/lit/ - Literature

Just commit suicide, retard. What the FUCK is this thread?

>>20895542
Well I was thinking about asking about the traditions that have existed since Shakespeare's plays first started getting printed regarding how to experience Shakespeare's plays but decided to just go with Harold Bloom
I hope that answers your question

>>20895552
Shakespeare is a made up guy. He couldn't write this stuff considering his background. Francis Bacon could.

>>20895526
Just read them. Any decent edition will have footnotes for the archaic words.

>>20895570
>He couldn't write this stuff considering his background.
What stuff? None of his plays depend upon particularly arcane knowledge.

>>20895570
>He couldn't write this stuff considering his background.
Actually he could, other poets and playwrights of the era came from similar backgrounds. Shakespeare was the son of a glover, Marlowe was the son of a cobbler, and Ben Jonson was the son of a bricklayer. Playwrights were kind of like that, they came from a lower background since being one was considered lowly or whatever.

There's nothing in Shakespeare that is particularly inhuman. His impossible stature just comes from England's over-aggrandizing of Shakespeare as a godly literature figure. If you put something on a divine pedestal, no shit the son a glover wouldn't be thought of as the author, but it turns out it's entirely possible.

Is there an ebonics translation of any Shakespeare play? I tried to get my wife's son interested but "white people language" makes him upset and he keeps saying embarrassing things about me to the baby daddy. Maybe it would be easier for him if it was in something he can understand?

>>20895526
OP, I feel your pain and have been experimenting with how to approach Shakespeare
I've read 3 plays at this point and am still kind of figuring it out but here's what I've learned thus far

> my brain is too slow to fully comprehend everything when listening to the lines being spoken at normal speed
This is the same for me and I would think the same for anyone else who isn't already intimately familiar with the play already.
Nonetheless, my approach at this point goes like this:
>watch a brief 10 minute summary of the play (tons on YouTube if you look it up)
>Watch one theatrical performance or a film adaptation of the play (or 2)
>Try to read the actual written word (using the Lit Notes modern translation for any particularly hard sections)

You will NOT understand everything when you watch the plays for the first time. It is old, complexly written English that is very unfamiliar to contemporary readers, BUT it is still really helpful to watch a performance before going in to read it. I personally would miss out on a lot of the subtleties of the dialogue if I didn't. Specifically things like the humor and delivery of the lines just completely fly over my head without seeing the performance first.

I like my approach because you don't have to juggle so many things at once. You need to
>decipher the story (YouTube summaries help)
>decipher the delivery (watching performances helps)
>decipher the sentences (your brain and Lit Notes helps)

And so going in steps can make it much less stressful. I also will use SparkNotes sometimes for plot summaries

Best of luck OP. Shakespeare kicks my ass majorly but it is really rewarding. He really is a great writer and that's why I don't give a shit about spoiling the story by watching summaries. His writing is really the amazing stuff anyways so doing what you can to let you focus on that when you actually get to reading has been helpful in my experience.

>>20895526
You have to absorb yourself in the language they were using. It's alright to go slower. Take time to read it, try to fully understand the figurative language and the metaphors he Shakes was using
Then you can watch the plays, it'll be much easier to understand in context

>>20895658
But wasn't it written so common man watching at the globe, drunk, hardly didn't get the subleteties?

>>20895692
Yes but I don't think that contradicts what you're replying to. If you go back in time 50 years and try to communicate with a businessman purely in zoomer niggerspeak, they'd have to take a minute to understand what the sentences mean too. Language changes over time, desu.

>>20895692
What? Just listen to what I said, re-read it if you don't understand it. People spend a lot of time dissecting these writers so take your time

>>20895526
Get a decent edition (collected works or single play, whatever you prefer), with footnotes that explain the archaisms, obscure contextual references, etc. Keep a dictionary nearby too, either physical or a digital one (Merriam-Webster, Lexico...). And read. It will be difficult at first, easy afterwards. I was a stupid ESL 16-year-old when I first read Shakespeare in English and if I could do that so can you.
Regarding performances, I especially recommend you read Virginia Woolf's essay "Twelfth Night at the Old Vic".
Bloom said he disliked all the new performances of Shakespeare and only read him. But regardless of that I don't think you should pay much attention to what that crusty jew had to say.

>>20895526
You don't "read" Shakespeare. You watch each of his plays a dozen times.

>>20895692
I do believe you think what now you speak,
But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory,
Of violent birth, but poor validity,
Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,
But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.
Most necessary tis that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactures with themselves destroy.
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament.
Grief joys, joy grieves on slender accident.
This world is not for aye, nor tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change.
For tis a question left us yet to prove,
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark his favorite flies.
The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.
And hitherto doth love on fortune tend,
For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
Directly seasons him his enemy.
But, orderly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown.
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
So think thou wilt no second husband wed,
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

He was writing for himself, like Kafka, like pessoa. It's vain insanity.

>>20895918
>t. Doesn't understand Kafka or Shakespeare

>>20895918
>He was writing for himself.
based.
crowd pleasers are cringe.

>>20895599
>His impossible stature just comes from England's over-aggrandizing of Shakespeare as a godly literature figure.
Shakespeare IS actually that good, though.