Thread 24676017

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"

>>24676017 (OP)
He was on another level.

iirc it's because he read a lot of roman poets and applied latin prosody to english

>>24676017 (OP)
>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

>>24676050
Prosody 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 Latin
imagine believing this

>>24676017 (OP)
He wrote in shakespearian language

>>24676360
According 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 Latin
source?

>>24676427
The 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.

>>24676538
I 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.

>>24676593
pretty sure this is the more fashionable take with middlewits these days but ok

>>24676598

Perhaps 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.

>>24676593
What's midwit is constantly thinking about writing in terms of whether it's overrated or underrated.

>>24676561
I 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.

>>24676084
that moist blubbery face always cracks me up. he looks like a seal.

>>24676706
You have an obnoxious way of speaking

>>24676715
Yet I can still read Shakespeare dans le texte despite english being my 4th language. Go figure huh...
Meanwhile you’re probably the type of dude that reads Montaigne in translation lol.

>>24676715
>t. poetrylet marlowe fan

>>24676372
NTA, 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.

>>24676706
This 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.

>>24676743
Jonson doesn't say Shakespeare couldn't read Latin, he says:
>thou hadst small Latin and less Greek
Which implies that he wasn't fluent. I don't believe he knew enough to read Ovid or Virgil without trouble.

>>24676017 (OP)
I 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 pinched
As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made ‘em.

>>24676724
Florio's Montaigne > Montaigne

>>24676901
>him being hardly intelligible half the time does detract from the experience
American 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 to
Why lie to yourself?

>>24676901
Would 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.

>>24677124
Neither 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.

>>24676994
nta 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

>>24677164
It'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 it
There is bait, and then there is lobotomizing yourself for attention.

>>24677210
I 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 honeycomb
Which you also said doesn't make literal sense, when it does.

>bathetic descriptor
There'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.

>>24677331
No 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.

>>24677342
kek

>>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.

>>24676372
Shakespeare 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
>>24677331
That'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 tongue
I 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).

>>24677395
I 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 bashing
This is telling

>>24676601
what a walk back lmao

>>24677425
>random Jew defense
This is telling

>>24677425
If 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.

>>24677359
Maybe he collaborated with someone else to write the latin

>>24676017 (OP)
storytelling in prose is a relatively modern invention
meter helped with memorization, that's all

>>24677686
Or 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 Latin
What?

>>24677764
He'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 day
Was Coleridge retarded?

>>24676017 (OP)
---- Solaria ----
30000
Review Of Sites And Cirvcumstances

I can imagine few depressing to pleasure than
Dependence on an entourage or

Conscription into one
Where scent

Is never adjacent to quiet ecstasy
Or sights beyond

Conjuring, too suave to record except in attempt,
Sound casually encyclopedic

And so-forth, something like the upper limit of life;.

>>24676017 (OP)
The 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 stolen
You have a child's understanding of ideas

>>24678003
Yeah it was hyperbolic, sue me faggot