Who was Shakespeare?

[IanEye]

What other body of work attributed to one man is comparable?

[geogeo]

What amazes me is how no one will admit that they don't really like Shakespeare. I don't; I've never been into him. Not sure why.

The dissing of Shakespeare is somewhat similar to that of Boehme. Ignorant shoemakers, couldn't have been well-read. Turns out to have been a legend.

[MacCruiskeen]

What amazes me is how no one will admit that they don't really like Shakespeare. I don't; I've never been into him. Not sure why.

Read King Lear. Really, it's incomparable. The high weirdness of the human heart. I was lucky enough to have one those inspiring English teachers who thought we could get something out of it at the age of 13. And we did, with his help. And ten years later there was an unforgettable BBC production of the play, by Jonathan Miller, with the great Michael Hordern in the lead role.

[geogeo]

I've read all the major Shakespeare, that's the thing. Perhaps I'm wrong in the head.

[norton ash]

This one never gets old for me, especially when trying to explain how important Shakespeare is.

On Quoting Shakespeare
If you cannot understand my argument, and declare ``It's Greek to me'', you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.

Bernard Levin

[AhabsOtherLeg]

@ IanEye: I can't help thinking Troy McClure woulda been a better pick.

As a team-written show with a single creative director, though, the Simpsons was stunningly consistent in the high quality of it's material for a long,long time, and there's a lot of material there.

Folk might laugh, but I'd also say the show has dealt with a similar range of characters, emotions, human failings, political skullduggery and historical issues to Shakespeare's work. It's got the lot - comedy, tragedy, politics, sex, religion - and the wise-fool or clown that showed up in Shakespeare all the time. It's also unashamedly populist and accessible to everybody, as Shakespere's work was designed to be at the time (and was).

Shakespeare was never sponsored by Domino's Pizza, though, so he never had to dumb it down and take out the references to atheism, or at least agnosticism, in his later stuff.

My new book, Shakespeare and The Simpsons: They're Pretty Similar, argues this case in more depth.


@ Mac, thanks for the Lear link - bookmarked. Edit: Ach, I thought it was to a video!

Personally I love Oliver Parker's Othello most out of the Shakespeare film adaptations, 'cos it just feels real. It is modernised in a way that works, with the language being a bit less flowery than usual, unlike most other recent versions, which are modernised in ways that don't - like having everybody living in California.

Anyone interested in the workings of psychopathology, and how easily it can be hidden in an ambitious man as he clims the political/military ladder, should watch Kenneth Branagh playing "Honest Iago" in that film. Ian McKellen made a pretty good Iago as well (it's on Youtube).


@GeoGeo: I think it's actually a good thing to stop and ask ourselves - was he really that great? It becomes much easier to believe that one man wrote all the plays (except the acknowledged collaborations) if we can admit to ourselves that some of them are, maybe, a bit shit. I definitely don't like all his work. Pretty much only the heavy tragedies, the Henrys, and The Tempest.


@ Norton: Woah - Bernard Levin. If I'm Mac, it's possible that you could be me.

Great quote!


There are two particular posters that I kind of wish would jump in and give us their take on things, but it might explode the thread. One is C2W. From what I gather, she knows her Shakespeare, and her history, and - unless I was hallucinating - some interesting stuff about Elizabethan Court life.

The other, though, is Stephen Morgan.

Well, say what you like, the lad has a brain, and he seems to know the ways (and some of the language, not all of it pretty) of Ye Olde Merrie Englande.

Would be interesting if Jeff had a theory as well - or just to hear what he thinks of Shakespeare generally.

.
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[MacCruiskeen]

@GeoGeo: I think it's actually a good thing to stop and ask ourselves - was he really that great? It becomes much easier to believe that one man wrote all the plays (except the acknowledged collaborations) if we can admit to ourselves that some of them are, maybe, a bit shit. I definitely don't like all his work. Pretty much only the heavy tragedies, the Henrys, and The Tempest.

That's a good point. Nobody is obliged to idolise him, and some of the plays are indeed a bit shit. Even bits of the great ones are sometimes a bit shit. Personally, I think Antony and Cleopatra is one of the most irritating things ever written, as well as being practically interminable. It wouldn't surprise me if that one had in fact been devised and constructed by a committee.

As for his comedies, they can sometimes look deadly or just plain incomprehensible on the page, but a really good production with really good actors can work wonders. One of the funniest things I ever saw was Richard Griffiths (Withnail's Uncle Monty) as Bottom in a 1977 RSC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

[Stabs himself]

Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.

Now am I dead,
Now am I fled;
My soul is in the sky.
Tongue, lose thy light;
Moon take thy flight:

[Exit Moonshine]

Now die, die, die, die, die.

[Dies]

[IanEye]

@ IanEye: I can't help thinking Troy McClure woulda been a better pick.

Ahab, as much as I love the collected works of Rainer Wolfcastle, I was actually making reference to this guy:

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Hunter]



[/url]

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Ah, see. I talk about The Simpsons, but I don't know about The Simpsons.

McBain only does crime, though, doesn't he? Not as broad a range... actually, just looked him up, and he has done some other genres and even horror/sci-fi in his film work (screenplay for "The Birds").

Elmore Leonard's great an' all. They look kind of similar.


@Mac: The death scenes are always his finest comedic moments, even in Hamlet. The audience sees a guy get stabbed through a curtain, which is fine, and Shakespeare then has him stumble out and shout from the footlights: "I AM SLAIN!"

Yeah, we saw that. No need to spell it out, mate.

[JackRiddler]

Love the death scenes. They tell you that the plays were part of the entertainment industry of the time and place. Polonius cannot die without a chance for the people to hoot and cheer. It's a shame there are no records from the theater's creative politics, because as far as the subject sequence of the plays goes, I'm sure it came out of what we would today define as pitch meetings and marketing deliberations. With tavern drunkards as the focus groups.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Love the death scenes. They tell you that the plays were part of the entertainment industry of the time and place. Polonius cannot die without a chance for the people to hoot and cheer. It's a shame there are no records from the theater's creative politics, because as far as the subject sequence of the plays goes, I'm sure it came out of what we would today define as pitch meetings and marketing deliberations. With tavern drunkards as the focus groups.

As the writers too, I reckon. Marlowe for sure.

I haven't seen anything about creative politics as such in my wee book here, but the section on the stage directions and suchlike is pretty funny:

...it is a mistake to concieve of the Elizabethan stage as bare. Although Shakespeare's Chorus in Henry V calls the stage an "unworthy scaffold" and urges the spectators to "eke out our performance with your mind," there was considerable spectacle. The last act of Macbeth, for example, has five stage directions for "drum and colors," and another sort of appeal to the eye is indicated by the stage direction "Enter MacDuff, with MacBeth's head."

Some scenery and properties may have been substantial; doubtless a throne was used, and in one play of the period we encounter this direction: "Hector takes up a great piece of rock and casts it at Ajax, who tears up a young tree by the roots and assails Hector."

It was the WWE of it's time!

BTW, Jack, can you expand on or give me a link to the Crown's propaganda uses of the theatre? It's obvious in a way, but I'd like to know more. Or just direct me back to it if you posted a link already.

I could look myself, but, forsooth, I am a lazy bastard.

[JackRiddler]

Ahab,

Just go ahead and expose my woeful ignorance.

I'm just going prima facie:

1) Time of rebellions, threat of invasion and inquisitions in an absolute monarchy.

2) They weren't banned.

3) They played for the court, so they were approved, very sensitive, and had contacts.

4) The Tempest an allegory of benevolent colonialism of the New World, as the first Virginia projects were underway.

5) All those Henry and Richard plays are pro-Tudor.

So yeah, clueless about more direct evidence of a link.

Hamlet's reference to an inch of powder was supposedly a literal and unflattering description of what Elizabeth through the years had allowed to accumulate on the royal face, and is hardly the only subversive reference. But I don't know much about what else Shakespeare may have gotten away with in the way of hidden criticism of the contemporary powers that be. Only that the plays don't often celebrate power.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Ahab,

Just go ahead and expose my woeful ignorance.

No no, just trying to cure my own. Truth is, I hadn't thought of most of the things you mentioned, especially not the one about The Tempest. Thanks for that.

They weren't banned.

That's a clincher, right enough, now that I think about it.

Seems like the right night to wonder if Shakespeare and others really were involved in Catholic subversion, and even linked to Guy Fawkes, and if one of them killed Marlowe when they found out he was working for Walsingham, as has been suggested.

That would make any reference in the subsequent plays to "powder" very interesting - though Hamlet was written before Fawkes got caught.

[chiggerbit]

I've read that one of the characters in The Tempest may have been based on a very early American colonial-hopeful who had to grovel for his life after being charged with mutiny, after the ship he was on had been shipwrecked on Berumda before reaching its destination in Jamestown.

[jingofever]

Who really wrote Shakespeare?

Surely not that 'upstart crow' from Stratford? As James Shapiro's new book rehearses the loony arguments about our greatest playwright, we ask some of today's finest Shakespearean actors and directors their thoughts on the authorship question

Bonus! 'Shakespeare's lost play' no hoax, says expert

New evidence that Double Falsehood was, as 18th-century playwright Lewis Theobald claimed, based on Bard's Cardenio