/lit/ - Literature

>>19384921
Filtered

>>19384946
Shakespeare is to Dante, what The Weeknd is toBrahms, Mahler and Schubert. Get over it.

>>19384921
what else have you read besides King Lear?

>>19384921
>Shakespeare is a sonnetist that the English and Americans raised to the level of a poet; without these two he would be nothing; the guy is not good, but he served a political agenda that was imperialist at the time, and that has left the marks of Shakespeare's popularity as one of the greatest poets when he is not.
Er dude, it was the Germans who did that: Herder, Schlegel, Goethe and Schiller are the ones who proclaimed him as the GOAT. Before them Shakespeare wasn't even the most esteemed author in England, he was generally considered equal to or below Milton. And Voltaire was the guy who popularised him on the continent as equal to the classical French dramatists (until he got bitter that Shakespeare began to overshadow them). Do you think the countless other great authors who idolised him like Pushkin or Hugo were tricked by English critics? This is just idiocy. If you want to claim his GOAT status is a conspiracy, at least get your facts right.

>>19384921
dante sucks lmao.

>>19384921
>it has no ideology
implying that is not a good thing

>>19384921
Dosto is way more overrated

>>19384980
Hamlet and most of the sonnets.

>>19385020
Herder, Pushkin, Hugo and Voltaire sucks, and Goethe tragedies aren't that good either because he falls away from characterization into an exaltation of passion, and Schiller substituted violencia for reality. (I still like Goethe btw)

>>19385041
Then Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shelley, Rossetti, Yeats, Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Borges, Stevens and Beckett sucks, because they all copy him, these are twelve different Dante's.

>>19385048
He don't have ideas either.

>>19384921
>Nietzschean's want to compare Nietzsche to the brilliance of Plato and Aristotle.
No they don't.

>>19384946
FPBP
>>19384921
Shakespeare is literally a Rosicrucian

>>19384921
>>19385367
You have really bad opinions

>>19384921
From what I've seen of Nietzsche he seems more like a cultural critic and complex self-help guru than a philosopher, is this a valid presumption?

>>19385367
>Herder, Pushkin, Hugo and Voltaire sucks, and Goethe tragedies aren't that good either because he falls away from characterization into an exaltation of passion, and Schiller substituted violencia for reality.
Good bait thread, almost had me.

>>19384921
>dante
>not serving a political agenda that was imperialist at the time

idiot

>>19385491
But Dante was serving THE Empire

>>19385491
>>19385572
Dante's political philosophy:
>dude what if Henry VII conquered italy lmao. deep.

>Why there are still literary critics who try compare him with Dante or Cervantes?.
The problem seems to be that you're an ESL monkey

>>19385367
>Borges

Borges considered Shakespeare to be the GOAT. You use him as an example of someone good while claiming you know better than him?

>>19384921
>I just finished King Lear and have never been so disappointed in my life.
WATCH AKIRA KUROSAWA'S RAN INSTEAD.

Lear is an underworked play. The genderflip, fox demon, and Kurosawa's fool make Lear into what it should have been: RAN.

>>19384921
Anglos overly study him, and the anglos influenced the world. There you are. He isn't a bad writer at all, he's rightfully a pillar of /lit/erature but the british influence on the world surely overrated his performance.

>>19386184
As I pointed out >>19385020 it's because of German influence that Shakespeare is so highly rated. Nothing to do with linguistic imperialism (unless you think Herder was anglobrained).

>>19384921
>seething Pedro
You’re retarded, or celebrate cinco de mayo if you think that Cervantes is above Shakespeare. It’s ok. You’re not the first to get filtered by the bard.

>>19384921
You are correct, of course.
With that being said, your criticisms are nonsense, because you are looking for non-literary things in literature. A writer doesn't need a "political theory". Sheer nonsense. Are you a Maestro fan? Because you sound like one.
Shakespeare is overrated because, even though he had a very fine ear for music and a great metaphorical genius as well as that famous vocabulary, his work is very often filled with commonplace ideas and expressions from the Renaissance poetry lexicon which emanates from Petrarch. It's bombastic, overly rhetorical, and very often too predictable. Shakespeare is superior to Petrarch, but he's still too often stuck in that artificial language, much like Tasso, Ariosto, Camões, Ronsard, Garcilaso etc. At least he didn't rhyme nearly as much.
He knew how to create a rich literary character, and this was perhaps his greatest gift, but he was unfortunate to be working within an inferior medium, while Cervantes was inventing and even subverting the ideal medium for character exploration. There's no Shakespeare character that compares with the great characters in the history of the novel, even though people will claim there are, but this is simply because Shakespeare's people have been analyzed to death, so we hear more about Lady Macbeth than we hear about Karenin or Molly Bloom, though the verbal structures which constitute the literary characters of Molly and Karenin are more varied and complex. There are many examples of how the novel is better suited for this, but let's take just one. Perspective. From which perspective do we get a character? Shakespeare is nearly all dialogue, so we see the characters either from their own words or from the words other characters say about them. Meanwhile, a novel mixes dialogue, monologue, and third-person presentations, which enables the author to place a new perspective on the character, not to mention such things as framing (which Cervantes does) to add uncertainty, and many more techniques which Shakespeare simply didn't have, nor invent, though he could do some interesting things such as, possibly, authorial self-insertion (at the end of the Tempest, for instance), which Cervantes however also does, and much more ingeniously.

He's not the best English language writer either, I would argue. Chaucer seems to me a better craftsman, whose writing is free from all those worn-out Renaissance jewels, and Joyce had greater virtuosity and verbal creativity than both. Among Shakespeare's contemporaries, I believe John Donne was at least as good.
Shakespeare is still great, greater than even Swift, Melville and others, but he is indeed overrated, specially if you look at the way Harold Bloom talked about him.

>>19386195
>Nothing to do with linguistic imperialism
Literature depends on politics retard. There is a reason the best poets are from the West and not some third world shithole in Africa.

I love the boy

>>19386082
>Borges considered Shakespeare to be the GOAT.
No, he considered Dante the GOAT. It's in his friend's diary.

>>19386238
Sorry, the idea that Shakespeare is "filled with commonplaces from Petrarch" is just idiotic. Shakespeare is the most strikingly original poet of his era. If you want Petrarchism in English poetry compare him to Spenser and Sidney (great poets in their own right) and you'll see it's like night and day in terms of conventionality. Even apart from having the most brilliantly fertile brain that could coin new images and words almost at will, if anything Shakespeare's storehouse of expressions and ideas was more often taken from English proverbs, the legal profession, popular religion, the wits of the tavern...The most obvious borrowings from Petrarchan language in Shakespeare is introduced to undermine, refute and mock it (e.g. As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, some of the sonnets), as Shakespeare does with other common Renaissance tropes like Humanist orations on the dignity of man (twisted to become brutally nihilistic in Hamlet's 'What a piece of work is man') or political Utopias and idealistic tracts about the Noble Savages of the Americas (ironised as naive and subtly tyrannical in the response to Gonzalo's speech in The Tempest). Hang him for being rhetorical but not for being rhetorically predictable.

I also don't think anyone who has an ear for poetry could seriously believe Chaucer to be a better craftsman than Shakespeare. I love Chaucer, he's one of my favourite poets, but his verse is very regular and there is a pretty decent amount of filler (as in, word padding for metre) in his poetry to fit form to narrative. One of the miracles of Shakespeare is that there is virtually none of that in his blank verse: he is always on, all the time, always saying something interesting, always has the object in view, always giving his lines the utmost meaning, sometimes distorting them to incomprehensibility in packing more sense into a moment than the syntax can bear. Shakespeare's texture is literally what Keats was thinking of (as he was trying to emulate) when he exhorted Shelley to "load every rift’ of your subject with ore." As for Donne, he is extremely clever, possibly the GOAT at coming up with arresting conceits (though e.g. Richard II's soliloquy springs to mind here) and not much else to make him superior.

Re: Joyce, Cervantes, characters in novels vs drama, desu it just seems like you have a personal preference for prose over poetry. Which is fine, but I don't think fair for an objective rating of a poet. And I don't agree with the artificial divorcing of Shakespearean soliloquy (or other verbalising) from interiority. But this post is already getting too long.

>>19384921
>Shakespeare is practically the Nietzsche of literature; it has no theology, it has no metaphysics, it has no religion, it has no ideology, it has no political theory, it has no ethics or any morals

You obviously don't understand him. What is the purpose of madness and the fool in Shakespeare's work? And by the fool I do not mean the clown, which you bloody are, and are you able to provide a distinction? To say you read both and saw no metaphysics or religion makes you as blind as the Earl of Gloucester.

Can't believe (well, sadly I can) that someone would so blatantly misunderstand an author and just jump at the idea that the whole world is wrong rather than themselves. You can have chad as your discord pfp and think yourself above those who like him but really you are a retard who is beneath those that understand him.

And no political agenda? *Sigh* Right.

Read: The Tempest, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Taming of the Shrew, Henry V, Titus Andronicus, R+J, Midsummer Night's Dream + any 3 others that take your fancy, then read the sonnets in conjunction with an understanding of the young man/ dark lady narrative which asks as a narrative undercurrent of the works, then reread Lear and Hamlet.

OP and anyone who agrees with him has been filtered. Read more.

Many anons think he is overrated, but this is due mostly to the fact that they read only 2 or 3 of his works, and to really see just how imense Shakespeare's achievement is one needs to look at the entire journey of his development.

For that reason I would like to use this thread to quote several different passages that wtiness to what I consider his most impressive quality: the poetic language of his dramas

Above all other things Shakespeare he was a poet. And there's no other poet as far as I know that comes even near his greatness.

Name me another writer who can write so beautifully in so many different styles, on so many themes, nesting inside so many different brains.

And please, let me know if any other poet has the same number of striking metaphors, at the same time fresh and beautiful, the kind of imagery that one never forgets.

About love, in the exaggerated and melancholy style of Renaissance poets (look for something in Petrarch that is more inventive than this):

For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.

An existential and Dantesque meditation on death and the hereafter:

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

A meditation of complete darkness and devoid of any remnants of Christian hope or any religious support:

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 is 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..

>>19387261

A poem similar to Job's first speech "perish the day I was born / And the night that said: a boy was conceived", but which is even more grand in his poetry than Job:

Lear. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulph'rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world,
Crack Nature's moulds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man!
(...)
Lear. Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this! O! O! 'tis foul!

A description of the fairy-world:

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.

A description of the horror of the brothels at the time:

Neither of these are so bad as thou art,
Since they do better thee in their command.
Thou hold'st a place, for which the pained'st fiend
Of hell would not in reputation change:
Thou art the damned doorkeeper to every
Coistrel that comes inquiring for his Tib [Tib is a nickname for slut-girls];
To the choleric fisting of every rogue
Thy ear is liable; thy food is such
As hath been belch'd on by infected lungs.

>>19387266

A Sunrise:

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

The passage of time:

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

On war, peace, ambition, all in few lines:

Now for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty
Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest
And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace.

On war:

VIRGILIA
His bloody brow! O Jupiter, no blood!
VOLUMNIA
Away, you fool! it more becomes a man
Than gilt his trophy: the breasts of Hecuba,
When she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier
Than Hector's forehead when it spit forth blood
At Grecian sword, contemning. Tell Valeria,
We are fit to bid her welcome.

Description of a great warrior:

He is their god: he leads them like a thing
Made by some other deity than nature,
That shapes man better; and they follow him,
Against us brats, with no less confidence
Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,
Or butchers killing flies.
(...)
There is differency between a grub and a butterfly; yet your butterfly was a grub. This Coriolanus is grown from man to dragon: he has wings; he's more than a creeping thing.

>>19387268

A lover complaining of how irritating his beloved is:

O, she misused me past the endurance of a block!
an oak but with one green leaf on it would have
answered her; my very visor began to assume life and
scold with her. She told me, not thinking I had been
myself, that I was the prince's jester, that I was
duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest
with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood
like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at
me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs:
if her breath were as terrible as her terminations,
there were no living near her; she would infect to
the north star. I would not marry her, though she
were endowed with all that Adam bad left him before
he transgressed: she would have made Hercules have
turned spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make
the fire too. Come, talk not of her: you shall find
her the infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God
some scholar would conjure her; for certainly, while
she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a
sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose, because they
would go thither; so, indeed, all disquiet, horror
and perturbation follows her.

>>19387273

Women talking about men and to cheat or not:

DESDEMONA
I have heard it said so. O, these men, these men!
Dost thou in conscience think,--tell me, Emilia,--
That there be women do abuse their husbands
In such gross kind?
EMILIA
There be some such, no question.
DESDEMONA
Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?
EMILIA
Why, would not you?
DESDEMONA
No, by this heavenly light!
EMILIA
Nor I neither by this heavenly light;
I might do't as well i' the dark.
DESDEMONA
Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?
EMILIA
The world's a huge thing: it is a great price.
For a small vice.
DESDEMONA
In troth, I think thou wouldst not.
EMILIA
In troth, I think I should; and undo't when I had
done. Marry, I would not do such a thing for a
joint-ring, nor for measures of lawn, nor for
gowns, petticoats, nor caps, nor any petty
exhibition; but for the whole world,--why, who would
not make her husband a cuckold to make him a
monarch? I should venture purgatory for't.
DESDEMONA
Beshrew me, if I would do such a wrong
For the whole world.
EMILIA
Why the wrong is but a wrong i' the world: and
having the world for your labour, tis a wrong in your
own world, and you might quickly make it right.
DESDEMONA
I do not think there is any such woman.
EMILIA
Yes, a dozen; and as many to the vantage as would
store the world they played for.
But I do think it is their husbands' faults
If wives do fall: say that they slack their duties,
And pour our treasures into foreign laps,
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant our former having in despite;
Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is: and doth affection breed it?
I think it doth: is't frailty that thus errs?
It is so too: and have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.

>>19384921
"Shakespeare" was a Jewish woman from Venice, proving to us once again that Italia is the father of all Western arts.

>>19387276

Description of a storm on the sea:

MONTANO
What from the cape can you discern at sea?
First Gentleman
Nothing at all: it is a highwrought flood;
I cannot, 'twixt the heaven and the main,
Descry a sail.
MONTANO
Methinks the wind hath spoke aloud at land;
A fuller blast ne'er shook our battlements:
If it hath ruffian'd so upon the sea,
What ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them,
Can hold the mortise? What shall we hear of this?
Second Gentleman
A segregation of the Turkish fleet:
For do but stand upon the foaming shore,
The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds;
The wind-shaked surge, with high and monstrous mane,
seems to cast water on the burning bear,
And quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole:
I never did like molestation view
On the enchafed flood.

Or this, on the same theme:

Clown: Hilloa, loa!

Shepherd:What, art so near? If thou'lt see a thing to talk
on when thou art dead and rotten, come hither. What
ailest thou, man?

Clown:I have seen two such sights, by sea and by land!
but I am not to say it is a sea, for it is now the
sky: betwixt the firmament and it you cannot thrust
a bodkin's point.

Shepherd:Why, boy, how is it?

Clown:I would you did but see how it chafes, how it rages,
how it takes up the shore! but that's not the
point. O, the most piteous cry of the poor souls!
sometimes to see 'em, and not to see 'em; now the
ship boring the moon with her main-mast, and anon
swallowed with yest and froth, as you'ld thrust a
cork into a hogshead. And then for the
land-service, to see how the bear tore out his
shoulder-bone; how he cried to me for help and said
his name was Antigonus, a nobleman. But to make an
end of the ship, to see how the sea flap-dragoned
it: but, first, how the poor souls roared, and the
sea mocked them; and how the poor gentleman roared
and the bear mocked him, both roaring louder than
the sea or weather.

>>19387282

A meditation on the destruction of Earth and civilization:

Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not Nature's hand
Keep the wild flood confin'd! Let order die!
And let this world no longer be a stage
To feed contention in a ling'ring act;
But let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end
And darkness be the burier of the dead!

A warrior lamenting the need to act like a politician:

CORIOLANUS
Well, I must do't:
Away, my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot's spirit! my throat of war be turn'd,
Which quired with my drum, into a pipe
Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice
That babies lulls asleep! the smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up
The glasses of my sight! a beggar's tongue
Make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees,
Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his
That hath received an alms! I will not do't,
Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth
And by my body's action teach my mind
A most inherent baseness.

A cosmic description of a loved one:

CLEOPATRA
I dream'd there was an Emperor Antony:
O, such another sleep, that I might see
But such another man!
DOLABELLA
If it might please ye,--
CLEOPATRA
His face was as the heavens; and therein stuck
A sun and moon, which kept their course,
and lighted
The little O, the earth.
DOLABELLA
Most sovereign creature,--
CLEOPATRA
His legs bestrid the ocean: his rear'd arm
Crested the world: his voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas
That grew the more by reaping: his delights
Were dolphin-like; they show'd his back above
The element they lived in: in his livery
Walk'd crowns and crownets; realms and islands were
As plates dropp'd from his pocket.

>>19387285

>About grumpy women:


Why came I hither but to that intent?
Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puff'd up with winds,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in a pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets' clang?
And do you tell me of a woman's tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to hear
As will a chestnut in a farmer's fire?
Tush! tush! fear boys with bugs.

>On the rotting of a civilization:

Antony. Cold-hearted toward me?2445
Cleopatra. Ah, dear, if I be so,
From my cold heart let heaven engender hail,
And poison it in the source; and the first stone
Drop in my neck: as it determines, so
Dissolve my life! The next Caesarion smite!2450
Till by degrees the memory of my womb,
Together with my brave Egyptians all,
By the discandying of this pelleted storm,
Lie graveless, till the flies and gnats of Nile
Have buried them for prey!

>Have any chefs been praised so well?

But his neat cookery! he cut our roots
In characters,
And sauced our broths, as Juno had been sick
And he her dieter.

>On civil war:

A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

>>19387291

>On time, the great lord of oblivion:

When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing

>A small and perfect pearl of a poem about the night:

Now the hungry lion roars,
And the wolf behowls the moon;
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,
All with weary task fordone.
Now the wasted brands do glow,
Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe
In remembrance of a shroud.
Now it is the time of night
That the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide:
And we fairies, that do run
By the triple Hecate's team,
From the presence of the sun,
Following darkness like a dream,
Now are frolic: not a mouse
Shall disturb this hallow'd house:
I am sent with broom before,
To sweep the dust behind the door.

>On demonic possession:

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'

>Love poetry in the vein of Petrarch:

But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd:
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockl'd snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste:
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair:
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

>>19387294

>A proud and pleb-disdaining warrior suffering because he is being forced to flatter the poor for votes:

Coriolanus. Well, I must do't:
Away, my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot's spirit! my throat of war be turn'd,2300
Which quired with my drum, into a pipe
Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice
That babies lulls asleep! the smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up
The glasses of my sight! a beggar's tongue2305
Make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees,
Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his
That hath received an alms! I will not do't,
Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth
And by my body's action teach my mind2310
A most inherent baseness.

>The dangers of being able to see the future:

O God, that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea! and other times to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book and sit him down and die.

>A realistic and anti-romantic view on love:

No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is almost six thousand years
old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person,
videlicet, in a love cause. Troilus had his brains dash’d out with a
Grecian club; yet he did what he could to die before, and he is one of
the patterns of love. Leander, he would have liv’d many a fair year
though Hero had turn’d nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer
night; for (good youth) he went but forth to wash him in the
Hellespont, and being taken with the cramp, was drown’d; and the
foolish chroniclers of that age found it was “Hero of Sestos.” But
these are all lies. Men have died from time to time, and worms have
eaten them, but not for love.

>>19387333

>The Underground Man before the Underground Man. Some lines by Thersites in Troilus and Cressida:

>I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had the scratching of thee; I would make thee the loathsomest scab in Greece. When thou art forth in the incursions, thou strikest as slow as another.

-

Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! his evasions have ears thus long. I have bobbed his brain more than he has beat my bones: I will buy nine sparrows for a penny, and his pia mater is not worth the nineth part of a sparrow. This lord, Achilles, Ajax, who wears his wit in his belly and his guts in his head, I'll tell you what I say of him.

-

How now, Thersites! what lost in the labyrinth of thy fury! Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus? He beats me, and I rail at him: O, worthy satisfaction! would it were otherwise; that I could beat him, whilst he railed at me. 'Sfoot, I'll learn to conjure and raise devils, but I'll see some issue of my spiteful execrations. Then there's Achilles, a rare enginer! If Troy be not taken till these two undermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus, forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods and, Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus, if ye take not that little, little less than little wit from them that they have! which short-armed ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce, it will not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider, without drawing their massy irons and
cutting the web. After this, the vengeance on the whole camp! or rather, the bone-ache! for that, methinks, is the curse dependent on those that war for a placket. I have said my prayers and devil Envy say Amen. What ho! my Lord Achilles!

-

Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would
croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode.
Patroclus will give me any thing for the
intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not
do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion: a burning devil take them!

>>19384921
>>19384921
You, egg!

what did /lit/ think of this movie, was the eal of oxford, the real shakespeare?

>>19388664
Billy wrote the plays himself.
Christopher Marlowe did fake his death, but he didn't write Shakespeare's plays.

>>19388694
what about edward de vere?

>>19388664

The photography, the make-up, the reconstruction of London's atmosphere, it's all been done very well.

However the rest of the movie is terrible. There's a scene where other playwrights are stunned by the fact that someone can write an entire play in iambic pentameter, when in fact that meter was the rule at the time.

There's also a moment when Ben Jonson says to Oxford/Shakespeare, "Sir, your voice is very different from mine" when Oxford/Shakespeare says, "Voice? You don't have a voice. That's why I chose you." This makes no sense at all, as Jonson was one of the most idiosyncratic playwrights of the time, with a highly personal style.

The chronology of the works is presented absurdly: Shakespeare/Oxford has all the plays ready, so in a matter of months we see the Globe enacting plays that took years to reach the stage, at different times.

Not to mention that a large portion of the writers of the time were men of humble origins, but trained in oratorical, rhetoric, Latin, etc., at the Grammar Schools, so that the obligation to shoot a nobleman in the back was "the necessary learning" to write Shakespeare's work is something stupid.

>>19388715
>There's also a moment when Ben Jonson says to Oxford/Shakespeare, "Sir, your voice is very different from mine" when Oxford/Shakespeare says, "Voice? You don't have a voice. That's why I chose you." This makes no sense at all, as Jonson was one of the most idiosyncratic playwrights of the time, with a highly personal style.

i see your point, but the Ben Johnson character was a young lad in the movie so he was basically starting out as a playwrighter, unless he was already acclaimed in his early 20s in real life

>>19385020
>>19386195
t. Tolstoy

>>19384921
His reputation waned during the 18th century and was revived with the Romantics in England. However it took until the Modernists to exploit his and his peers' style in verse. English verse is actually far more influenced by Milton until the modernist period. Instead, Shakespeare's influence is much heavier on the great English and American novelists, from Bunyan to, I don't know, let's stay 4chan and say Bret Easton Ellis, whether it is a primary influence or secondhand.

As for your complaint about him lacking any "ideology," I take it you do not consider Socrates to be a good thinker?

And even that is besides my point. Shakespeare does a lot more showing than telling and you won't get his politics, ethics, etc. from a mere surface reading of his texts. You often have to tease it out through dialogue and context of the dialogue within the play. See the following: https://www.city-journal.org/shakespeares-richards-contrasts-political-pathologies?wallit_nosession=1

Something that always confounds foreign readers of English and American writers is the lack of overarching ideas. Much of this has to do with the Anglo-Saxon temperament. We are more interested in observing and describing what we see in plain words rather than trying to fit what we see into categories and theoretical frameworks. We are basically anti-Thomists and is an inheritance of the Protestant Reformation, for better or worse.

>>19386638
This post is the only good one in the thread. Thank you, anon.

>>19386638
>I also don't think anyone who has an ear for poetry could seriously believe Chaucer to be a better craftsman than Shakespeare. I love Chaucer, he's one of my favourite poets, but his verse is very regular and there is a pretty decent amount of filler (as in, word padding for metre) in his poetry to fit form to narrative. One of the miracles of Shakespeare is that there is virtually none of that in his blank verse: he is always on, all the time, always saying something interesting, always has the object in view, always giving his lines the utmost meaning, sometimes distorting them to incomprehensibility in packing more sense into a moment than the syntax can bear. Shakespeare's texture is literally what Keats was thinking of (as he was trying to emulate) when he exhorted Shelley to "load every rift’ of your subject with ore."

This is the first time I've seen anyone here (or even anywhere) say this about Shakespeare, something that has always been obvious to me but that, for some reason, no one seems to notice.

You are a very good reader.

This:


>Even apart from having the most brilliantly fertile brain that could coin new images and words almost at will

Is also spot on

>>19384921
>shakespear has no theology, ideology, ethics, or morals
Anyone who bit this bait gets a certified midwit award

>>19389294
>His reputation waned during the 18th century and was revived with the Romantics in England. However it took until the Modernists to exploit his and his peers' style in verse. English verse is actually far more influenced by Milton until the modernist period. Instead, Shakespeare's influence is much heavier on the great English and American novelists, from Bunyan to, I don't know, let's stay 4chan and say Bret Easton Ellis, whether it is a primary influence or secondhand.

so Shakespeare writing was ahead of its time? or was he acclaimed just because the modernists wanted to copy him?

>>19389454
I don't think anon is correct. Shakespeare's reputation went something like this:

Generally acclaimed as the greatest author in English (and an equal to the ancients) during his lifetime and the generation after his death: Jonson, Milton, Frances Meres all praise him to the skies as head and shoulders above everyone else.
Puritans close the theatres at the start of the civil war in 1642 and Shakespeare goes into hibernation, although of course still a profound influence on Milton during this period.
After the Restoration in 1660 his plays are staged again and he becomes one of the most popular authors, but usually cut to pieces and bowlderised to answer for polite taste and political sensitivities.
In the early 18th century Shakespeare becomes the most popular and supreme English playwright with favourable criticism by Pope, Addison and others, while still considered rough and imperfect in certain aspects.
Reputation steadily grows over the 18th century with better editions of his plays produced. Introduced to the continent where there's a growing awareness of English culture and society as a model of modernity and antipode to France.
Late 18th century German proto-Romantics like Herder, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller promote Shakespeare as the GOAT and use him as the prophet of nature to demolish French classical rules that had a deadening effect on German culture at the time.
This gets filtered back to England through Coleridge to the English Romantics and critics like Hazlitt around the turn of the 1800s, who establish the cult of Shakespeare back here. Drama and the novel becomes increasingly important relative to epic and lyric poetry also.
Rest of the 19th century: Bardolatry
20th century: 'classic' authors in general decrease in reputation due to the traumas of traditional European culture in the World Wars, but I think but Shakespeare suffers from this much less than others thanks to his multisidedness.
21st century: pomo Shakespeare adept at being recombined in countless ways. Read less and less as literature declines in society but one of the very few authors still to retain a presence in public memory.

>>19389369
Thanks. The merits of Shakespeare are very obvious as I said if you also read his contemporaries, the other Elizabethan poets closely. People often think Shakespeare is difficult because he's just writing in 400 year old English, which is not in fact the case: Spenser's Faerie Queene uses deliberately archaicising language taken from Chaucer and Malory, but in my experience he's FAR easier to read because Shakespeare's syntax is so fucking weird and difficult to parse from constantly punning and referencing three things at once.

cont. >>19386675
>And no political agenda? *Sigh* Right.
And yes, this is one of the stupidest things one could possibly say about Shakespeare. I'll just let pic related >>19389754 speak form me on this point, concerning not even one of his most esteemed plays:

>Shakespeare has in this play shown himself well versed in history and state-affairs. Coriolanus is a store-house of political commonplaces. Any one who studies it may save himself the trouble of reading Burke's Reflections, or Paine's Rights of Man, or the Debates in both Houses of Parliament since the French Revolution or our own. The arguments for and against aristocracy or democracy, on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably handled with the spirit of a poet and the acuteness of a philosopher.

>>19385426
>is this a valid presumption
No.

>>19384921
I did not ready or any of those authors this but I am forced to agree

>>19384921
I like the questioning of the canon in general, I'll give it a try though. Reminds me of the scene where The Cosmopolitan and Charlie basically equate questioning Shakespeare to heresy.

I think this
>Shakespeare is practically the Nietzsche of literature; it has no theology, it has no metaphysics, it has no religion, it has no ideology, it has no political theory, it has no ethics or any morals; and like Nietzsche his followers want to compare him to the brilliant minds of Plato and Aristotle, when Shakespeare is a boring mockery that Cervantes turned into a retarded horseback and Dante burned him in the last circle of hell.

aside from the Nietzsche throw in basically is why he is so great, although it's not 'has no morals,' but 'what are his morals?' Shakespeare plants unfathomable seeds into your soul, while also being fun to read. I read Antony and Cleopatra, and Timon of Athens both in the same day recently, and the endings are devastating.

>Lear
the best parts of Lear are the delicacy of the four outcasts finding meaning and pursuit in the world. Also, Edmund is a great character. Lear was a more moralistic, hopeful work from what I remember about finality and peace.

As for
>Nietzsche
The best parts of Nietzsche are just him re-stating Goethe, Schopenhauer, Machiavelli and so-forth, with the mad-man angle, and let's be honest Clarel completely obliterates anything he tried to do with Zarathustra. I guess Shakespeare owes a lot of Ovid, Spenser, and Sidney, but his style is distinct and enjoyable enough, with enough insight for me to find value in it. I also think Conrad addresses the same issues much better than Nietzsche ever could in his novels.

>Cervantes
'failed poet, who is best known for a book he didn't plan on finishing and considers inferior to his basically unread final work,' if I were to be a prick. I try not to read translated works, so never have read Cervantes. Can you really say you 'know' Cervantes enough to say he's the best though. Same with Dante, Plato, Aristotle all are in translation unless you know Ancient Greek, Italian, and Spanish, and if-so hats-off to you.

>>19385367
>Joyce
>Pound
>Beckett
>Yeats
>Borges
>Wallace Stevens
Yes, most of them I'd consider unreadable in all honesty, especially Pound.

>>19387261
>Many anons think he is overrated, but this is due mostly to the fact that they read only 2 or 3 of his works, and to really see just how imense Shakespeare's achievement is one needs to look at the entire journey of his development.
this too

>>19386238
How are Tasso and Ariosto artificial?

>>19385041
you were born to climb to your bliss

>>19386238
>all this nonsense
>turns out to be a Joycefag
kek, figures.

>>19386638
>>19387261
>>19387266
>>19387268
>>19387273
>>19387276
>>19387282
>>19387285
>>19387291
>>19387294
>>19387333
>>19387372
Anon this was amazing thank you. I'd add on the destruction of civilizations that the one from Hamlet (the one about Rome) is better tho

>>19384921
>it has no theology, it has no metaphysics, it has no religion, it has no ideology, it has no political theory, it has no ethics or any morals

Read Tony Tanner's intro to Everyman's first volume of tragedies and then read King Lear again nigger

>>19385041
u r an niger

>>19389880
>Yes, most of them I'd consider unreadable in all honesty, especially Pound.
How so? I'm not an English student and I can still read most of the people on that list pretty well. I read most of the Cantos with a guide, it took me a few months but it was great. Nothing from Yeats is super hard--he's pretty regressive compared to his contemporaries--but he's still got great poetry.

>>19388664
Part of a conspiracy so Tariq NaSneed can use it as an indisputable academic source to prove new scholarship proves Shakespeare was black.
>hE a MoOr tHo! MoOrs wAs BlaCk

>>19387261
>>19387266
>>19387268
>>19387273
>>19387276
>>19387282
>>19387285
>>19387291
>>19387294
>>19387333
>>19387372
Some great passages anon, thanks for sharing. Let me post a couple of my own:

DUKE SENIOR
Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored.

FIRST LORD
Indeed, my lord,
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.
To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him as he lay along
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish, and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting, and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

DUKE SENIOR
But what said Jaques?
Did he not moralize this spectacle?

FIRST LORD
O, yes, into a thousand similes.
First, for his weeping into the needless stream;
"Poor deer," quoth he, "thou makest a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much:" then, being there alone,
Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends,
"'Tis right:" quoth he; "thus misery doth part
The flux of company:" anon a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him
And never stays to greet him; "Ay" quoth Jaques,
"Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;
'Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?"
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants and what's worse,
To fright the animals and to kill them up
In their assign'd and native dwelling-place.

DUKE SENIOR
And did you leave him in this contemplation?

SECOND LORD
We did, my lord, weeping and commenting
Upon the sobbing deer.

Is there a more vivid argument for animal rights anywhere else in literature? And this is from the 16th century...

>>19390028
I meant I think they're bad.

>cantos with a guide
You shouldn't need a guide to be able to read a book.

>Yeats
I don't like him

>>19390030
moor was just a codeword for nafris

>>19390034
Ill throw on one of my own personal favorites:

A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun, and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of feared events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.

>>19384921
>Can any fan of Shakespeare explain to me what is so special about him?.
I've been wondering this about him myself. People often answer with "his themes are timeless" or "his characters go through the gauntlet of emotions" but they never explain why that is or how that makes him the all time greatest. It is not as if he is the first recorded writer to create complex characters or themes. Epic of Gilgamesh deals with death; The Iliad is about the hell of war. Does a character like Lear really have more layers than Priam?
Or is it the poetry itself that exceeds Homer, Alighieri, Milton, Pope, and Poe?
If I were to come up with an answer, it would be that a plays like Romeo and Juliet has defined the romance genre just as Hamlet defined tragedy; but this is a half-assed guess.

>>19390034
[Thunder and lightning]

CASSIUS
Who's there?

CASCA
A Roman.

CASSIUS
Casca, by your voice.

CASCA
Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this!

CASSIUS
A very pleasing night to honest men.

CASCA
Who ever knew the heavens menace so?

CASSIUS
Those that have known the earth so full of faults.
For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,
Submitting me unto the perilous night,
And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,
Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone;
And when the cross blue lightning seem'd to open
The breast of heaven, I did present myself
Even in the aim and very flash of it.

CASCA
But wherefore did you so much tempt the heavens?
It is the part of men to fear and tremble,
When the most mighty gods by tokens send
Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.

CASSIUS
You are dull, Casca, and those sparks of life
That should be in a Roman you do want,
Or else you use not. You look pale and gaze
And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder,
To see the strange impatience of the heavens:
But if you would consider the true cause
Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,
Why birds and beasts from quality and kind,
Why old men fool and children calculate,
Why all these things change from their ordinance
Their natures and preformed faculties
To monstrous quality,--why, you shall find
That heaven hath infused them with these spirits,
To make them instruments of fear and warning
Unto some monstrous state.
Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man
Most like this dreadful night,
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
As doth the lion in the Capitol,
A man no mightier than thyself or me
In personal action, yet prodigious grown
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.

CASCA
'Tis Caesar that you mean; is it not, Cassius?

CASSIUS
Let it be who it is: for Romans now
Have thews and limbs like to their ancestors;
But, woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead,
And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits;
Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.

CASCA
Indeed, they say the senators tomorrow
Mean to establish Caesar as a king;
And he shall wear his crown by sea and land,
In every place, save here in Italy.

CASSIUS
I know where I will wear this dagger then;
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius:
Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat:
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
If I know this, know all the world besides,
That part of tyranny that I do bear
I can shake off at pleasure.

>>19384921
>it has no theology, it has no metaphysics, it has no religion, it has no ideology, it has no political theory, it has no ethics or any morals
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

>>19390068
[Thunder still]

CASCA
So can I:
So every bondman in his own hand bears
The power to cancel his captivity.

CASSIUS
And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?
Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf,
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep:
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will make a mighty fire
Begin it with weak straws: what trash is Rome,
What rubbish and what offal, when it serves
For the base matter to illuminate
So vile a thing as Caesar! But, O grief,
Where hast thou led me? I perhaps speak this
Before a willing bondman; then I know
My answer must be made. But I am arm'd,
And dangers are to me indifferent.

Is there a more vivid portrayal of political bravery and ambition, Roman courage?

>>19390055
Read the above anons lengthy posts, look at 1. from a technical level his poetry is almost peerless. 2. the absolute breadth of his writing ability. 3. the natural way he show cases human emotion and growth.

I suppose this is really shallow, but there's a reason why the Modernist movement is basically built on him and Dante.

>>19390055
first 2 are poets in translation
Paradise Lost is more inaccesible than anything Shakespeare is remembered for. Yes, some Shakespeare plays are dense.
I don't like Pope.
Poe never wrote an epic or a verse drama, he wrote small poems, aside from his prose-poem Eureka which most people hate. Small poems like The Raven or Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner or nice, but poets make their money from collections/folios, plays, or epics. Coleridge's complete works is sparse, and Poe's complete works are mostly undershadowed by his short stories.

>>19389454
Neither. He was just a genius and genius doesn't always spawn schools. Shakespeare certainly influenced other poets, but it was often through a Miltonic filter. Instead, novelists felt his influence more directly than poets just because novels are basically plays with the ability to have more descriptive, psychological elements. This especially begins with Jane Austen.

>>19389754
I regret using the word "reputation" as opposed to influence in my original post. However Milton did have a much bigger influence than Shakespeare in verse until Modernism which was a sort of Renaissance in English verse, where poets became conscience of Milton's influence and decided to go back to Shakespeare, his peers, Chaucer, and the Anglo-Saxons. Aside from this mere quibbling of mine in words, you're spot on about the reputation of Shakespeare through the centuries. I appreciate your post because it seems very few posters on here actually appreciate Shakespeare, especially with the relatively recent influx of foreigners on /lit/ who have a chip on their shoulder about the Bard.

(My opinion on Shakespeare vs. Milton in influencing verse is basically derived from F. R. Leavis and Cardinal Newman.)

Just purchased (pic). Never read Bloom before (except for the intro of The Western Canon, which I found to be based as fuck). Seems like it's going to be a fun/light read that will increase my ability to appreciate Shakespeare. I get Bloom can be fairly pretentious but as far as being an accessible critic who can offer some light reading and share his passion for lit--I don't get why this board seems to hate him so much.

>>19385367
Bro what the fuck lol. Just walk the opinion back instead of doubling down this ridiculously

>>19390096
>However Milton did have a much bigger influence than Shakespeare in verse until Modernism
I definitely agree with this. Perhaps Spenser was more influential in the 18th and 19th centuries as well. The problem with Shakespeare's influence is that he has always been too sui generis for poets to imitate successfully, and there was less attention paid to his metrical subtlety until the modernists broke form (and then went too far).

>>19390106
>I don't get why this board seems to hate him so much.
Because he's an idiot, and is just a retarded reactionary critic who really has nothing interesting to say. Go read Eliot and Pound's literary analysis (although you wont find anything about Shakespeare from Pound that's overwhelmingly positive).

>>19390106
*sigh* to be young again.

Well, go ahead and read it, but eventually you will learn you're better off reading criticism of the individual plays than any book that proposes some big theory about Shakespeare. A lot of sound and fury and all that.

>>19390133
I also agree. Milton ruined the english language for 200 years.

>>19384946
Fpbp

>>19390076
FLORIZEL
What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet.
I'ld have you do it ever: when you sing,
I'ld have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so,
And own no other function: each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,
That all your acts are queens.

One of the most beautiful expressions of attraction to a woman

KING RICHARD II
Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom,
Which I with some unwillingness pronounce:
The sly slow hours shall not determinate
The dateless limit of thy dear exile;
The hopeless word of 'never to return'
Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.

THOMAS MOWBRAY
A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,
And all unlook'd for from your highness' mouth:
A dearer merit, not so deep a maim
As to be cast forth in the common air,
Have I deserved at your highness' hands.
The language I have learn'd these forty years,
My native English, now I must forego:
And now my tongue's use is to me no more
Than an unstringed viol or a harp,
Or like a cunning instrument cased up,
Or, being open, put into his hands
That knows no touch to tune the harmony:
Within my mouth you have engaol'd my tongue,
Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips;
And dull unfeeling barren ignorance
Is made my gaoler to attend on me.
I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,
Too far in years to be a pupil now:
What is thy sentence then but speechless death,
Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?

And this metaphorically strange yet utterly touching speech about exile

>>19390106
I've never read much by Bloom that isn't bombast and ill-supported generalities.
If you want light reading on Shakespeare then just read William Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespeare's Plays and his Lectures on the English Poets.

>>19390152
>Milton ruined the english language for 200 years.
>Pound spawned Bukowski

Been forgetting my trip.

>>19390133
Whenever Spenser's name is brought up I always recommend this site: http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/

Spenser is definitely for the discerning patrician of English letters. The argument for Milton is usually based on his crisp and even prosody. I believe Newman says Pope played a strong hand in tempering the Miltonic style further.

>>19390137
Pound definitely preferred Chaucer.

>>19390137
I've read Frye. Bloom is light reading.
>>19390142
>*sigh* I'm a pseud
I own a few from Bullough's "Narrative and dramatic sources of Shakespeare" series. They're pretty dry. You know dunking on something meant to be accessible to the broad public doesn't make you seem smart to anyone who matters--right?

>>19390106
I get it now. They're pseuds unironically going after an easy target.

>>19390106
He's an example of how reading too much can make you stupid. Should have written a book or something. He's a boring docile man, who gives a shit what he likes.

>>19390152
Uh no *he* didn't, lazy classicising poets after him who only wrote in closed couplets and only paid attention to assonance did. A similar crappiness ruined French poetry in the 18th century and you can't blame Milton for that, or Spenser, or Chaucer, who were also common sources of classic English poetry.

Leavis had very strange opinions on many things. He's forgotten now for a reason.

>>19390162
I think he rubbed people the wrong way with The Western Canon and it lead to reactionary takes that focus on low-hanging fruit. As far as light reading meant for a general audience--someone could do a lot worse.

>>19390172
>I believe Newman says Pope played a strong hand in tempering the Miltonic style further.
Yes, the problem was that Milton's regularity was compensated for by his heavy enjambment (even more enjambed than Shakespeare), which Pope turned into closed couplets with regular caesuras, robbing English verse even of that variety.

>>19390167
I was meme'ing, tbf there aren't many good poets after any massive movement.
>>19390172
I got filtered HARD by Spenser. I hate the Faerie Queene, its so dry and uninteresting to me. I read similarly long poems like Orlando Furioso and loved that, it was such a massive step up for me. What's wrong with me?
>Pound definitely preferred Chaucer.
Yeah, he said he had a better understanding of human characters than Shakespeare. Idk if Pound was just being counter-cultural just for the memes or not though.
>>19390180
>I get it now. They're pseuds unironically going after an easy target.
I'm not even an english major, I just think that most people are intelligent enough to understand much harder texts on literature. Its just about the time you want to invest in it.

>>19390188
I do not know who that man is, but I mostly just larp and repeat what Eliot and Pound said about Milton without any context.

>>19390096
>because novels are basically plays with the ability to have more descriptive, psychological elements. This especially begins with Jane Austen.

You know, it took me more than 30 years to realize that. It’s specially true with dialogue-heavy novels.

>>19390222
>I was meme'ing, tbf there aren't many good poets after any massive movement.
I like most of the 17 and1800s English poets much more than Bukowski and the Beat Generation. I'd read Thomas Hood and Cowper over TS Eliot any day.

>>19390240
..Are you serious? Cowper??? Bruh what lol. Do you just not like modernist-aesthetics?

>>19390264
No Modernism is a disgrace, and just a dilution of Mark Twain and Whitman. Even Pound acknowledged it at the end. I like that small London circle of Wells, Ford, Conrad, Henry James, Stephen Crane that often gets lumped into modernism by association but pre-dates it, and the big 3 American weird fiction writers of the time and Jack London.

>>19384921
Overated, yes. Good yes. But it's frankly white supremacist that he's been touted as the greatest writer in the English language. Or as some-racist, i might add- fanboys proclaim, the greatest writer in any language.

>As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods.
>They kill us for their sport.

dost thou proclaim 'tis not the truth?

>>19390222
>I got filtered HARD by Spenser. I hate the Faerie Queene, its so dry and uninteresting to me. I read similarly long poems like Orlando Furioso and loved that, it was such a massive step up for me. What's wrong with me?
It's not a particularly *dramatic* poem in the same way as Tasso or Ariosto are, or quite as funny as the latter. Spenser is famously called a 'poet's poet' because of his total control of rhyme and alliteration, and his brilliant, delightful images and allegories. He's a poet who you can feel having fun while writing.
Skip to the end and read the Mutability Cantos, especially the Procession of the Months and Seasons. It's an orgiastic parade of joyful and inventive imagery, which is what Spenser is about to me. After that maybe Canto XI of Book I with the dragon fight. But I don't think many people read the Faerie Queene straight through these days because there's a fair deal of the protagonist wandering around that isn't particularly inspired: I at least pick individual scenes to read when I go back to it, like the House of Pride in Book I Canto IV, the Bower of Bliss in Book II Canto XII, the Temple of Venus in Book IV Canto X. Those set pieces are where he really shines I think in some of the loveliest and most beautiful sounding English poetry ever written.

>>19390325
Oh so you might know, what's the difference between an artificial and natural poet? Are Tasso and Ariosto (who I love as just fun Epic reads) considered artificial? What about Spenser?

And I will read those portions of the poem actually. I got the penguins classic copy that has the entire poem, but it's a chore to slowly pronounce the Elizabethan English, any recommendations for a modern spelling version I could find? I'd be very interested in finally finishing the poem.

>>19390180
I don't even know who Bullough is, my point is that the ones who have some big theory to propose about Shakespeare are usually working with scant evidence and therefore end up blowing a lot of hot hair. The idea that he invented the modern mind is an example of such hot air.

>>19390188
I promote Leavis for his views on the novel. His criticism should be the objective standard there. However, for his criticism of poetry, I look to him to understand the why's and wherefore's of modernist verse. I don't take his criticism of Milton seriously. Instead, I look to him to understand WHY the modernists rejected Milton. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton are the incomparable masters of English verse. I have no desire to dispute that. As for the novel, I completely agree with Leavis that Austen, Eliot, James, and Conrad are the best but I am hesitant to agree with him on Lawrence.

>>19390222
The Faerie Queene isn't easy reading. I believe I've only read Book I in its entirety. There isn't a requirement to read everything by a poet because it's not like a novel.

Though I champion Leavis, I personally don't care much for his champions in verse, Pound, Eliot, and Hopkins. Again, I just like how he explains WHY modernists innovated in verse. I have never read such a description that fit the bill so well.

>>19390188
Leavis is definitely not forgotten by academics since he played a big role in establishing the English canon. He's vital in the history of English literary criticism, just as you often see E. M. Forster quoted in reference to theories of the novel or Ian Watt on the rise of the novel. There's never been a critic widely read by the general public, not even H. L. Mencken.

>>19390222
>faerie queene is dry
U literally wot m8 it is so satisfying and dappled

>>19390304
You are racist and white supremacist. Also, could you please address whether or not you have an unhealthy interest in young boys. Not saying you do, but you better clear it up to my satisfaction just to be sure.
See how this works?

>>19390466
>The Faerie Queene isn't easy reading. I believe I've only read Book I in its entirety. There isn't a requirement to read everything by a poet because it's not like a novel.
Yeah, I found it more difficult than any other epic I've read. But I've also read all of those other epics in their entirety, is that not normal?

>>19390462
>Oh so you might know, what's the difference between an artificial and natural poet? Are Tasso and Ariosto (who I love as just fun Epic reads) considered artificial? What about Spenser?
I don't really like the distinction because all poetry is art (and I can't comment on Tasso/Ariosto not having read them in the original). I'm not really sure what a "natural" artist would be. But Spenser's subject matter is fantastical and his verse is consciously affected to be archaic I suppose?
>I got the penguins classic copy that has the entire poem, but it's a chore to slowly pronounce the Elizabethan English, any recommendations for a modern spelling version I could find?
I don't really know as most editors keep the old spelling because it was a conscious literary effect on the part of Spenser, who wanted to evoke an ethereal old-timey Faery Land aesthetic from the Arthurian romances of Malory and Medieval authors like Chaucer. The spellings he used were considered archaic even in his own time. And you're not alone in finding it a chore because Spenser's contemporaries complained about the same thing: Jonson famously said that "in affecting the ancients, Spenser writ no language". I did a google search and found an edition of Book I in modern spelling though: https://books.google.td/books?id=1KYDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA1&hl=fr&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false

>>19390514
I mean, it might just be that you read Tasso and Ariosto in translation which flattens out the peculiarities of their verse compared to Spenser in the original?

>>19390528
Thanks for the info, very helpful.
>>19390538
I did read them in an English translation, however I can get through some portions of the poems in the original with difficulty. I tried the same with Dante with a side by side translation, but I don't speak much Italian just Spanish and I try piecing it together for fun.

>>19390514
I'm impressed by your dedication anon. I personally just find that the older I get the less inspired I get to finish epic verse, and the same holds true for novels. I found Middlemarch an almost herculean effort to read earlier this year but it was well worth the effort. But when I was about 22 or 23 I read Ulysses, Anna Karenina, etc. in about a week. I might have done the same for the epic poets but they were low on my radar at that time.

But as for Spenser, he is deliberately archaic so perhaps even his own contemporaries would have found him difficult. He's the sort of writer I pick up now and again and I'm continually astonished by what I read. It's almost too much! I know Conrad was a lover of Spenser and I can believe it given his style.

>>19390538
I was gonna suggest what you said here to that other anon. Reading a Fagles translation is much easier than Pope wrt the Classics. Modern translations often just read like versified prose.

>>19390514
>I found it more difficult than any other epic I've read
The Ring and the Book and Clarel are harder, but Faerie Queene is tough though, as is Arcadia. Kids used to read Epic poems with their families all the time though, so it's doable. My advice is just to read it like a song, and accept that not everything will make sense, but if you can enjoy it's aesthetic qualities through and through while understanding it mostly then it's fine. I read Paradise Lost in 2 days. Dante and the Iliad took a lot longer.

>>19390561
I can read an epic poem much quicker than a novel, since I get sucked in. I wasn't able to finish Ulysses after Oxen, it felt like a waste of time and I hated it.
I also listen to audiobooks and read on my ipad at work lol.

>>19390561
I'm younger than you were when you read those works, I just got out of my teenage years. I managed to knock out Jerusalem Delivered in less than a week, and Fagles Iliad in about 3 days. I just really like certain kids of verse. I loved Anna Karenina but it took me a month to finish. This is just my break from the hell that is a STEM degree. But yeah I can't stand the archaic language, I'm just so used to Shakespeare and Chaucer being updated to modern spellings that it feels weird to go back.

>>19390578
>I wasn't able to finish Ulysses after Oxen, it felt like a waste of time and I hated it.
Oxen of the Sun is literally incomprehensible. When I read Ulysses I can get like the first 10% of that chapter and my eyes glaze over the rest. It's a shame you gave it up after that though because Ithaca is after that and the most beautiful chapter in the novel.

>>19390592
I didn't like any of it, and Oxen was just them being drunk and I think Joyce was quipping away as the narrator, but who the fuck knows. I hated Mulligan, I hated everything, the jerk-off park satirical scene, the citizen scene, I could not stand the quips and puns.

>>19390578
>The ring and the book
>Arcadia
Never heard of them actually. My brother and I read a portion of Clarel and I enjoyed it, I like Melville a lot, but I doubt I'll be able to ever finish such a dense and theological work.

>>19390601
The Ring and the Book is the toughest one. I finished Clarel pretty quickly, you get sucked into it, but parts of it were tough.

>theological
lol there's a character who is a Jewish atheist that worships science and it's absolutely hilarious. Also, Mortmain is a Dostoevsky character but better.

>>19390584
Shakespeare and Chaucer in modern spellings whaaaaaa you gotta go to the sauce for that my dude, even if they do take more effort. There are good hypertexts of the Canterbury Tales if you don't mind reading on the computer. One of my favorite recent discoveries is reading early editions of 17th and 18th century books on archive.org. Reading writers like Daniel Defoe in the original print is tedious at first, but eventually you stop seeing those long s's as f's and get used to the seemingly irregular capitalizations. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is a great underrated classic from this era and the way it was printed originally makes it so much more fun to read.

But you have much respect from me for reading what you do considering you're doing a STEM degree. I switched majors later in life to STEM so I understand your pain.

>>19390578
I save audiobooks for walks. That's how I worked through about half of Leaves of Grass. I found him very easy to listen to compared to other poets because if I tuned out for a bit it was not hard to tune back in. Felt strange walking in public and hearing the Calamus poems in public though.

>>19390615
Ring sounds extremely rough to read. Arcadia sounds very interesting though, thanks.

Lmao that actually makes me want to finish it all the more. I'm gonna finish my Greek and Roman reads and then try it again.

>>19390630
>I save audiobooks for walks.
I read on my ebooks app on my phone during walks, I only do audiobooks at work, when driving, or before sleep. A lot of what I want to read doesn't even have an audiobook made for it.

>>19384921
>bait thread turns out to be good
Well done.

Also, the guy who is posting the extracts is based.

>>19390630
If I was interested in studying them academically I probably would, but I just read for pleasure now. Not that all the spellings are modernized, but it's the same as the anon who quoted some portions of Shakespeare above. I did find a website with the Canterbury Tales with side by side spellings though and that was cool. And yeah physics is just a cunt to study.

>>19390634
Add Tristam of Lyonesse, Tale of Balen.

Check out Heinrich Heine too.

Honestly, I feel Shakespeare caught on because he’s more accessible than his contemporaries while still retaining poetic elegance. The dialogue exchanges in Shakespeare sound very natural and they flow very well. It also helps that plays like Romeo and Juliet, and even some of his less well regarded plays like Titus were extremely popular with audiences in their day.

When you also consider that most of his plays are masterpieces at best and “meh” at worst, then it’s little wonder he was praised for having an amazing track record.

>>19389772
He is actually right; Nietzsche is a self help guru for atheists to cope with a life without God and you know it.

>dude just live, touch grass, nature and shit

>>19390662
>Nietzsche is a self help guru for atheists to cope with a life without God and you know it.
Nietzsche took a bunch of insights that were generalized in the time period and in prior thinkers that were greater than him like Schopenhauer and Goethe, and was able to catch on because of his writing style, his 'be your own God nonsense,' and his persona/backstory as the tragic hopeless romantic and has achieved relevance from big-brained retards who think they are the ubermenschs and unique individuals he discusses. It's shit.

>>19390652
I have a list another anon gave me of some poems and those are actually on there, eventually I'll get around to them. I'm a recovering fantasy junkie so I usually pick epic poems (or poetry that has cool themes of that ilk) for the Gods and magic and what not. I might try Idylls of the King after I finish the Aeneid. List in question:
Tale of Balen
Tristram of Lyonesse
Clarel
Endymion
Sordello
Ring and the Book
Balaustion's Adventure
Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society
Fifine at the Fair
Red Cotton Night-Cap Country
Aristophanes Apology
Inn Album
Ferishtah's Fancies
Four Zoas
Milton
Jerusalem
Madoc
The Curse of Kehama
Roderick the Last of the Goths
Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo
Vison of Judgment
Oliver Newman
In Memoriam A.H.H.
Idylls of the King

>>19390677
skip the Walter Scott ones

>>19384921
I don't understand how you can compare Dante to Shakespeare and have the opinion you do. Shakespeare's command of language is easily triple Dante's. There's nothing in The Divine Comedy that is as poetic and moving as countless lines in Hamlet.
I'm sorry but you're clearly an enraged retard. Your whole post--the way you've formatted it, how obviously you've checked for errors so you can't be made fun of, and carefully chosen an image--screams your insecurity. Imagening you getting more and more frustrated as you fail to understand Middle English is very funny to me. I know you read a translation of Dante, too.

>>19390466
>blowing hot air....SUCH HOT AIR
>tripfag
Fuck off pseud. It's meant to be an accessible book written for the appreciation of the general public. You obviously haven't read it and are basing your opinions on a general dislike for his work/reputation as a public figure.

>>19390681
I'll be honest, I'll probably skip quite a few. My brother is an English grad major and I usually just read whatever he gets me for presents, so besides the epic poems I'm reading César Vallejos poetry, and I forgot how good short poems were lol. Pic related.

>>19390698
>Has never read Dante in the original
>Compares them anyway lol

>>19385367
>Then Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shelley,
Rossetti, Yeats, Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Borges, Stevens and Beckett sucks, because they all copy him, these are twelve different Dante's.
This is probably one of the most retarded things anyone has ever written on this board. You are a utter spastic if you genuinly believe this. Thinking about you having this thought and typing it out is like imagining the thoughts of a nigger.

>>19384921
OP is a Christian, he is just mad at the King Solomon reference.

>>19390674
>It's shit
I agree!. Lol

>>19390698
>Better than Hamlet
Cymbeline
Coriolanus
Antony and Cleopatra
Macbeth
King Lear
Timon of Athens
Winter's Tale
Merry Wives of Windsor

>>19385367
>Then Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shelley, Rossetti, Yeats, Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Borges, Stevens and Beckett sucks, because they all copy him, these are twelve different Dante's.
It's actually amazing that you think this, it's quite surreal to see. I'm trying to imagine you having this thought and it's like trying to think as a nigger. How did you even begin to have this idea?

i love Hamlet more than should be reasonable, but everything else of his falls flat. I should like R&J but I just don't. They're stupid. I fucking love tragedy more than anything and I can't like R&J because everyone is stupid. read a few others, they're bland.

Fun fact but Dazai wrote a Hamlet fanfiction. Not sure if it's translated.

>>19390789
go back

>>19390789
>I should like R&J but I just don't. They're stupid.
R&J are literally kids; Romeo is in love with an idea and Juliet is barely post-pubescent. You were filtered.

>>19390699
I haven't read that book in over ten years, so in a certain sense it's as if I have never read it. But due to the obscurity of Shakespeare's life it is ridiculous to build these theories, especially the idea Bloom has that Shakespeare somehow invented the modern mind and that it trickled from England into the rest of Europe. The most credible theory I've heard is Foucault (yuck) saying the Third Lateran Council is responsible for that. But go right ahead, read Bloom, then read Greenblatt, then read the Oxford and Bacon theories and whatever other fluff attracts your attention.

As for Bloom himself, the idea he has of a Western Canon is not consistent with the trajectory of the nation states from the Reformation to today. We can speak of an English canon, a French canon, or even a Medieval canon, but there's no such thing as a Western canon unless you begin with the Greeks and end with roughly Chaucer and Dante's generation.

>>19384921
gr8 b8 m8 i r8 it 8/8

>>19390852
I like Made in Abyss dude, i assure you that i enjoy the literary sexualization of children. riko and reg are not STUPID.

>>19384921
>Shakespeare is a sonnetist that the English and Americans raised to the level of a poet
Shakespeare is literally a playwright; the poems and sonnets were only side projects. He's a PLAYWRIGHT.

>>19384921
>Shakespeare is by far the most overrated writer in human history

As opposed to writers in box turtle history, or inert gas history, obviously

>>19390935
Everything in that post, including the fact you're a tripfag, leads me to believe you're a pretentious pseud that will produce nothing but shallow takes and the regurgitation of standard narratives--sometimes peppered with esoteric details so as to convince yourself, as well as others but mostly yourself, you've actually produced a thought of your own.

>>19390038
That's bs. People use guides to read the Bible all the time, the most common book in the world. Books don't have to be open, straightforward, or easy to be good books. But if you need a commentary, that's great too.

>>19391099
>standard narrative
>peppered with esoteric details
Sounds like Bloom, the self-proclaimed Gnostic. Let me guess, you're a Guenon-poster too?

>>19391217
Nope. Cope.

>>19384921
>criticizes Shakespeare out of the most boring moralfagging imaginable
>thinks Cervantes was mocking Don Quijote and considered him a retard
I cannot even begin to imagine how bland it must be to inhabit your mind.

The seething envy of Harold Bloom in this thread. You will never be able to read thousands of pages a day with perfect comprehension, your minds will always be inferior, by the time you die you will have read and understood fewer books than Harold Bloom had by the time he was ten.

>>19384921
God just shut the fuck up. Why do you even think to mention him, not even compare him to Dante or Cervantes? May as well ask yourself how you compare sucking the dick of a mule versus the dick of a horse. Cervantes was making fun of dick suckers while getting a gigantic awful literary reverse-fart-cloud winded up his own asshole about some fucking old hack chasing a windmill or whatever, Dante doesn't even need to be considered because he's ignorant of both the Garuda Purana as well as Maimonides (ignorant of Death like subhumans who don't love divine violence and faint like men who could never be divine warriors ready to die)

I'm sure the Spanish nor the French nor the Italians never committed any kind of sick Imperialism (forget Haiti, or Ethiopia, fuck the Americas certainly while we're at it) that could trample over other cultures either? Nothing could be made out of Native American mythology? How about the mythologies of other parts of the world in general? Don't open the gates if you don't want to ask the questions at a minimum.

>Shakespeare is Nietzchien in any form
Do you jerk yourself off to Stephen Deadulus waxing his brain on Dante while avoiding memories of his yelling parents or could you never bear that chapter with any comprehension because it reminds you of when your father beat you in the head

>>19391341
take your meds

>>19391344
Schizophrenia is only imposed on the weak, the strong are uplifted through adversity against disease to God-Kin, able to manifest as any Television character they desire

>>19391217
Fuck off newfag

>>19384921
Yes, most of anglos are famous because of cultural imperialism. But if you think about it, despite this massive advantage, neither Britain or North America produced much worthwhile. The best music is from elsewhere, same for painting, same for sculpture and same for prose and poetry and even film. It is because the anglosphere is and has been for centuries an entirely commercialized project, even moreso than Republic of Venice which was at least smart and small enough to realize being patron of arts is a sensible thing to do.

>>19391191
>Bible guides
I've read the Bible at least 3 times and have never used a guide, if it's not enjoyable or valuable on its own merits then it never will be.

>>19384921
I HATE ESLS I HATE ESLS I HATE ESLS I HATE ESLS I HATE ESLS I HATE ESLS

>>19384921
Maybe a bit overrated, but still brilliant at times. Was pretty much solid on the tragedies, some of the comedies (esp Taming of the Shrew, Love's Labour's Lost) are cringe and just potboiler rubbish. I prefer him to Dante, anyway.

>>19390935
Go back. Go back to wear people will think your tripfag handle is clever. Go back to where you'll be protected from people calling you a faggot by downvotes. Go back to where you you can maintain a record of midwits impressed by your pseudery by upvotes. Go back to where 95% of your fellow posters won't think you're retard for saying things like "my dude" and "but you do have much respect from me for reading what you do considering you're doing a STEM degree." Go back to where people may care, or at least pretend to care, that "one of my favorite recent discoveries is reading early editions of 17th and 18th century books on archive.org. Reading writers like Daniel Defoe in the original print is tedious at first, but eventually you stop seeing those long s's as f's and get used to the seemingly irregular capitalizations. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is a great underrated classic from this era and the way it was printed originally makes it so much more fun to read." Go back and they may not even realize you're a pretentious cunt. They may think your quirky. They may be impressed by your asinine ways.

Because here you're a faggot. Here you're a retard. Here people don't care about your respect and aren't impressed and will call you a pretentious cunt. This is /lit and here you are a pretentious retard faggot pseud cunt. This is /lit. Go back.

>>19393007
Based.

>>19390172
>>19390466
>>19390561
>>19390568
>>19390630
>>19390935
>>19391217
Go back. Go back to wear people will think your tripfag handle is clever. Go back to where you'll be protected from people calling you a faggot by downvotes. Go back to where you you can maintain a record of midwits impressed by your pseudery by upvotes. Go back to where 95% of your fellow posters won't think you're retard for saying things like "my dude" and "but you do have much respect from me for reading what you do considering you're doing a STEM degree." Go back to where people may care, or at least pretend to care, that "one of my favorite recent discoveries is reading early editions of 17th and 18th century books on archive.org. Reading writers like Daniel Defoe in the original print is tedious at first, but eventually you stop seeing those long s's as f's and get used to the seemingly irregular capitalizations. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is a great underrated classic from this era and the way it was printed originally makes it so much more fun to read." Go back and they may not even realize you're a pretentious cunt. They may think your quirky. They may be impressed by your asinine ways.

Because here you're a faggot. Here you're a retard. Here people don't care about your respect and aren't impressed and will call you a pretentious cunt. This is /lit and here you are a pretentious retard faggot pseud cunt. This is /lit. Go back.

>>19393022
I reposted because I wanted to tag all this fags messages.

>>19391240
>thinks Cervantes was mocking Don Quijote and considered him a retard
Yes? Cervantes was mocking every form of idealism

>>19393338
Is Don Quixote similar to Candide? I've never read any Cervantes but I liked Candide a lot.

Bump

Why should I give a fuck about anything you bloviating blowhards have to say? Some retard hates Shake, another retard likes him, why should I care either way. When it comes to this board, things rank and gross in nature possess it merely. It is not, nor it cannot come to good. Go read something.

Read Cymbeline this afternoon

>>19394532
soomr times i hold my lap and type with my errect penis and onlky good comes ofd itr

>>19387266
That fairy poem is cute, cute, CUTE!

>>19387261

He creates almost incessantly and without much care poetic images and metaphors that other poets (and I mean the greatest poets of the world) would kill for.

I opened a page of the complete works at random, and got this (I’m copy-pasting from the Open Source Shakespeare website):


Henry IV: Go call the Earls of Surrey and of Warwick;
But, ere they come, bid them o'er-read these letters
And well consider of them. Make good speed.

Exit page


How many thousands of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frightened thee,
That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch
A watch-case or a common 'larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deafing clamour in the slippery clouds,
That with the hurly death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

>>19396191
>He creates almost incessantly and without much care poetic images and metaphors that other poets (and I mean the greatest poets of the world) would kill for.

For example, the greentexted verses on this soliloquy;

Macbeth. If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination 475
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases 480
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust; 485
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
>Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
>Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 490
>So clear in his great office, that his virtues
>Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
>The deep damnation of his taking-off;
>And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
>Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed 495
>Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
>Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
>That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself 500
And falls on the other.
[Enter LADY MACBETH]
How now! what news?

>>19393028
I think he listened.

>>19384960
>Compares without knowledge
>not logical
> Contributes nothing

>>19396191
That Bollingbrooke soliloquy is one of my favourites in all of Shakespeare. Just perfectly crafted and utterly penetrating.

>>19396261
Also I think people who depreciate Shakespeare just don't understand how difficult it is to come up with an image or metaphor that is both original and fitting for what you're trying to describe. Shakespeare seems to come up with them so effortlessly that his greater problem seems to be them piling up and becoming incomprehensible through sheer weight of invention.

>>19385426
>cultural critic and complex self-help guru than a philosopher
Why won't that qualify him to be a philosopher?

>>19393338
>He thinks The Fool is just foolish
>mfw
I'll gladly reiterate: I cannot even begin to imagine how bland it must be to inhabit your mind.

>>19390758
>why yes, I am an insufferable hipster who must at all times maintain contrarian opinions despite the fact that some commonly held truths are commonly held becaue they are the truth rather than the other way around, how could you tell?

There is something always incredibly dull about reading such Shakespearean Drama. And its most awkward is abandoned in the superior form of novel writing. So why read Drama when I can read a novel instead?
And if it is for the theater performance, then there is something dull about it too. Why spectate any awkward performance when instead I could get a superior form in Opera?
Even if all these superior forms draw from drama they eschew the awkward to perfect the better aspects. Even if it’s the written verse with metre and rhyme it is best to just read simple poetry instead.
Drama takes the best of these other forms and bastardizes them into something unwanted.
I’d rather read Dostoyevski’s novels, rather spectate Wagner’s operas or rather hear Ovid’s poetry than any aspect of Shakespeare’s drama.

>and all the excerpt posting itt just reminds me I am right.

>>19397540
>Even if it’s the written verse with metre and rhyme it is best to just read simple poetry instead.
No it's not. Shakespeare is the best poet in the English language.

Reading the rest of your post, are you autistic or just soulless?

>>19385041
Kys

>>19397401

This

Why that the naked, poor and mangled Peace,
Dear nurse of arts and joyful births,
Should not in this best garden of the world
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,
And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
Corrupting in its own fertility.
Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach'd,
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
Put forth disorder'd twigs; her fallow leas
The darnel, hemlock and rank fumitory
Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts
That should deracinate such savagery;
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness and nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility.
And as our vineyards, fallows, meads and hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,
Even so our houses and ourselves and children
Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country;
But grow like savages,--as soldiers will
That nothing do but meditate on blood,--
To swearing and stern looks, diffused attire
And every thing that seems unnatural.

>France BTFOed by Hal

>>19397508
>no attempt to argue the merits but a blind appeal to authority and ‘truth’
You’re retarded and only defend Shakespeare because he’s famous, and thus have no taste.

>commonly held truths
Because the fat Jew in Yale overrated Hamlet, we all have to? Why do you even read? Just to affirm your perceived intelligence and good taste? I bet you love Joyce and Proust too, without fully reading either.

All those passages show is that Shakespeare could do endless metaphors, which I suppose nobody disputes.
But the thoughts are unoriginal, the situations predictable, a lot of it is taken from common tropes, except for the metaphors and the vocabulary.
For instance,
>>19396191
The age-old trope of the statesman who lies awake while the poor peasant sleeps, a trope that has been written and re-written one million times since antiquity. All Shakespeare did was add a short list of images to it, nothing else.
The view of sleep is predictable: it's the place of "forgetfulness" where your daily troubles are abandoned for a while. It's also a "god", obviously, because it's the Renaissance, and "gentle" and "soft", and only becomes "dull" and "partial" because the guy isn't getting any. Even his attitude to sleep is entirely predictable.
Other instance: >>19390046. Just a short list of new images added to Plutarch's description. And the subject, of course, is entirely predictable again. The "bad omens" before someone's death, which we've read about a thousand times since antiquity. I love the image of the dews of blood, I love the line "was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse", but, as I say, this is all he could do, it's all entirely within the conventions of Renaissance verse, all entirely within the predictable and formulaic. And that's what makes Shakespeare dull to some of us (pic related).
Sometimes the imagery itself can also become conventional, such as in the fairy song here >>19387294, with night being represented by the common images of the wolf, the resting ploughman, the owl, the spirits, with only a few fine touches, specially the fairy sweeping the dust.

A lot of Shakespeare is just that, a book of commonplaces in which a string of images is attached to every Latin and Greek quote. And then, in order to connect those images, he copies someone else's story and turns it into a play, filling it with them.
Is he one of the greats? Yea, quite certainly, his imagery by itself guarantees him a very high place in the so-called "Western Canon", but how much freer from bombastic rhetoric and commonplace ideas I feel when reading Cervantes or the best modernists...

>>19398377
>but how much freer from bombastic rhetoric and commonplace ideas I feel when reading Cervantes

I never read Cervantes. I started it but didn’t liked the crude style and the physical-abuse jokes. It seemed not that much empathetic to me, just like the 3 Stooges.

But this was only from some first chapters and the browsing of the book. I would like to give it a second chance.

Could you tell me what you find so stimulating and touching in Cervantes? It’s

>>19398448
>It seemed not that much empathetic to me

I don't give a shit about "empathy" in literature.

>so stimulating and touching in Cervantes

Touching? No idea.
Stimulating? Cervantes stimulates my intelligence due to the ingenuity of his treatment of the literary form, not to mention the fact that, unlike Shakespeare, he is funny. His sentences are worse than Shakespeare's, though I admit I haven't read his poetry (only the D. Quijote) so maybe this is unfair to him, but Cervantes is way more unpredictable, subversive, and constantly calls into question the very nature of literature and the relationship between author and reader. He is as modern as possible, and yet a contemporary of Shakespeare. This was a man who knew how to use his brain and had little time for the sterile "wisdom" of the ancients, as can be seen in the very start of the book. Cervantes represents the opening of endless literary possibilities, as much as Descartes or Newton represent the opening of endless philosophical and scientific ones. Where Shakespeare's work fits inside an existing literary current (much of him is already present in Marlowe), Cervantes broke the currents of his day by writing a book which was at once not only, paradoxically, that current's masterpiece, but also contained an entirely new form which went on to dominate literature for the next 400 years.
D. Quijote could have been shorter. Regardless, it contains enough ingenuity that it's worth reading in its entirety, but I don't recommend it to you because if what you're searching for in literature is "empathy" then you should probably read, I don't know, children's literature or something.

>>19398565
Not the same anon.
Are you Spanish? Just asking.

>>19398299
>makes a list
>chastises others for not making arguments
Here's a list of words that describe you, in lieu of "le argument" which you clearly do not care much for yourself.
Faggot
Retard
Cringy
Pseud
Insufferable
Contrarian
Hipster

>Because the fat Jew in Yale overrated Hamlet, we all have to?
If you honestly think Bloom is the only one, read more.

>Why do you even read? Just to affirm your perceived intelligence and good taste? I bet you love Joyce and Proust too, without fully reading either.
You're embarrasing.

>>19398597
You’re seething uncontrollably because someone says xyz plays are better than Hamlet and only can appeal to authority, you’re a joke and everything that is wrong with literature in a post. To you literature is a commodity to be shown off for status. More clout for Hamlet than Cymbeline. Would not shock me if you never even read Hamlet. Glad to see I weeded out and stomped on a rodent. Maybe one day you’ll actually like reading instead of restating the ‘canon’ as ‘truth.’

>>19398636

>>19398572
No. Neither is Spanish my first language, or Cervantes my favorite author, and I despise Mr. Maestro because, though he is clearly an intelligent reader, he still mixes his own annoying nationalist agenda with proper analysis.
If you read my post you can see I do not defend Cervantes on extra-literary grounds. I am not interested in extra-literary values.

>>19398681
I’m not the one screeching because someone doesn’t have exact canonical taste.

>>19398721
>"I'm not the one screeching" he screeched in a fit of autistic rage

>>19388664
Every conspiracy theory about someone else writing the plays of Shakespeare boil down to classism. People can't seem to accept that someone who wasn't rich or noble wrote all the plays/poems. That it was a peasant from Warwickshire bothers them even more.

>>19398572
>Are you Spanish? Just asking

If I had to guess I would say he is Brazilian.

>>19398762
i must admit it´s weird that none of edward de vere´s plays survived