/lit/ - Literature

Pechorin

>Hamlet and Falstaff and Iago and Cleopatra remain the most interesting humans and characters in literature bar none
Are they, or are you just repeating what you’ve been told by an overweight Yale professor?

>>19361461
Between those two statements there exists no contradiction.

>>19361446
This is a ridiculous claim. Shakespeare wasn't a great writer of characters, he wrote good characters, and gave them great scenarios. Everyone recognizes these names when they hear them because Shakespeare has a monopoly on English education.
There are plenty of examples of literary names which are equally recognizable, but were truly great characters.
For example:
Don Quixote
Ebenezer Scrooge
Oliver Twist
Ishmael
Holden Caulfield

>>19361501
Based and Scroogepilled. Might I add several of the characters from Canterbury Tales being superior, specifically the wife of bath

>>19361501
>Racist isn't granted a promotion
>Old guy isn't loved by daughters
>Boy visited by ghost of father
>Guy murders to become king
Yeah, these are great scenarios. Stripped of characters, Shakespeare is nothing.

I love Shakespeare and John Milton. Very based anglos. Who can compare?

>>19361501
>Shakespeare wasn't a great writer of characters
This, all his characters are quite monolithic if not outright caricatures (Richard III).
It's the beauty of the language that transcends it all.

>>19361501
>Don Quixote
Poor man's King Lear
>Ebenezer Scrooge
Poor man's Timon
>Oliver Twist
Poor man's Hamlet
>Ishmael
Poor man's Hamlet
>Holden Caulfield
Poor man's Hamlet

>>19361544
>his characters are quite monolithic
Correct. They are like the Roman Empire: large and powerful.

>>19361541
Milton is just great

>>19361529
Yes, I could boil down the plot of any play ever written to five words and it would sound unimpressive. For example: The Glass Mengaerie.
>Young man decides to leave home.
See? Your five-word reductions don't reflect the clever ironies or other plot elements that infest Shakespeare.
But here's the difference between a play like Macbeth and a play like Streetcar. Streetcar gives exposition and dialogue which delves into the very character of Blanche Dubois. How much do we really learn about Lady Macbeth by the time the curtain falls? Compare this to how vivid a portrait you could paint of Blanche just from the text of the play.

>>19361546
And Hamlet is a poor man's Absalom. And Lear is a poor man's Creon. What are you really accomplishing here, anon?

>>19361597
>How much do we really learn about Lady Macbeth
Reducing a play to a side character, lol.
Shakespeare gives more dialogue/character to Macbeth than Tennessee Williams to Blanche.

>>19361763
>Reducing a play to a side character, lol.
I wasn't talking about the whole play, I was specifically talking about the character.
>Shakespeare gives more dialogue/character to Macbeth than Tennessee Williams to Blanche.
Show me.

>>19361461
>an overweight Yale professor
He was just parroting Samuel Johnson

Because Shakespeare didn't write all those plays.
He was just a battleaxe playhouse owner that demanded he be given writing credit in exchange for producing the plays.
Elvis Presley would do the same thing, years later.

>>19361845
>Macbeth's most famous speech
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
>Blanche's best speech, conveniently also about death
I, I, I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the
graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! So big with it, it couldn't be put in a
coffin! But had to be burned like rubbish! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella.
And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths--not always.
Sometimes their breathing is hoarse, and sometimes it rattles, and sometimes they even cry out to
you, "Don't let me go!" Even the old, sometimes, say, "Don't let me go." As if you were able to
stop them! But funerals are quiet, with pretty flowers. And, oh, what gorgeous boxes they pack
them away in! Unless you were there at the bed when they cried out, "Hold me!" you'd never
suspect there was the struggle for breath and bleeding. You didn't dream, but I saw! Saw! Saw!
And now you sit there telling me with your eyes that I let the place go! How in hell do you think
all that sickness and dying was paid for? Death is expensive, Miss Stella! And old Cousin
Jessie's right after Margaret's, hers! Why, the Grim Reaper had put up his tent on our doorstep!...
Stella. Belle Reve was his headquarters! Honey--that's how it slipped through my fingers! Which
of them left us a fortune? Which of them left a cent of insurance even? Only poor Jessie--one
hundred to pay for her coffin. That was all, Stella! And I with my pitiful salary at the school.
Yes, accuse me! Sit there and stare at me, thinking I let the place go! I let the place go? Where
were you! In bed with your--Polack!

>Death is expensive
Obvious. Trite. Cliché. Predictable.
>Dusty death
Original. Poetic. Genius. So intelligent, I don't even know what it means.
No contest which is greater.

>>19361631
No, Hanlet is a poor man's Amleth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amleth
Shakespeare never wrote an original story in his life

>>19362336
Imagine pulling the wiki up in person.

>>19361517
Wife of Bath is my hero. Her tale wasn't nearly as good as her prologue though

>>19362329
Okay, you've shown me two speeches, one from Macbeth and one from Blanche, and claimed that Macbeth's is 'greater,' stylistically, but you haven't done anything to display that Macbeth is a better character than Blanche Dubois, which was the original argument.

>>19361501
>Don Quixote
I guess

>Ebenezer Scrooge
Because of the implication

>Oliver Twist
No

>Ishmael
Babby skips later Melville. For one Pierre and The Cosmopolitan and Clarel are all much better characters, and for two he has an essay on characters towards the end of The Confidence Man.

>Holden Caulfield
Interesting choice, but ultimately a result of Jewish stronghold on academia forcing this to be a thing post-WW2, and I love Salinger/Catcher in the Rye.

>>19361453
Truly a hero of our time.

>>19361446
test

>>19362648
>>Ishmael
>Babby skips later Melville. For one Pierre and The Cosmopolitan and Clarel are all much better characters, and for two he has an essay on characters towards the end of The Confidence Man.
Whether they are better characters is irrelevant to the point I was making that Ishmael is an equally well-known character and a superior character in literary terms. The general public is not as familiar with Pierre or Clarel as they are with Ishamel and Ahab.
>>Holden Caulfield
>Interesting choice, but ultimately a result of Jewish stronghold on academia forcing this to be a thing post-WW2, and I love Salinger/Catcher in the Rye.
You're delusional.

>>19362596
>Imagine typing in King Lear and clicking the second link
Are you so fat and lazy you think that is hard work?

>>19362731
>The general public is not as familiar with Pierre or Clarel as they are with Ishamel and Ahab.
The general public in 2020 has zero idea who Ishmael or Ahab are. If by general public you mean the given person who has perused a best of all time books list and read a synopsis of Moby Dick and knows Ishamel is the narrator and Ahab is a character in it, then sure.

>delusional
Not really, whether Salinger intended it or not aside (I think Salinger was a genuine writing about what he knew), he's viewed as a Jewish indictment on WASP culture; he's at boarding school, bitching about family structure, and is in NYC. Look at the people that praise it not to mention the fact that most kids hated it. The reason Catcher in the Rye is still taught is because it was a useful tool until the early 2000s, when even that book became too 'archaic,' so within 20 years the woke illiteracy will completely remove it.

I do think Caufield is a better written character than one of the Hemingway tards, Ferdinand Bardamu, and Chinaski though (as the former is coping/larping, Celine is just writing about himself, and I hate Bukowski). If you want a 20th century rebellious character than I'd probably agree with you and choose Caufield, which is why I did say it's an interesting pick, but I can't ignore why I perceive the book has any relevance.

Henry V and Hotspur are both far more interesting than Falstaff, but critics and professors are so far up their ass theyd write five books on Cosmo Kramer as long as someone like Shakespeare had been the one to write him.

>>19362772
He rapes his sister, Phoebe.

>>19362633
Macbeth murders his beloved King, descends into paranoia, has his best friend murdered, suffers delusions of ghosts, has innocents murdered, cumulating in existential despair.
Blanche was . . . a pedophile? Who puts up paper lanterns? Goes insane because . . . she was too stupid financially? Not very interesting if you ask me.

>>19362814
>Kramer
Goofy guy who does random things
>Falstaff
A man with no virtues save the essential ones and all vices save the unforgivable ones.
They are as different as night and day.

>>19363010
These are the things which happen to the characters, that's not character.

>>19363029
>A man with no virtues save the essential ones and all vices save the unforgivable ones.
That's literally Kramer.

>>19361446
>The four most original characters literature has given us: Hamlet, Falstaff, D.Q. and Sancho.

>>19361501
Shakespeare's entire value comes from his characters.