—Making a statistical argument against Shakespeare's greatness is like saying the Pyramids of Giza can't be architectural wonders because we have such better engineering knowledge and technology now.
—This discussion is too English-focused. Shakespeare has been and continues to be highly regarded by poets and authors around the world. This is of course because his genius speaks to humanity and not just some narrow section of Elizabethan England. Sounds cliche but it's true.
—These criticisms seem like they're coming from people who have trouble appreciating fiction writing of any kind. Just my sense.
Certainly time enough for him to learn to appreciate Shakespeare. In fact I’m just going to tell myself SBF is being imprisoned for re-education because of his terrible art criticism.
Never mind whether you can imagine a 16th-century person struggling through 21st-century English to enjoy a modern writer, how about the reverse? In other words, try and imagine a 21st century person who never did much Shakespeare at school struggling through olde English.
That person could be me. Much as it might horrify lovers of Shakespeare, I have no qualms stating that reading Shakespeare while needing to read explanatory footnotes or look up old English in a dictionary every other line is not exactly my idea of reading for pleasure. The little Shakespeare I did at school (Julius Caeser, Romeo and Juliet) was insufficient to enable me to get into many of his other works as an adult - and God knows I tried. And yet, English is my mother tongue and I speak a number of foreign languages.
So yes, don’t underestimate to what extent it can be an ordeal for those who never did much Shakespeare at school or university to try to read it for pleasure.
Agreed—disliking Shakespeare is no comment on a person in and of itself. I recommend watching some films, like Baz Lurhman if you want to get into Shakespeare
Just the cadence and rhythm of the language is enough to convince me of greatness, and the way his words and phrases are part of our everyday talk - four hundred years on. Not just for scholars but for ordinary people in all walks of life. It's a lasting connection.
Oct 10, 2023·edited Oct 10, 2023Liked by Henry Oliver
I think about shakespeare and language everyday everyday -- his splurges, the way he organizes his verses, where he starts ,does a jump to, then unfurls, and slips back under.... starts out resonant, sparks, prods, then turns back under, makes it right tight -- also his love of madness. in almost every play there is madness as part of the hazard of the players.
Oct 10, 2023·edited Oct 10, 2023Liked by Henry Oliver
The wonder of controversy on Shakespeare, not over who the "real" author was, but that he wasn't any good. Dismiss Shakespeare? I'm with you Henry—no way to dismiss the work that stands— and David Roberts, who writes Sparks from Culture, on this one: see David's comment below.
One way to appreciate Shakespeare is to learn a soliloquy. The sound and rhythm of the language just sings. People who claim to find nothing appeal to them within the canon may not have experienced enough of it. Someone once told me that he thought that Shakespeare was not for him, that he wouldn't be able to understand it, but when a friend took him to see a Shakespeare play he enjoyed it so much that he assumed that the language had been updated for a modern audience. It hadn't, it was just that he had been so absorbed by it that he had understood it better than he thought he would. Having said this, taste is also a significant factor. I once saw an old TV clip of John Betjeman explaining to some Oxford dons how he knew he should like Shakespeare but he couldn't. If memory serves I think he was saying that the characters were a bit cliched for his taste. I humbly disagree. Sometimes Shakespeare has the ability to take my breath away.
Not all Shakespeare adaptations are good, of course which is why every director and actor wants to have a crack at them. I find it very hard to read a Shakespeare play, and when I see them on stage it often takes a couple of scenes for me to get in the rhythm and for my understanding of the language to flow. By the end you aren't noticing the archaism at all. That's why cinema is the perfect medium for new audiences, you can get people to understand right from the start.
Seems to me the middling position is best. Shakespeare was a great writer in the sense of being good at it – but Bankman-Fried is surely right that given human population growth and changes in living standards it is likely there are many better writers than him, in the sense of mastery of the craft.
It's indisputable that Shakespeare is also significant, but the point reinforces itself. He is widely celebrated, so people have plenty of opportunities or obligations to read him, so he continues to be widely celebrated. It is conceivable that we could stop putting his plays on and forcing people to study him, and his influence would wane.
Put more broadly, you can believe that writers can have more or less mastery of the craft, but that there's a strong element of unpredictability in who gets celebrated and who doesn't. Put in tech terms, it's the network effect, often combined with first mover advantage.
I don’t know what all this craft talk is about. Writing is more than craft. How do you separate craft from the rest of it? If you think there are unappreciated writers who are geniuses please tell us!
I would agree writing is more than craft, but craft seems to me to be the only objective thing you can talk about. A given Shakespeare play, or Shakespeare's work as a whole, either speaks to your soul or it doesn't, but that's purely subjective.
As for geniuses, I know who like and who I don't, and that's enough for me. In my experience people labelled that way are just talented people in the right place at the right time.
Well I don't think it is purely subjective, which is why I drew a distinction between craft and personal taste. If Shakespeare was a poor or even mediocre writer he wouldn't have been taken up so widely. But is it conceivable that another equally good writer could have been taken up in his stead and receive equal adulation? I think so. And does his success mean he is by definition a genius that towers among his peers? I don't think so.
Shakespeare isn't good. His plots are thin—especially in the comedies; he uses too much coarse comic relief in his serious plays; and since so many of them came from Italian romances, he can barely even be said to be original. But he is so human, as you mention; and this humanity is what makes him great. His place in the canon is assured because he reminds us that great art must always be both serious and fun, truthful and silly.
You could not be more wrong. He is the most original writer there is. Is the plot of Twelfth Night thin? Is Hamlet unoriginal because there were other revenge tragedies?
A few things:
—Making a statistical argument against Shakespeare's greatness is like saying the Pyramids of Giza can't be architectural wonders because we have such better engineering knowledge and technology now.
—This discussion is too English-focused. Shakespeare has been and continues to be highly regarded by poets and authors around the world. This is of course because his genius speaks to humanity and not just some narrow section of Elizabethan England. Sounds cliche but it's true.
—These criticisms seem like they're coming from people who have trouble appreciating fiction writing of any kind. Just my sense.
Yes it seems like the aesthetic sensibility of some number-crunching bureaucrat.
Every writer has to confront Shakespeare. There's just no way of getting around him. I think the two choices are to revel or to envy. I pick revel.
Methinks SBF will have plenty of time to reconsider his “anti-book” stance very soon.
Certainly time enough for him to learn to appreciate Shakespeare. In fact I’m just going to tell myself SBF is being imprisoned for re-education because of his terrible art criticism.
Brisk, cogent, delightful.
Thank you!
Never mind whether you can imagine a 16th-century person struggling through 21st-century English to enjoy a modern writer, how about the reverse? In other words, try and imagine a 21st century person who never did much Shakespeare at school struggling through olde English.
That person could be me. Much as it might horrify lovers of Shakespeare, I have no qualms stating that reading Shakespeare while needing to read explanatory footnotes or look up old English in a dictionary every other line is not exactly my idea of reading for pleasure. The little Shakespeare I did at school (Julius Caeser, Romeo and Juliet) was insufficient to enable me to get into many of his other works as an adult - and God knows I tried. And yet, English is my mother tongue and I speak a number of foreign languages.
So yes, don’t underestimate to what extent it can be an ordeal for those who never did much Shakespeare at school or university to try to read it for pleasure.
Agreed—disliking Shakespeare is no comment on a person in and of itself. I recommend watching some films, like Baz Lurhman if you want to get into Shakespeare
Or Kenneth Branagh ...
Pithy. Unfussy. Convincing.
Just the cadence and rhythm of the language is enough to convince me of greatness, and the way his words and phrases are part of our everyday talk - four hundred years on. Not just for scholars but for ordinary people in all walks of life. It's a lasting connection.
I think about shakespeare and language everyday everyday -- his splurges, the way he organizes his verses, where he starts ,does a jump to, then unfurls, and slips back under.... starts out resonant, sparks, prods, then turns back under, makes it right tight -- also his love of madness. in almost every play there is madness as part of the hazard of the players.
The wonder of controversy on Shakespeare, not over who the "real" author was, but that he wasn't any good. Dismiss Shakespeare? I'm with you Henry—no way to dismiss the work that stands— and David Roberts, who writes Sparks from Culture, on this one: see David's comment below.
One way to appreciate Shakespeare is to learn a soliloquy. The sound and rhythm of the language just sings. People who claim to find nothing appeal to them within the canon may not have experienced enough of it. Someone once told me that he thought that Shakespeare was not for him, that he wouldn't be able to understand it, but when a friend took him to see a Shakespeare play he enjoyed it so much that he assumed that the language had been updated for a modern audience. It hadn't, it was just that he had been so absorbed by it that he had understood it better than he thought he would. Having said this, taste is also a significant factor. I once saw an old TV clip of John Betjeman explaining to some Oxford dons how he knew he should like Shakespeare but he couldn't. If memory serves I think he was saying that the characters were a bit cliched for his taste. I humbly disagree. Sometimes Shakespeare has the ability to take my breath away.
Not all Shakespeare adaptations are good, of course which is why every director and actor wants to have a crack at them. I find it very hard to read a Shakespeare play, and when I see them on stage it often takes a couple of scenes for me to get in the rhythm and for my understanding of the language to flow. By the end you aren't noticing the archaism at all. That's why cinema is the perfect medium for new audiences, you can get people to understand right from the start.
I almost only read him now. But agree about film. Would go to see Branagh if I could though.
moi aussi
Do you have a link to that clip?
Seems to me the middling position is best. Shakespeare was a great writer in the sense of being good at it – but Bankman-Fried is surely right that given human population growth and changes in living standards it is likely there are many better writers than him, in the sense of mastery of the craft.
It's indisputable that Shakespeare is also significant, but the point reinforces itself. He is widely celebrated, so people have plenty of opportunities or obligations to read him, so he continues to be widely celebrated. It is conceivable that we could stop putting his plays on and forcing people to study him, and his influence would wane.
Put more broadly, you can believe that writers can have more or less mastery of the craft, but that there's a strong element of unpredictability in who gets celebrated and who doesn't. Put in tech terms, it's the network effect, often combined with first mover advantage.
I don’t know what all this craft talk is about. Writing is more than craft. How do you separate craft from the rest of it? If you think there are unappreciated writers who are geniuses please tell us!
I would agree writing is more than craft, but craft seems to me to be the only objective thing you can talk about. A given Shakespeare play, or Shakespeare's work as a whole, either speaks to your soul or it doesn't, but that's purely subjective.
As for geniuses, I know who like and who I don't, and that's enough for me. In my experience people labelled that way are just talented people in the right place at the right time.
It can’t be purely subjective that Shakespeare is so widely performed and read and has added so much to the language and has influenced so many…
Well I don't think it is purely subjective, which is why I drew a distinction between craft and personal taste. If Shakespeare was a poor or even mediocre writer he wouldn't have been taken up so widely. But is it conceivable that another equally good writer could have been taken up in his stead and receive equal adulation? I think so. And does his success mean he is by definition a genius that towers among his peers? I don't think so.
Shakespeare isn't good. His plots are thin—especially in the comedies; he uses too much coarse comic relief in his serious plays; and since so many of them came from Italian romances, he can barely even be said to be original. But he is so human, as you mention; and this humanity is what makes him great. His place in the canon is assured because he reminds us that great art must always be both serious and fun, truthful and silly.
You could not be more wrong. He is the most original writer there is. Is the plot of Twelfth Night thin? Is Hamlet unoriginal because there were other revenge tragedies?