trashing Shakespeare

wv wrote:

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… Search [in Shakespeare] for statesmanship, or even citizenship, or any sense of the commonwealth, material or spiritual, and you will not find the making of a decent vestryman or curate in the whole horde. As to faith, hope, courage, conviction, or any of the true heroic qualities, you find nothing but death made sensational, despair made stage-sublime, sex made romantic, and barrenness covered up by sentimentality and the mechanical lilt of blank verse.

All that you miss in Shakespeare you find in Bunyan, to whom the true heroic came quite obviously and naturally. The world was to him a more terrible place than it was to Shakespeare; but he saw through it a path at the end of which a man might look not only forward to the Celestial City, but back on his life and say: “Tho’ with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get them.” The heart vibrates like a bell to such utterances as this; to turn from it to “Out, out, brief candle,” and “The rest is silence,” and “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” and “our little life is rounded by a sleep” is turn from life, strength, resolution, morning air and eternal youth, to the terrors of a drunken nightmare.

G.B. Shaw – “Better than Shakespeare”

The difference being, there are characters in Shakespeare.

Ole GB Shaw, he sure did like to opinionatize.

dunno what happened here. Delete

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Zooey.

No, I deleted it. I went to edit a typo, but I think I must have accidentally quoted my post instead of an edit, so I had my post, then a revised quote of my post. I blame flawed intelligence.

Harold Bloom is a good go-to critic for Shakespeare. He’s perhaps the best-read, most erudite reader of the Bard alive today. If he has a flaw on the subject, however, it’s that, IMO, he tends to exaggerate Shakespeare’s importance a bridge too far. Not that he isn’t tremendously important to English Literature and our cultural inheritance in general. But Bloom tends to see him as a kind before-and-after personage. An historic dividing line. That we are somehow profoundly different, as human beings, because of him, directly.

Possibly. But I think that’s going a bit too far when it comes to just one person in history.

Back in the late 1990s I saw Bloom lecture on Shakespeare and the Canon at UVA in Charlottesville. It was a wonderful experience, made all the better for the post-lecture gathering next to Jefferson’s famous Lawn. He was, I think, in his late 60s at the time, but already having health issues. Very friendly toward us, very patient, but I remember him being like someone out of a Woody Allen film, too. Almost diva-like, as an intellectual, which is somewhat unusual.

The chance to do things like that, see world-class critics, writers, artists, etc. was the main reason I moved to C’ville at the time. I’m no longer there and miss that kind of cultural moment. Time for me to seek out more of that kind of thing closer to home.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

. He’s perhaps the best-read, most erudite reader of the Bard alive today.

Take my word for this.

No.

Nothing wrong with Bloom, I like Bloom. But he’s not the best Shakespeare scholar or however you want to put that.

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Shakespeare scholar? Roddenberry scholar? Both are ridiculous.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

. He’s perhaps the best-read, most erudite reader of the Bard alive today.

Take my word for this.

No.

Nothing wrong with Bloom, I like Bloom. But he’s not the best Shakespeare scholar or however you want to put that.

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Didn’t say the best. I said the best-read and most erudite. I stand by that. The man is a voracious reader, and has been for well over half a century. Tremendous intellectual range as well.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Billy_T.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

. He’s perhaps the best-read, most erudite reader of the Bard alive today.

Take my word for this.

No.

Nothing wrong with Bloom, I like Bloom. But he’s not the best Shakespeare scholar or however you want to put that.

.

Didn’t say the best. I said the best-read and most erudite. I stand by that. The man is a voracious reader, and has been for well over half a century. Tremendous intellectual range as well.

Yeah and I say no to that.

He’s not the only voracious reader as a scholar in the world. He’s just the one who markets himself to the mainstream more than others.

And remember I like Bloom.

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(from the 2nd thoughts file). As the moderator, I want to caution zn on being too argumentative. Anyone can think anything about Harold Bloom they want to…let a thousand Blooms…uh…flower.

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wv wrote:

zn wrote:

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(from the 2nd thoughts file). As the moderator, I want to caution zn on being too argumentative. Anyone can think anything about Harold Bloom they want to…let a thousand Blooms…uh…flower.

.

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thankyou

THAT is what makes/can make this place something
special

w
v

Yes indeed he talks to himself in Bob Dole-eze.

bnw wrote:

J.R.R. Tolkien had more than a few.

Yeah, I’m not riding with you in this posse.

I think Tolkien’s interesting characters begin and end with Gollum.

Everyone else is just a Type, imo. No complexity of character.

I think Tolkien’s genius/appeal was in the History he constructed for everything. He is the first writer to really create an alternate world.

And. I think that if Tolkien published his books for the first time today, they would largely be ignored. He did some ground breaking fictional work, but he wasn’t a great writer. He was merely the first writer to open the door to an alternate reality that had bones.

Zooey wrote:

bnw wrote:

J.R.R. Tolkien had more than a few.

Yeah, I’m not riding with you in this posse.

I think Tolkien’s interesting characters begin and end with Gollum.

Everyone else is just a Type, imo. No complexity of character.

I think Tolkien’s genius/appeal was in the History he constructed for everything. He is the first writer to really create an alternate world.

And. I think that if Tolkien published his books for the first time today, they would largely be ignored. He did some ground breaking fictional work, but he wasn’t a great writer. He was merely the first writer to open the door to an alternate reality that had bones.

I’m not a fan. My family is. To a casual observer like myself I see little difference in complexity of character between Falstaff and Bilbo Baggins. Shakespeare never reached this pinnacle of success,

Zooey wrote:

bnw wrote:

J.R.R. Tolkien had more than a few.

Yeah, I’m not riding with you in this posse.

I think Tolkien’s interesting characters begin and end with Gollum.

Everyone else is just a Type, imo. No complexity of character.

I think Tolkien’s genius/appeal was in the History he constructed for everything. He is the first writer to really create an alternate world.

And. I think that if Tolkien published his books for the first time today, they would largely be ignored. He did some ground breaking fictional work, but he wasn’t a great writer. He was merely the first writer to open the door to an alternate reality that had bones.

I think most of the stuff written in the fantasy/sci-fi/horror genres are more story driven than character driven. Exceptions would be stuff by Kurt Vonnegut and Stephen King.

bnw wrote:

I’m not a fan. My family is. To a casual observer like myself I see little difference in complexity of character between Falstaff and Bilbo Baggins. Shakespeare never reached this pinnacle of success,

Which goes to show you don’t know the first thing about Falstaff. And that’s fine. You said “to a casual observer….”

You will get precious little out of Shakespeare as a casual observer. He takes work. A lot of work. Because of the language barrier. The first thing you have to do is learn Shakespeare’s language which is halfway to learning a second language. On top of that, he used it in a highly sophisticated way, both in terms of vocabulary and sentence construction. And a lot of it is poetry, not prose. Several of his famous speeches are actually written as sonnets. So to crack that nut, you first have to understand what the words mean, perhaps understand a handful of allusions, and know what a sonnet is, and spend some time with it to savor the literary stunt he just pulled off.

Then you see that he has his noble characters talk in iambic pentameter a lot, and in verse, and his working class grunts don’t. Furthermore, they tend to butcher the language when they speak, misusing words and so on which creates a hell of a lot of humor…unless you don’t know what the words mean in the first place!

And you have to crack the language before you crack the play. Falstaff, as it happens, is a character in three plays, so to understand Falstaff…well, you have a lot of work in front of you.

I get that the vast majority of people don’t want to put that kind of effort in when there are a lot of compelling stories around in print and on screen that are rich and satisfying, and immediately accessible and comprehensible. I am not a missionary for Shakespeare. He is too damn much work for me to recommend him to somebody casually.

But…he and Roddenberry and Tolkien are not equivalents.

wv wrote:

—————–

Oh yeah, well if Shakespeare did a movie trilogy today,
it’d be largely ignored.

w
v

Hmm. You do know that Shakespeare has more movies to his credit than anyone else in the world?

zn wrote:

In terms of character driven works in fantasy, that would include Martin. Arguably he was actually making up for a deficiency he saw in Tolkien.

Along with Martin’s GOT, Donaldson’s ‘The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant’ and Rothfuss’ ‘Kingkiller Chronicles’ have a lot of character development as does the ‘Shannara’ series by Terry Brooks. Of course, Those
books also have great storylines. Like anything else, the best fantasy has some of both I suppose.

PA Ram wrote:

zn wrote:

PA Ram wrote:

Poe wrote character driven stuff, IMO.

Also–Peter Straub is a lot like King in that regard.

You;re basically evoking 3 different genres.

Poe is one thing. He did not write fantasy in the way we understand that term from the works of Tolkien and Martin.

Straub is horror. Different thing. That’s #3. (Naming what Poe does is more tricky, though it is doable. But it’s better to just say “Poe” and steer clear of the nuances.)

King ranges widely and has written both horror and fantasy.

It is true that those genres influence one another. And both are influenced, in different ways, by earlier gothic. But they are also quite distinct from one another. Horror is not fantasy and vice versa.

In terms of character driven works in fantasy, that would include Martin. Arguably he was actually making up for a deficiency he saw in Tolkien.

Straub is just horror? Shadowland? The Talisman? He may be mostly horror but he has dabbled in fantasy horror. But that misses the point.

Nittany said “horror” and you didn’t yell at him. I knew he was your favorite. I knew it.

Yeah point taken about Straub.

On Nittany…I see no differences between you outlanders.

You’re all mormons to me.

Or is that amysh.

Whatever.