/lit/ - Literature

>>4211569
>Northrop Frye uses this book as an example of perfect literature and says nothing could be better only perhaps equal.

Akira Kurosawa's RAN pisses all over Lear.

So much so that I now refer to Lear as ur-RAN.

Listening to city and colour, saw this thread, thought I was on /mu/

You'll understand when you're older.

>>4211619
I actually have heard this, as it's more of a parent book and was written after Shakespeares son's death to boot. Does anyone have anything to add on more general aspects of the play? i'm pretty good with characters

>>4211657

It's about aging and the loss of power and dealing with your fuck ups.

>>4211607
but... the language...

>>4211699
>but other formalisms
Lear has pacing problems that RAN resolves. Lear has major problems with the identity in crisis, largely because Shakespeare was incapable of using the fool.

>>4211706
lol but shakespeare is also a poet, not just a playwright

>Lear
>Book
Stop this. Stop it. I have seen this too many times on /lit/

>>4211607
Different mediums. I'm sure there is a distinct possibility of a production of Lear(past, present or future) that you would like more than Ran. I love Ran as well, but they're so very different right down to one being a film and one being a play.

>>4211733
>but they're so very different right down to one being a film and one being a play.
This is the least significant difference.

The gender flip so Lear's _sons_ represent his own failings writ large. The particular role of the fool, and the fox. And especially the Buddhism, whose contents of "right action" versus "pure land" are far more significant in terms of a reflection on Lear's own hubris than Christianity could be in Shakespeare.

Face it, you're just unable to accept that one of the weakest Tragedies of the Bard was shitrekt by a nip.

>>4211743
you suck at analyzing shakespeare and you're apparently unable to appreciate poetry

>>4211748
Your farts smell like butt and you "read for style"

None of Shakespeare's stuff is 'perfect', stop this moronic wankery.

>>4211751
i recognize that style is the author's most important tool for the advancement of substance

>>4211743
I never said it was one of the strongest. I was only commenting on how different the mediums of film and theatre are. I think it is a mistake of a lot of people who might read a lot of theatre but rarely or never act, direct, write or design for it that it is so close to film. Film's ability to guide the audience's eye through the camera can be so much more specific than the tools at a theatre director's disposal to lead the eye through staging. Not to mention the very live aspect of theatre being diametrically opposed to the finesse of editing in film. Theatre feels more alive if you will. Why do you think so many plays fail on the screen and so many films fail on the stage?

They're closely related but so vastly different.

Troilus and Cressida, Timon of Athens, and Cymbeline are all far weaker. Titus is seen as weaker, but I find it as one of the stronger. And then the romances like The Tempest and Measure for Measure are weaker than Lear because they are missing the cathartis of mass death that the great tragedies have, when they both would be much more satisfying with it.

>>4211768
Tempest comes close to a Brechtian problem in its resolution. If you want Shakespeare's views on "catharsis" then ask yourself why Act 5 of Hamlet doesn't occur in Act 1?

>>4211761
No. Style is a bourgeois illusion imposed by your valuing of petty formalist techniques over the interactive process of reading. Go back to the 19th century, they're missing their exegetic techniques.

>>4211768
>Titus is seen as weaker, but I find it as one of the stronger.
i don't understand this opinion at all

>>4211780
>No. Style is a bourgeois illusion imposed by your valuing of petty formalist techniques over the interactive process of reading. Go back to the 19th century, they're missing their exegetic techniques.

oh jesus christ why am i talking to you

>>4211780
I just feel that the Tempest would be much more satisfying if Prospero unleashed an arcane shitstorm and kill a bunch of people. The happy end feels so limp wristed.

Hamlet doesn't end in Act 1 because Hamlet hasn't decided to act on his father's murder or not yet. He has trust issues with the ghost and hasn't resolved to seek revenge until he makes the players put on the Murder of Gonzago, highlighted by "To be or not to be..."

>>4211784
It's seen as one of the weakest by mainstream critique, but I'm more with the people in Elizabethan England in their love of it. Aaron the moor is one of Shakespeare's best villains. the violence is unmatched for brutality in his tragedies and the whole play feels on edge to me the whole time. It's not for everyone, but it's bold and as a dramatist, boldness and conviction are some of favorite aspects of good drama.

>>4211799
>Hamlet doesn't end in Act 1 because Hamlet hasn't decided to act on his father's murder or not yet. He has trust issues with the ghost and hasn't resolved to seek revenge until he makes the players put on the Murder of Gonzago, highlighted by "To be or not to be..."
Nor does he whip out his gat during the play. Hamlet's deferral of catharsis indicates that while life is in its nature tragic, it is the deferral of catharsis wherein life occurs.

Regarding Prospero whipping out his dick, that's Christianity for you.

>the violence is unmatched
Within Shakespeare yes, but violence doesn't make catharsis or we'd be talking about Salo right now.

>>4211809
Oh, I wasn't discussing catharsis in Titus, just explaining my stance that I love it.

Hamlet, after the Murder of Gonzago rushes towards the climax though. He can't murder Claudius in front of a whole audience of subjects, then is summoned by his mother(a summons he wouldn't reject given the Oedipus complex tones we get) and then he is compelled by the ghost, appears madder to his moth and kills Polonius and must be shipped off to England. These are all necessary distractions from the catharsis of killing Claudius in act 5.

His interruption of Ophelia's funeral and setting up of the duel is again required to stage that great last scene and is often cut to high hell for that reason.

>>4211829
>He can't murder Claudius in front of a whole audience of subjects
A sovereign can. Either Hamlet is the King or he isn't. The Murder of Gonzago is when Hamlet ought to fuck off back to Wittenberg, rejecting vengeance; or become King. Instead he delays yet again.

With a near Tragedy, like Richard III, we run straight with growing Hubris towards conclusion. The only Hubris Hamlet Has is epistemology.

>>4211862
And the delay is Hamlet's flaw. His inaction is the tragic nature of his character.

Let's say Hamlet openly challenges Claudius at the Murder of Gonzago. Only one of the two come out alive. If Hamlet does, the play isn't a tragedy and is unsatisfying. If Claudius does then Hamlet's status as a tragic character is no longer on par with Oedipus or Macbeth. His flaw would be that he defied his uncle, not his inaction, which all his great speeches, and scenes where he feigns madness become tangentially related to the crux of the play and his character.

In either outcome, Polonius, Laertes, Ophelia and R&G become pointless characters. We also lose the gravedigger because we never get to him.

The pile of bodies at the end of Hamlet are a product of Hamlet's inaction, and it reaching a point where he can no longer torment himself over it and must face what the play has built to. I mean the Norwegians sack their castle because the gravity of the situation is of such import.

>>4211882
You're arguing from a formal stylistic requirement, not from hubris within the character. This makes Hamlet a melodrama or grand guignol; not a tragedy. If the tragedy is contingent on the requirement for there to be a tragedy, it isn't.

Ajax's rage is a convincing hubris.

You can't have inaction as hubris when it ends in action. Nor is it "lack of filial piety." Hamlet is more complex than that and you're underselling it with a dissatisfying conventional interpretation.

>The pile of bodies at the end is a product of Hamlet's inaction

And? So? If Hamlet fucked off to Wittenberg in Act 5 it would be a melodrama.

Death due to contingency is not tragedy. Contingency due to formal demand is not tragedy. Hamlet doesn't kill Claudius in the Play for more than stylistic necessity.

>>4211897
I probably do come from, and thus argue, from that more stylistic standpoint. I'm a dramatist and for us it's about that, thinking about the play in the context of production and presentation, rather than a purely philosophical stance. It may be a more conventional interpretation, but I don't think I'm underselling it. That is what the play was meant for. Shakespeare wrote it to be performed, not necessarily be philosophized over. It's importance philosophically is more due to how brilliant of a play it truly is. There are few plays penned whose meanings will still be discussed like this 400 years after.

The broader theatrical definition of tragedy is simply a play in which someone important to the action dies at the end, and a comedy is when they don't(usually someone gets married instead). Melodrama, romance, history, tragicomedy, and any other theatrical genre you can think of are merely the result of tragedy and comedy being mixed together with different amounts, for different reasons and to different results.


The play isn't really about whether or not Hamlet should have fucked off(he probably should have), it's about what he does do, which is be a tormented little bitch and refuse to make decisive action.

>>4211927
You are making Aristotle cry.

The definition of a Tragedy is when you tear a goat apart with your bare fucking hands instead of doing it to a child in a public religious ceremony. Unless you're Goat rending, then at least pay attention to Aristotle.

>>4211954
Ok, but Aristotle's thoughts on theatre, while paramount to the foundation of the art, is missing quite a lot of theatrical innovation and evolution. Brecht, Shakespeare, Grotowski, Augusto Boal, Ibsen, Stanislavski, Broadway, Albee, Tracy Letts, etc. I did say broader theatrical definition, I should have said the general modern theatrical definition or something,

I don't know. Theatre artists have a lot of miscommunication with people of different disciplines, especially in this day. Perhaps I should read more philosophy and give myself a better understanding from different disciplines.

If you want some good, pretty easy reading from a more theatrical standpoint try "Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual For Reading Plays" by David Ball. He uses Hamlet as his main example when going through it.

By the way, this has been one of the best discussions, if not the best, I've ever had on 4chan, but I need to go work on my graduate school applications if I want to actually be a relevant dramatist and not just a bartender who writes and directs. Cheers.

>>4211975
Also, at least Aristotle didn't think actors would be able to convince audiences of whatever they wanted because they were so good and their ideas didn't come from objective truth like Plato did.

>>4211975
To celebrate, read Fo's accidental death of an anarchist, or Weiss' Trotsky in Exile :)

>>4211985
Will do brother. Stuck around long enough to see if you'd drop me a suggestion back.

>>4211780
>No. Style is a bourgeois illusion imposed by your valuing of petty formalist techniques over the interactive process of reading. Go back to the 19th century, they're missing their exegetic techniques.
are u 18?

Northrop Frye is very reliable

it's not a book.

watch a good performance and you'll see it come to life. also, try reading bloom's chapter on lear in the invention of human.

>>4211780
>Style is a bourgeois illusion

how did you manage to get all those cocks in your mouth

>>4212356
>>4212398

Please do tell me how you suck the dick of formalism without purpose. Laying down under a bulldozer of ruling class cocks.

Go back to your American genre novels that the New York Times protests are literature. Drink down that briney briney lemonade.