinching nor beestings carry particularly intimidating connotations and it comes off as kind of cutesy or childish, especially when paired with the honeycomb descriptor. I'm guessing he meant as dense as the holes in a honeycomb, but thick as honeycomb doesn't make literal sense. The whole thing leaves a bitter aftertaste.
>>24676994nta but half the time the references are Bible stories, most of the puns are immediately noticeable if you have half an ear ("mender of broken soles" from Julius Caesar really give you trouble? really?), the proverbs are just Biblical. Basically any modern edition of Shakespeare comes equipped with commentary and footnotes that explain all the references. Ez
>>24677164It's thick as in 'numerous', tightly compacted, which is a conventional use for the word. So you've already misunderstood basic language and you think you're fit to criticise the greatest poet in the language. The 'honeycomb' image immediately brings to mind the Shakespearian fantasy, displayed by Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, which delights in flights of imagination in the language as much as the world of the The Tempest. The context is quotidian, a master will have to punish and correct his servant's behaviour many times over, and Calaban is somewhat childish and often used for comic relief. Realising this I'm sure you'll find the image an apt one.
>>24676994>it’s either unintelligible or you understand everything about itThere is bait, and then there is lobotomizing yourself for attention.
>>24677210I said he probably means as densely compact as holes in a honeycomb, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a bathetic descriptor. Which you pretty much admit but just say that Caliban is comic relief so it's therefore justified for Prospero, who isn't comic relief, to say it, which is a reach.And 'Than bees that made 'em' is an objectively ugly line.
>>24677283>I said he probably means as densely compact as holes in a honeycombWhich you also said doesn't make literal sense, when it does.>bathetic descriptorThere's nothing out of place about the description, it fits perfectly into its context and perfectly expresses what it's meant to. Why are you using these categories so ridiculously black and white, of Caliban being 'comic relief' and Prospero being 'not comic relief'? I said Caliban is often used for comic relief, but he is also a character with tragic and serious elements, and in the same way Prospero is often used for the expression of that romantic humour which Shakespeare often enjoys. A magical wizard is telling his monstrous servant that he'll punish him in an imaginative fashion, how does the language not seem fitting to you? I don't know how to simplify it any further. Maybe the emotional connotations of poetry just go over your head?>And 'Than bees that made 'em' is an objectively ugly line.It's as simple as a line can get and smoothly rolls of the tongue. You are just full of bizarre emotional responses to this text. Furthermore, you demonstrate no familiarity with the basic qualities of poetic language, especially of the era. People enjoyed hearing intricately constructed and image-dense language in Shakespeare's day.
>>24677331No Shakespeare has clear categories for his characters: COMIC RELIEF AND NOT COMIC RELIEF. Iago is comic relief because he smiles a couple times. The Fool in King Lear is not comic relief because he has serious moments. Get with the times.
>>24677342kek
>>24676994>first try,Nobody expects this which is why returning to and ruminating on Shakespeare is such a rich experience. Retard. You absolute incorrigible imbecile.
Part of it is Shakespeare used a lot of provincialisms, i.e. words that were spoken in Stratford but never put in writing by educated Londoners before and rarely put in writing since. >>24676372Shakespeare knew enough Latin to compose humorously bad Latin in Love's Labour's Lost, alhough he probably didn't read much Latin after leaving the Stratford grammar school.
>>24677342>>24677331That's another issue Shakespeare has: using whichever character is available as a mouthpiece. They lack defined personalities.>if you weren't stupid and really understood poetry like me you would actually love this cartoonish and juvenile passage>than bees that made em' rolls perfectly off the tongueI think you just have bad taste or no taste and rely on consensus
>>24677371>using whichever character is available as a mouthpiece. They lack defined personalities.This might be the most false statement I've ever read on /lit/. Congratulations.
>>24677371>They lack defined personalities.You just said that they have clearly defined personalities: COMIC RELIEF and NOT COMIC RELIEF.Those are pretty stark categories that you definitely didn’t just make up on the spot. No, you’ve just discovered a magical revelation that will WOW all the Shakespeare scholars. I’ll tell Harold Bloom of this if I fall down to purgatory (Jews get a chance to repent to go to Christian heaven, it’s like getting half credit for an expired coupon).
>>24677395I said Caliban is used as comic relief but that Prospero is a generally serious character so it's inappropriate to express comedic sentiments through him. Shakespeare had a habit of using anyone at his disposal to say whatever he felt like in the moment.>random Jew bashingThis is telling
>>24676601what a walk back lmao
>>24677425>random Jew defenseThis is telling
>>24677425If you think that was Jew bashing, you haven’t been on this site long enough. I do like Harold Bloom, bloated and benevolent as he is.
>>24677359Maybe he collaborated with someone else to write the latin
>>24676017storytelling in prose is a relatively modern inventionmeter helped with memorization, that's all
>>24677686Or maybe he learned Latin at the Stratford grammar school, which existed for the sole purpose of teaching boys Latin.
>>24676084>Shakespeare wasn't fluent in LatinWhat?
>>24677764He's extrapolating from a line in a poem Ben Jonson wrote in memory of Shakespeare that Shakespeare had "small Latine & lesse Greeke". All that line really means is "I, Ben Jonson, want everyone reading this to know that I was better at Latin and Greek than William Shakespeare".
>>24676084>As I said, he is of no age—nor, I may add, of any religion, or party, or profession>The Last Will and Testament of the Soul, a Catholic tract, found in Shakespeare's rafters>Regularly wrote plays for the queen and king knowing they liked his work>Plays constantly reference his father's profession in metaphors, references abound to playwrights and theatre business of his dayWas Coleridge retarded?
>>24676017---- Solaria ----30000Review Of Sites And CirvcumstancesI can imagine few depressing to pleasure thanDependence on an entourage orConscription into oneWhere scentIs never adjacent to quiet ecstasyOr sights beyond Conjuring, too suave to record except in attempt,Sound casually encyclopedicAnd so-forth, something like the upper limit of life;.
>>24676017The introduction of the edition I'm currently reading made me way too redpilled on all the different Quartos and the Folio version of every play and how after like 100 years of autistic arguing about this shit, we can barely estimate when half these plays were even written or which version is most accurate or which versions were revised by Shakespeare himself or were fucked up by some retard editor or a thousand other considerations. It is kinda interesting how the bare bones of stories like Hamlet and Othello were just straight up stolen but then massively elevated with all the psychological soliloquies and social stuff.
>>24677973>just straight up stolenYou have a child's understanding of ideas
>>24678003Yeah it was hyperbolic, sue me faggot
>>24676901>Tolstoy unironically was right.Same. As I've gotten older, Tolstoy is a much better writer and can be appreciated more. His criticisms of Shakespeare were spot on too.
>>24678018I hate that phrase and I wish people would be more careful using it.
>>24678033Imagine being such a gullible retard that you get hoodwinked by the obvious seething of a great artist coming to terms in old age that he was not the greatest, that’s all that essay is
>>24678139>t. Canon babby
>>24678139Tolstoy never liked Shakespeare, even when he was 15 years old, and even spoke out against him in class. Way later in life, when he basically had a ton of life experience and consumed a ton of artistic and literary works, he considered Shakespeare a shitty dramatist and his famed being due to Anglo propaganda rather than actual merit. You would know this if you've ever read his diary.Also, Tolstoy is actually correct in his assessment on Shakespeare, and is a much, much better writer than Shakespeare. Anna Karenina alone is probably one of the greatest works ever written, and it beats anything Shakespeare ever wrote.
>>24678935oh, he spent his entire life seething about shakespeare, interesting
>>24677371>using whichever character is available as a mouthpiece. They lack defined personalities.Kek, so you insist that Prospero is a 'serious character' and should only say serious things, then he demonstrates a wider and more complex personality and now you insist that Shakespeare betrayed your own mistaken idea of Prospero. Ridiculous audacity. Maybe you're just too stupid to understand literature? You struggle to even understand a multifaceted personality, and we're literally talking about a tiny example of imaginative language, not even something important here, that you think contradicts how Prospero is meant to speak. He's constantly using imaginative and fantastical language throughout. You're just very stupid.'Than bees that made 'em' sounds perfectly normal if you read it with its correct stress and consequently the echo of its original accent. Think of it as being spoken by a countryside or far North English person's accent, it's elided 'them' and is just putting the stress on 'bees' and 'made'. It's not highly constructed language, it's language that is as natural as possible.
>>24677862>>The Last Will and Testament of the Soul, a Catholic tract, found in Shakespeare's raftersWe don't even have the actual thing anymore, it was found over a hundred years after his death, and it was judged to be a fake.Although if it were real it wouldn't change anything, because Coleridge is (correctly) saying that no age, religion, party or profession can be extrapolated from the text itself. Everything is portrayed with utmost objectivity and for that reason every ideology finds their own beliefs confirmed in him. You're clearly new to babby's first Shakespeare academia, because this has been a universally accepted belief for hundreds of years. And no, you're not more intelligent than Coleridge.
>>24676017His works are in a poetic style, but they must have been fairly understandable to the average person at the time since his theater company was commercially successful. Part of it is just you need to get used to Early Modern English, though getting used to his particular style helps too.
>>24677168Some of the puns don't work as well in most people's accents now, like "reasons/raisins".
>>24678989>having the character say whatever the author personally wishes to express at the time gives depth to the characterI think you just lack the ability to feel literature. Clearly you'll rationalize anything Shakespeare does as a stroke of genius no matter how inconsistent or jarring.
>>24679081If the character consistently talks in a certain way, then it's not a random expression, you dope. As previously said, Prospero often speaks with fantastical language. That's a fact. Maybe you should watch a good actor play the part? Since you lack the imagination to see the character as coherent in your mind's eye, you'll have to rely on a talented actor to show you how the character is coherent.
>>24678938Because he couldn't believe people were mindlessly fawning over Shakespeare. >“Every man of our society and time, from the first period of his conscious life, has been inoculated with the idea that Shakespeare is a genius, a poet, and a dramatist, and that all his writings are the height of perfection. The sooner people free themselves from the false glorification of Shakespeare, the better it will be.”And he's 100% right.
>>24678935Anna Karenina isn't even as good as Madame Bovary
>>24676017Better question is how an illiterate man who owned no books wrote and who couldn't even sign his own name wrote in such a manner.
>>24678935why is shakespeare bad? why is anna karenina better? >>24679081the entire concept of tragedy is about characters having internal tension and contradiction. you get that, right?
>>24679290>make up a backstory for shakespeare >complain when it doesnt make sense for your made up shakespeare to do the things the real shakespeare did why are anti-strafordians like this?
>>24679345To be fair, Shakespeare did struggle to write his own name.
>>24679358By that do you mean the fact that he spelled it a half-dozen different ways? That's because spelling wasn't standardized then.
>>24679364No I mean his actual writing, it's a mess and looks like he would have struggled to write down poetry.
>>24679378>half were done during the final weeks of his life>the other half were done with only a small space to write in
