Shakespeare: a variable writer?

[Conchis]

Comments on the Twelfth Night screening thread gave me the idea for this.

The idea that Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the English language and (chauvinistically) the greatest writer in ANY language EVER, seems to have great currency, in Britain (or, 'England') especially.

Yet, I have to confess there are large swathes of his output I just don't like at all: and whilst I'm on board for most of the Tragedies (with the exception of the youthful and overwritten Romeo & Juliet, which does contain some striking writing and effective scenes) and most of the Histories, I find the Comedies very hard to love - particularly so in the case of Twelfth Night and (especially) Much Ado About Nothing.

The latter strikes me as being such a poor piece of work, I seriously can't believe it was writen by the same person who wrote Hamlet and Othello. As Peter Shaffer once commented, 'it reads like a first draft' (the fact that it's all in prose doesn't help). Whilst I suppose Shakespeare deserves kudos for inventing the 'romcom' half a millennium early, that doesn't excuse the fact that the characters are tedious and unlikeable (non-couples who 'pretend' not to fancy each other are tedious in real life, why should it be any different on the stage?). And Dogberry has to be the bard's most contrived and banal 'comic' character - has anyone ever found his scenes with Verges and the Watch funny?

The fact that Shakespeare's comedies are not, generally speaking, very funny has never bothered me, as my idea of 'comedy' is more closely aligned to the Chekhovian model (and I've found it fairly easy to locate the laughs in Ibsen - they are there, if you look for them!). But when watching things like T.N., Comedy Of Errors, Much Ado, I've frequently wondered why anyone could be bothered to write them....


I think the first Shakespeare play you encounter probably influences how you feel about him: my first (thankfully) was Macbeth, which is perfect for an 11-year old (as I was at the time). Some years later, my class at school was introduced to him via Midsummer Night's Dream (which is one of the better Comedies but perhaps not ideal for teenagers). My own favourite Comedy is As You Like it (a bit of a mess as a play, but Rosalind is my favourite Shakespearean character bar none)


There are also misfiring Tragedies such as Timon Of Athens (which is rarely performed, for several good reasons) and others that cannot be adequately performed nowadays because the talents required to produce them have been lost (Troilus and Cressida is arguably the greatest Shakespeare play but the number of good/great productions of it can be listed on the fingers of one hand).

[french frank]

I think it would be strange if everything Shakespeare wrote was universally pure genius - any more than everything that survives of Mozart would be considered genius. Perhaps there's a parallel in that it's a bit of a misfortune for almost an entire oeuvre to survive so long after it was created - and created in different circumstances for an audience of a different age.

One point about the 'comedy': I don't think that as a genre it's supposed to be 'funny' in the modern sense of the modern word. Tragedy is the noble genre, comedy deals with the 'lower classes' - so you can have a comic scene in Hamlet. But the distinctive narrative meaning is that it ends happily.

As for the 'comic scenes', I'm kicking myself that I've lost the link for an article, written by a 'comedian' who if I remember specialised in playing Shakespeare's comic roles. He analysed the comic process and references in a way I found very convincing. I'm not sure that it made them any funnier, but isn't the fault the passage of time rather than Shakespeare's?

I'm not really saying anything you don't know - just picking up on isolated bits that you've said for the sake of saying something .

[greenilex]

Can we separate the poet from the dramatist?

He is peerless as a writer of dramatic verse, imo, but very fallible in other respects of course...I absolutely agree with ff about the difficulty of having nearly the whole oeuvre preserved.

That said, I do find some parts very funny if the director is not being respectful.

[Conchis]

Can we separate the poet from the dramatist?

He is peerless as a writer of dramatic verse, imo, but very fallible in other respects of course...I absolutely agree with ff about the difficulty of having nearly the whole oeuvre preserved.

That said, I do find some parts very funny if the director is not being respectful.

He was certainly a great poet and a great dramatist (I think the structure of some of his greatest plays is as remarkable as the verse/characterisation).

On the whole, directors don't seem to find the texts funny - whcih is why they invent 'comic business' to garner some laughs. Frequently, this business has nothing at all to do with the play being performed.

An exception was Jonathan Kent's production of The Tempest, which I saw at the (old) Almeida Theatre in 2000. Every single comic moment was provided by Shakespeare - and a director who not only respected the text but wasn't afraid of it, either. Easily the best Shakespearean production I've ever seen.

[ardcarp]

One point about the 'comedy': I don't think that as a genre it's supposed to be 'funny' in the modern sense of the modern word.

Well, Dad's Army isn't funny in the modern sense of the word. Shakespeare's humour so often lies in the intricacies of language (ambiguity, double-entendre, puns, malapropisms, alliteration, etc) and I think it's survived 450 years quite well on the whole. Twelfth Night had many in the audience (at the live streaming) laughing out loud and even clapping...and that wasn't just down to production tricks. If Shakespeare wasn't always working at 'genius level', I'm pretty sure he knew how to get his audience in stitches. And of course in his day there would have been, additionally, the exquisite trichotomy of a boy playing a woman dressing up as a man.

[vinteuil]

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... I s'pose I had deep thoughts about Shakspere when i were an undergraduate in the early '70s.


Odd how seldom he has impinged in the last forty years, compared to other writers deemed less important ...

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[Serial_Apologist]

While glad I did Macbeth for O Level, there are moments in it where I just want to shout, in Kenneth Williams manner, "Oh just get on with it!!" My problem with Shakespeare's dramas has always been twofold - one aspect flowing from his omnipresent overdependence on spelling out in excessive linguistic detail every thought pattern going through the characters' heads at the expense of "body language". In this respect he is rather akin to a serial composer who can not countenance concluding his work until every possible permutational ordering of his series has been undertaken. The other aspect flows from the conventional approach devised by those most lauded for having established a modus parlando for such linguistic over-exuberance, eg Olivier: one which takes its time over those parts of dialogue that are most clearly close to present day speech, but then rushes more convoluted passages with much ado about whatever plus a lot of exaggerated gesture, the significant gist of which passes me by, every time... And they didn't have recordings in Shaky's time to pass that by themselves for that second take.

[french frank]

Well, Dad's Army isn't funny in the modern sense of the word.

Not sure what you're thinking of here. Comedy in the modern sense is something intended above all to make the audience laugh, isn't it?

[Conchis]

While glad I did Macbeth for O Level, there are moments in it where I just want to shout, in Kenneth Williams manner, "Oh just get on with it!!" My problem with Shakespeare's dramas has always been twofold - one aspect flowing from his omnipresent overdependence on spelling out in excessive linguistic detail every thought pattern going through the characters' heads at the expense of "body language". In this respect he is rather akin to a serial composer who can not countenance concluding his work until every possible permutational ordering of his series has been undertaken. The other aspect flows from the conventional approach devised by those most lauded for having established a modus parlando for such linguistic over-exuberance, eg Olivier: one which takes its time over those parts of dialogue that are most clearly close to present day speech, but then rushes more convoluted passages with much ado about whatever plus a lot of exaggerated gesture, the significant gist of which passes me by, every time... And they didn't have recordings in Shaky's time to pass that by themselves for that second take.

Macbeth is his shortest tragedy and second shortest play. Compared to most of the other works, the action hurtles forward. It's a white-knuckle ride!

As to the verbalisation of thought at the expense of 'body language' - although our knowledge is limited, there is evidence to suggest 'acting' in those days consisted largely of being able to deliver the script adequately. 'Business' tended to be secondary and a theatre-full of tanked up Elizabethans, not all of whom would have been there to see a play, would have had little use for subtlety. In the 19th century, Henrik Ibsen discovered a book of 'attitudes for actors' in the theatre he had just taken over the artistic direction of - it demonstrated, by means of silhouettes, how actors could stand on a stage to 'denote' certain moods. The Elizabethan theatre was probably not much different.

[ardcarp]

I'm quite surprised by the luke-warm appreciation of our National Treasure! Rather like Bach, his plays seem to survive all manner of interpretations and time-shifts.
It's odd that studying the text (eg of A Midsummer Night's Dream) can be grief to schoolkids; yet when they see it on stage, they are often blown away by it. I've had hugely positive responses from kids in my own family seeing inter alia MND at the Minack, a trendy (in the electronic and Kensington gore sense) Macbeth at the Northcott, A Winters Tale at Stratford, not mention A Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, The Tempest and Taming of the Shrew on cinema and home screens.

[Conchis]

I'm quite surprised by the luke-warm appreciation of our National Treasure! Rather like Bach, his plays seem to survive all manner of interpretations and time-shifts.
It's odd that studying the text (eg of A Midsummer Night's Dream) can be grief to schoolkids; yet when they see it on stage, they are often blown away by it. I've had hugely positive responses from kids in my own family seeing inter alia MND at the Minack, a trendy (in the electronic and Kensington gore sense) Macbeth at the Northcott, A Winters Tale at Stratford, not mention A Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, The Tempest and Taming of the Shrew on cinema and home screens.

Shakespeare's popularity has increased greatly in the last decade or so. When I went to school, the FACT that he was boring was like something you took in with your (free) school milk. Baz Lurhman and other popullists have transformed all that. But verse-speakers are in short supply. Directors are now jettisoning the 'core text' in favour of doing their own thing - as has long been the case on the continent (a friend of mine recently saw a production of Hamlet in Germany, where Hamlet - after killing Polonius - picked up a guitar from somewhere and began singing Bohemian Rhapsody).

[vinteuil]

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... 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.

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[jean]

I find the Comedies very hard to love - particularly so in the case of ... (especially) Much Ado About Nothing.

My favourite of the comedies, no question!

[Conchis]

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... 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.

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I once knew someone who said The Tempest 'reads much better in French.'

British audiences are disadvantaged when it comes to productions of European classics, as 'adaptors' are now basically writing their own plays (including making changes to the plotline of the source play) under cover of 'adapting a classic.' You certainly won't see a Schiller play in Britain that Schiller might have recognised as his own work.

[jean]

...When I went to school, the FACT that he was boring was like something you took in with your (free) school milk. Baz Lurhman and other popullists have transformed all that. But verse-speakers are in short supply. Directors are now jettisoning the 'core text' in favour of doing their own thing ...

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.