It is better to say things out loud than keep them inside

[esmenet]

I am in no way an expert on Shakespeare. I have watched perhaps five of his plays, and read another one or two. I have read an excellent book on them (which, sadly, I cannot at present recall the title of). But here is my opinion, which I for some reason feel the need to share.

I don't think they deserve all the acclaim they have been given.

Not half of it. They are not bad, aside from the standard issues (sexism, racism, ableism, etc) of the period; they are well-phrased, though by no means as well as any number of things I could link you to given half an hour's notice; they are fairly entertaining, but not overly so.

They do not move me as I must assume -- given the amount of passionate discussion I have seen -- they move other people. Not as  春雨 or Adonai or The Journey West or they shall have stars at elbow and foot  or Orhan Pamuk's books do. Perhaps this is because I am so used to novels and the closeness they give to the story and the character; plays are more distant, and I am still unused to that. Perhaps this is because I am so thoroughly modern and not good at dealing with things that aren't. Maybe I'm so jaded I just can't care very much about stories written for white men. Maybe I'm just not a fan.

I do not mean to diminish them. They are great stories; I simply do not think they are terribly good ones. And that's fine. Things don't have to be very good to be great! Look at Harry Potter. Look at Star Wars. Shakespeare's work has had such a huge effect on English -- and by extent Western -- literature and language and popular culture that you can't turn around without running into it. All the world's a stage, is this a knife I see before me, there are more things in heaven and earth. Its greatness is not in the works itself so much as the mark they have left upon the world, all the quotes and references and books written about them.

Like so many other things, I think the true grace of Shakespeare's plays is in their fandom.


(Linkspam thursdays will return eventually. Really.)

Comments

[branchandroot]

I'm with you on this. The whole mythos of his "timeless truths" is total claptrap. Shakespeare is /extremely/ local and specific to his period (albeit merrily copying a lot of basic plots that had, indeed, stood up pretty well for a long time). The only thing that's kept those plays alive is that people have heroically reinterpreted them down the centuries. I honestly doubt that will be sufficient for much longer, though.

My favorite example of this is the article "Shakespeare in the Bush".

[esmenet]

When someone reminded me that no, you don't have to include Shakespeare in any literary canon no matter how many dead white guys have talked about him, my mind was positively blown. Because up until a few years ago I had barely read anything (other than a few fanfics) that hadn't referenced Shakespeare at one point or another, and many of them made a point of (say) the main characters having Shakespeare recitals with their family for fun. Or quoting him in barely-relevant situations. (Wrinkle in Time, I'm looking at you.) Being able to say "Holy shit, Shakespeare isn't necessarily relevant" was very very eye-opening. :D

*googles "Shakespeare in the Bush" and resolves to read it in the morning*

[azuire]

As an unofficial expert on Shakespeare, I agree. It's difficult to read the plays without all that jazz, the fact is I notice it and others don't (case in point, everyone in my class thought R&J was ~romantic~. ewww)

I find certain plays as moving as novels, but that's because I'm familiar with the material, and the actors must be able to bring it to life.

oh. I hunger for transformative Shakespeare. Links please :)

[esmenet]

Here is something I enjoyed far more than the actual play of The Tempest. :D

[lookninjas]

See, as a theatre geek, I don't think Shakespeare has to feel dated or "old" at all, nor do I think it has to be about white men just because it always was in the past. The great thing about a play is that you can recast it, reset it, change the costuming, change the settings, and suddenly the story takes on a new array of meanings. I love novels, but they're sort of inherently static -- Harry Potter takes place at Hogwarts, features a black-haired, green-eyed boy and his red-headed friend Ron, etc. But Richard III can be picked up and moved to whatever time period and location I feel like moving it to. Richard himself can be whatever race I choose to cast him as. Or he can be a woman, if I'm so moved. It's a very malleable art form, theatre. That's what I love about it. And I think Shakespeare, because it's reached that stage of being considered sort of the "universal stories," stands up to that sort of treatment very well.

[esmenet]

Oh, plays are fantastic for that. It's wonderful, and I love it. But Shakespeare has always been hyped up to me as THE BESTEST THING EVER and I look at it and think mmm, it's kind of not. It is, however, one of the most famous things ever, and most of its greatness comes from that. Which there is nothing wrong with, but I have to say that as written they don't move me at all.

[lookninjas]

I'll refrain from the urge to say "But you haven't read my favorite! Go read it now!" and just agree that Shakespeare really is not the best writer ever, and really wasn't even the best of his time. He was kind of more the Stephen King of his time -- very popular, made a lot of money, had the action and the romance and the dirty jokes going, but I don't think he was considered "high art" until much, much later on.

(I sometimes wonder if more people would "get" Shakespeare if it was taken down from that ART pedestal and seen for what he was: a writer of plotty potboilers.)

[mercredigirl]

Shakespeare is, for me, a springboard into Western culture; but I say that because, indifferent as I am to Hamlet as a play, I love the idea of Hamlet-the-boy/man; ditto for my hatred of Romeo and Juliet, but my fascination with Juliet-as-child-bride. And these are people, situations that are very fixed in time/space. That is what makes them appealing. Not some bullshit 'universality' that is completely alien to the lived experiences of most people in the world. I agree with you in that I love the transformative remixes of Shakespearean canon far more than I enjoy the canon itself, although that raises the thought experiment of 'If a canon doesn't fall in a forest, is anyone around to hear the fanwork?', heh.

But what I object to is that Shakespeare is a little like the Christian Bible -- it becomes a sort of shibboleth, necessary to understanding portions of Western culture in context. It becomes a key, without which people can be stuck. When I was younger I was amazed people could read Narnia without understanding it was Christian allegory; since then, I've learnt the immense privilege of my familiarity with Christian themes because of my RC upbringing. And, again, I completely agree with you that Shakespeare has become valorised, a symbol of more valorised Dead White Men.

[mercredigirl]

Also! I want to thank you for reccing my Firefly fic 春雨 :)

[esmenet]

It's had a very profound effect on me, even though I don't know the canon at all. The last three paragraphs bowl me over every time. <3

[quadruplify.livejournal.com]

I completely agree; even after having taken a class on Shakespeare in high school, I simply could not "get into" his work, and it's not something I'd read willingly. I think, for me, it's a combination of being ~modern~ (as you said), the fact that his language and turns of phrases hardly thrill me (perhaps because a lot of them have become so overused as to become trite), the fact that I prefer my "great" stories to actually be good (without so much caring for their impact in the world), and that I'm just averse to hype in general. Which, taken together, is probably sufficient evidence that the presentation of Shakespeare as offering forth universal/timeless truths is rather bogus, because how we view the world and ourselves changes over time, and event though there are constant themes in literature, there is so much variation in how they are presented and portrayed between historical periods, and between individual authors, that the process of canonizing "great books" must become inherently problematic. I'm tired of the lionization of Shakespeare -- I'm more interested in learning about in what ways his "timeless truths" don't hold up in the modern era.

OT, but if I wanted to start reading Orhan Pamuk, where should I begin? Even though I already have too many books on my to-read list already. -_-;

[ojuzu.livejournal.com]

It's occurred to me that even though I hype him up so much, I still haven't actually finished any of his books. :D But you should probably start with Other Colors, which is a collection of essays about everything from seaside trips with his daughter to his opinions on literature to his own writing. There's a lovely, lovely discussion of reading in the first essay -- even if you don't read this book first, you should definitely read it.

Or possibly My Name Is Red, which has one of the best opening lines I've ever seen and is about miniaturists in fifteenth-century Istanbul. I haven't read more than a chapter or so, though, in an attempt to finish the books I've already started, so my opinion is perhaps not the greatest. ;)

[quadruplify.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recs! I'll, uh, get around to them eventually. ^_^;

[childings.livejournal.com]

I'm more interested in learning about in what ways his "timeless truths" don't hold up in the modern era.

I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone could argue that there are constant "truths" in Shakespeare given that his plays are products of the times in which they were made. I guess there are a few things that you could consider relevant to our times, but for the most part, no. I guess that's one of the reasons why I always get irritated when people try to make Shakespeare more "relevant" when adapting it for the stage (by doing stupid stuff like changing costumes or whatever -- like this production of Julius Caesar my sister saw where Caesar was actually a United States president assassinated in a motorcade or something).

Probably the most annoying thing about Shakespeare is how much it dominates high school curricula when students would probably be better served by reading other plays. Even something like The Crucible seems like a better choice than Romeo and Juliet (okay, The Crucible isn't bad, I guess I just put it that way because it's by a white male author... but it invites discussion of how drama can be used as allegory to make a political statement)

[quadruplify.livejournal.com]

I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone could argue that there are constant "truths" in Shakespeare given that his plays are products of the times in which they were made.

I'm not disagreeing with you here, but I think a lot of people hype up Shakespeare so much because of his supposed universality, when as you said, it's really not the case.

And yeah, I agree with you about being annoyed by trying to "modernize" Shakespeare, though I certainly think it's possible, like the film adaptation of Richard III with Ian McKellen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_%281995_film%29).

Even something like The Crucible seems like a better choice than Romeo and Juliet

I've never read The Crucible, but I completely agree with this.

[childings.livejournal.com]

I shocked and offended this English professor I had in college * when I said that Shakespeare was "overrated" -- I guess in a way I can see why, since he was very culturally influential and significant, but all of his stories were just rehashed versions of older stories and legends. He wasn't original, he was basically the 16th century equivalent of Hollywood (who aren't very original these days either). I have to admit that I did enjoy Julius Caesar and Macbeth but for the most part his plays don't really impress me all that much.



Perhaps this is because I am so used to novels and the closeness they give to the story and the character; plays are more distant

Totally disagree, I mean, that's like saying that movies don't give you a closeness to story and character. If you see a well-acted play, the actor's performance should give you an intimate view of a character. I guess with novels it's more personal because you can put your own spin on the characters as you read about them, but plays demand that you accept the actor's performance of the character; there's less room for personal interpretation in most cases, and I find that interesting

In any case, don't give up on drama as a genre just because of Shakespeare (based on my own personal experience, most Shakespearean actors give pretty stiff performances)

[ojuzu.livejournal.com]

Mmm, it's not that they don't give you closeness to the story and character . . . it's just that you can't climb inside their head and watch their thoughts whizzing around the way you can with novels. Like, you will never know the exact wording of what they don't say out loud.

And I do love how, with plays, you may get less personal interpretation of the characters, but the actors and director can do pretty much anything. (Btw, have you read Ashita no Ousama by any chance? Because that is the manga that made me go "Holy shit, theatre = awesome.")

[demoerin.livejournal.com]

They are great stories; I simply do not think they are terribly good ones.
I wouldn't have thought to apply this distinction to Shakespeare, but now that you mention it, it seems totally right. The plays aren't the best executed things, with a lot of the trite and the pat in them. I enjoy them, though - the ones I've read/seen have a feeling of energy I find appealing.

But I do love his phrasing, so could you drop names for some of the things you feel are at that level? No need for links, if that's too much extra work.