Shakespeare: a variable writer?

[french frank]

This isn't my experience. When I was at school in the 50s we had to read it properly, and I loved it.

My experience too. Several of us from school went to performances at the Bristol Old Vic (on our own initiative) and I always booked for the Old Vic tour performances when they came to Bristol. (I'm not altogether sure that we were very well taught: my only memory is of classes where we 'acted' individual scenes that we had read for our homework).

[Conchis]

This isn't my experience. When I was at school in the 50s we had to read it properly, and I loved it.

When I taught it in the 1980s, the students were always complaining and asking why they couldn't have a translation. That never occurred to us. But of course by that time the KJV, which helped familiarise us all with the language of the period, had virtually disappeared from public discourse.

But it was the 70s and 80 gave us the worst of garbled Shakespeare IMO. I really think the verse has been much better spoken in recent years.

In January 1979, the RSC's McKellen/Dench Macbeth was shown on ITV. I was eleven years' old. I had nothing better to do but thought I'd watch it just to see wht it was like (a slght curiosity about Shakespeare had been stirred by the showing of the Vincent Price film Theatre of Blood over Christmas/New Year 1978/79). As anticiipated, I quickly got bored with it (and was bemused by the 'all leather' RSC look of the time and went to bed. Looknig for something to read, I found my mother's ancient copy of Macbeth on the bookshelf. Figuring it would very quickly put me to sleep, I started reading it....and was shocked to discover that a) I understood the 'diffcult' language and b) found the plot enthralling (I didn't know what happened in the end). I very quickly finished the play and the following day, I went in search of more Shakespeare. A life-changing experience!

It is a myth that Shakespeare's language is inpenetrable and difficult to understand. I had a bog standard comprehensive school education, yet I understood it. Since then, I've encountered many students with the same prejudice that I had - before reading it, they've already decided it's 'too hard' for them. Yet when I asked a reluctant student to tell me what he 'thought' a speech by Friar Lawrence in R&J meant, he got it absolutely right.

The idea that the text 'needs to be deciphered' seemed to strengthen in the 80s.

[Conchis]

I can't really comment on the teaching of Shakespeare in schools becuase I discovered him before I was taught him. But I remember our fourth year English class liking Macbeth a lot when we studied it.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... recently I have been wondering whether inhabitants of another language have a benefit when it comes to Shakspere - they will tend to have a chance to read him in a language contemporary to their own. Only those of us in the English speaking world are restricted to read him in a 16th/17th century lingo.

As "restrictions" go, that's a pretty good one. The opportunity to work and play with the language as it was four hundred years ago is something I find to rejoice about. (And, if one also loves Chaucer, and Gawain & the Green Knight, Beowulf ... well, Shakespeare is decidedly modern.

Since the age of twenty, I have read the complete works (plays and poems) through in the first year of each decade - my fifth "go" is looming ever closer. Is he "variable"? Of course he is. But he's always excellent - as is perhaps suggested by the fact that I doubt that there will be anything of his that everybody on this Thread will agree is poor stuff. My problem is Titus Andronicus - the use of language is ham-fisted here, and the character perception risible: I've never believed it's authentic Shakespeare.

[vinteuil]

As "restrictions" go, that's a pretty good one. The opportunity to work and play with the language as it was four hundred years ago is something I find to rejoice about...

... o, me too, obvs.

But to quote Hamlet - for the play, I remember, pleas'd not the million; 'twas caviary to the general....

How many will get it?

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[Conchis]

As "restrictions" go, that's a pretty good one. The opportunity to work and play with the language as it was four hundred years ago is something I find to rejoice about. (And, if one also loves Chaucer, and Gawain & the Green Knight, Beowulf ... well, Shakespeare is decidedly modern.

Since the age of twenty, I have read the complete works (plays and poems) through in the first year of each decade - my fifth "go" is looming ever closer. Is he "variable"? Of course he is. But he's always excellent - as is perhaps suggested by the fact that I doubt that there will be anything of his that everybody on this Thread will agree is poor stuff. My problem is Titus Andronicus - the use of language is ham-fisted here, and the character perception risible: I've never believed it's authentic Shakespeare.

This raises the thorny question of WHO actually wrote the plays....

I've always felt that if you were able to bring Shakespeare the Mayor of Stratford back to life, you'd find he was a terse Warwixkshire tradesman, whose only concernt was money (he made a lot of it and never went to prison - unusual among playwrights in those days).

I tend to think most of the plays were written by the Earl of Oxford, a man who had been close the seat of government (or 'in the kitchen' as Enoch Powell once memorably put it).

It would be hilarious (to me, at least) if one day it turned out they were, in fact, written by an Italian whose second language was English! :)

As to Titus....it's doggerel, but it can be effective in performance. The Merry Wives of Windsor is also a poor text, of no interest to scholars, but directors and actors can make something entertaining out of it.

[vinteuil]

I tend to think most of the plays were written by the Earl of Oxford, a man who had been close the seat of government (or 'in the kitchen' as Enoch Powell once memorably put it).

... I like the phrasing in wiki -

"The convergence of documentary evidence of the type used by academics for authorial attribution – title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official records – sufficiently establishes Shakespeare's authorship for the overwhelming majority of Shakespeare scholars and literary historians, and no evidence links Oxford to Shakespeare's works. Oxfordians, however, reject the historical record and often propose the conspiracy theory that the record was falsified to protect the identity of the real author, invoking the dearth of evidence for any conspiracy as evidence of its success."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_silence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxfordian_theory_of_Shakespeare_authorship

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[Conchis]

... I like the phrasing in wiki -

"The convergence of documentary evidence of the type used by academics for authorial attribution – title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official records – sufficiently establishes Shakespeare's authorship for the overwhelming majority of Shakespeare scholars and literary historians, and no evidence links Oxford to Shakespeare's works. Oxfordians, however, reject the historical record and often propose the conspiracy theory that the record was falsified to protect the identity of the real author, invoking the dearth of evidence for any conspiracy as evidence of its success."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_silence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxfordian_theory_of_Shakespeare_authorship

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I find that less funny than credible.

[jean]

I tend to think most of the plays were written by the Earl of Oxford, a man who had been close the seat of government...

How does anyone think they could possibly know this?

[Bryn]

How does anyone think they could possibly know this?

The Earl was a bery clever chap. He even managed to write around a dozen Shakespeare plays after he was dead and buried.

[teamsaint]

What matters, rather than who wrote the text, is whether more than one person is responsible?

Anyway, regarding the plays, I certainly can’t agree with Conchy about TN and MAAN. Both works fully demonstrate the writer's genius. The last TN I saw was at Stratford about 6 years ago, which was both true to the text, and very funny.

My final year Shakespeare module focussed on 8 of the comedies, including Merchant of Venice. Fantastic learning experience.One of the texts we used as background was Merry Wives , about which, I have to admit,I remember very little indeed.

I’d like to see the BBC Shakespeare “ Comedy of Errors” with Roger Daltrey again. Only saw it once , while doing that module, and at the time I thought it and him excellent.

[Serial_Apologist]

What matters, rather than who wrote the text, is whether more than one person is responsible?

Anyway, regarding the plays, I certainly can’t agree with Conchy about TN and MAAN. Both works fully demonstrate the writer's genius. The last TN I saw was at Stratford about 6 years ago, which was both true to the text, and very funny.

My final year Shakespeare module focussed on 8 of the comedies, including Merchant of Venice. Fantastic learning experience.One of the texts we used as background was Merry Wives , about which, I have to admit,I remember very little indeed.

I’d like to see the BBC Shakespeare “ Comedy of Errors” with Roger Daltrey again. Only saw it once , while doing that module, and at the time I thought it and him excellent.

WHO????

[johncorrigan]

WHO????

I don't know much about Willie the Shake, but I picked up a copy of Neil MacGregor's 'Shakespeare's Restless World' for a quid in a junk shop a couple of weeks back, and what a fine investment that was. Might even go and look out a couple of his plays on the back of it. MacGregor as fascinating as always.

[Sir Velo]

The Earl was a bery clever chap. He even managed to write around a dozen Shakespeare plays after he was dead and buried.

Interestingly, the quality of Shakespeare's writing reaches a new peak after 1604.

[Lat-Literal]

The biggest problem with Shakespeare is the same as the biggest problem with the Bible and other religious tomes. All are much too earthy. However, the former at least doesn't logically require any justification for its X rated certificate. Not essentially being a handbook for morality, it is entitled to wallow obsessively in fleshly pursuits and blood and gore. Of course, all these works are redeemed by the quality of the writing. Here the lyricism is more important than any need for comprehension. And names are important. Just as there is no point in becoming a politician unless one can be Churchill, so it is that any decent writer shouldn't even try for publication unless we can believe in their ability to be Shakespearian.

So the perfect entry to Shakespeare for twelve year olds is Macbeth, eh. We started with The Merchant of Venice where the pound of flesh demanded is literal. It was a reasonable enough introduction to the adult world. But, then, yes, it was a trip to Polanski and Tynan's depiction of treachery and murder following the murder of Polanski's wife and other members of the Manson family. The especially pessimistic angle in the film on all round moral decline was offset by us beating the censors because they were overruled by the school authorities and Francesca Annis delivering Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking soliloquy in the nude. I doubt that much of the writing itself was recalled nor that in Hamlet which probably followed it.

Twelfth Night was better for being easier and lighter. A comedy doesn't have to have a lot of laughs. Then in the mid teens it clicked, courtesy of the captivating all black Measure for Measure at the National, even if the great Norman Beaton was absent following his arrest. And The Tempest which is wonderful for being so other worldly. The actors' love for the Bard became entirely understandable. One empathises, for example, with Scales and West in their canal reminiscences. There is also a recognition that any questioning about a consistent voice misses the point. Sure, Carla Lane, the nearest that tv came to finding a Shakespeare, was mainly her own woman but, just like Winston, Will is above scrutiny or critique.