/lit/ - Literature

Hamlet

McBeath

>>6103019
I personally liked Hamlet a lot but I have yet to read all his works in English or as they were originally written, so yea.

>What's is best play /lit/?

McBeth

>What's his worst?

Hamlet

>>6103026
>>6103035

you two should fite irl

fucking easy:

Twelfth Night

All's Well That Ends Well

>>6103019
Henry V

Titus Andronicus

As much as I love King Lear, Hamlet is without a doubt his best play.

His worst is a tossup between Timon of Athens and Titus Andronicus.

extremely accurate ranking of all of Shakespeare's plays coming through

BEST

Hamlet
Richard III
The Merchant of Venice
King Lear
Twelfth Night
As You Like It
Much Ado About Nothing
The Tempest
Julius Caesar
Othello
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Henry IV, Pts 1 and 2
Titus Andronicus
Macbeth
Henry V
Henry VI, Parts 1-3
The Taming of the Shrew
The Winter's Tale
The Comedy of Errors
Antony and Cleopatra
Richard II
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Troilus and Cressida

WORST

I haven't read or seen Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Timon of Athens, All's Well that Ends Well, Love's Labors Lost, Pericles, Measure for Measure, The Two Noble Kinsmen, or any of the histories outside the two Henriads.

>>6103223
I somehow forgot Romeo and Juliet but it goes somewhere in the middle-bottom

>Everyone shitting on Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus is fun as hell. The worst would be the Henry VI plays or the earliest comedies.

>>6103019

Best: Midsummer Night's Dream

Worst: Maybe Cmyberlaine, though I'd reccomend most of the history plays

>>6103256
Yeah. I mean as subjective as this all is the early comedies are by far the worst. I mean I take the question as "Ok right NOW which one would you be willing to sit through in it's entirety?" cause for me? Twelfth Night. I mean Henry IV part 1 is BALLER but boy those court scenes are a thing to sit through at times.

Twelfth Night is hime combining all his successful comic tropes (twins, mistaken identities, old knights, wise fools) into one great comedy.

Hamlet's an incredibly mature work but fuck me it's so goddamn long.

>>6103019
You guys only like Hamlet so much because you were told to. You know I'm right.

I like them all :/

>>6103304
Isn't King Lear the patrician one?

Hamlet kind of angsty pleb

>>6103304
>implying any of Shakespeare's plays other than Romeo and Juliet were ever mentioned by my teachers

Hamlet is the best. If you disagree then... well... you, uh, suck, maybe.

>>6103308
seriously? You have a defence for All's Well That Ends Well? At leas two gentleman has Lance & Crab to prop it up but....All's Well? Seriously?

(this genuine question comes with the caveat that I too REALLY rather enjoy Shakespeare but...I can say some of his plays are pretty woeful. MOST are fucking immortal works but, that said, the guy just wrote wrote wrote without revision so it's hardly blasphemy to say some turned out better than others)

>>6103135
My fucking NIGGA

Henry V is the best of the history plays and deserves to break out of those and be ranked with Shakespeare's other works. It features Shakespeare's greatest monologue (the St. Crispin's Day Speech), his most heroic character (Henry), and it features the funniest scene in all of Shakespeare (Fluellen making Pistol eat his leek).

>>6103322
Isn't Julius Caesar the Patrician one?

>>6103308
>liking as you like it and all the histories

undiscriminating pigs are not welcome

>>6103304
I prefer King Lear, actually. I like when think are lead to an inescapable conclusion.

>>6103333
There is no way in hell that leak stuff is funnier than Falstaff in the Boar's Head recounting his "escape", funnier than all of Twelfth Night, funnier than the mechanicals play??

It definitely has DIZZYING highs but a LOT of it is just bullshit propaganda painting Henry in the broadest strokes imaginable. "Well this war isnt MY fault." "Well torturing these betrayers isnt MY fault" "well killing all my prisoners isn't MY fault".

St.Crispin's day is fucking incredible. I cannot even front.

>>6103019
Hamlet
Love's Labor Lost

Did anyone else actually really enjoy Titus Andronicus?

Shit was awesome.

>>6103358
Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare doing what amounts to the 16th century exploitation flick. And that's great.

>>6103353
>bullshit propaganda
You fail then too see what most people don't either. It's actually a subversion, the nobles speak in verse of glory and honor and in the next scene the soldiers speak in a mockery of their verse of the horrors they face

>>6103367
I can use "too" and "to" correctly so maybe I'll just ignore your erroneous assumptions of what I am and am not aware of in that play. Enjoy your deluded opinions, kiddo.

Best: Titus Andronicus

Worst: A Midsummer Night's Dream

>>6103414
>uses one grammatical error to give off a smug air of superiority
You're insecure and dumb.

Best: Titus Andronicus

Worst: The two gentlemen of Verona

Plebs diss Titus Andronicus because they don't understand its satiric reinterpretation of religious typology.

>>6103414
reddit is that way ----->

>>6103019
best:

worst: othello

source: othello has a nigger in it

>King Lear
>Macbeth
>Hamlet
>Romeo and Juliet
>The Tempest
>Timon of Athens

In official order

>>6103484
Othello is shit because Iago is not even a real character. He's just a narrative trick to get the story going.

>>6103495
Othello is literally the best Shakespeare play.

>>6103019
Best - Troilus and Cressida - for it paints a realistic portrait of most romantic relationships, also Hektor is the noblest of Shakespeare's creations.

Worst - Much Ado About Nothing - Just utterly uninteresting.

>>6103492
>Romeo and Juliet in fourth place

The only thing official here is your conceit, négro.

Cardenio

Love's Labour's Won.

>>6103505
Othello, just like Titus Andronicus, does not always feature portrayed human beings, but rather, often "acts with a name" and characters in the etymological sense of the term.

>>6103335
E-everything has its high points anon

>>6103508
Romeo and Juliet is a great work dealing with the battle between church and state, politics and hubris, as well as gender identity; Romeo literally becomes a woman.

>>6103492
post a pic of your face to prove you don't have down syndrome

>>6103434
"you fail to see what most people don't either"
Calling ME smug and superior. That is just "to" much.

>>6103517
Just because Iago isn't some kind of 'complex villain' like Shylock doesn't mean Othello is a bad play. Having a legitimate psychopath be the driving force of your play's action isn't inherently bad, either. The themes the play ends up exploring as a result of Iago's betrayals are of ultimately greater importance than the character's motivation.

>>6103514
I'm terrified you're right, anon.

>>6103536
Iago is not a pyschopath. Iago is not a human being.

Iago goes like "Hah, I shall be evil, for no reason!"

That's not what a psychopath does, and this kind of shit is the opposite of what makes Shakespeare deep; thoroughly examinating his characters' consciousness and motives.

Just remember his worst play is still better than anything else produced in the last 400 years

>>6103547
You obviously don't get it. Did you read Othello or just the wikipedia article? I don't get why someone would show everyone how pleb they are. go back to reddit if you want someone to spoon-fed Shakespeare to you.

>>6103550
It's that glorious blank verse. The greatest use of the English language you'll ever see.

>>6103547
I usually don't talk to tripfags, because I think you guys range from clowns to buffoons, but Iago explicitly says he believes Othello fucked his wife.

Not exactly "no reason".

Read more carefully or refrain from talking. Certainly, refrain from tripping if you're going to post such embarrassing stuff.

>>6103576
He explicitly says he doesn't know, then wants to bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.

>>6103576
He also got passed up for a promotion.

Although neither of them is really enough motivation for Iago to become the Devil, which he says he does.

>>6103591
Plus all that posting on /pol/ had addled his brain.

Best: Troilus and Cressida

Worst: The Taming of the Shrew

>>6103547
>Iago goes like "Hah, I shall be evil, for no reason!"

Iago doesnt do evil to the other characters. He lets the greed and jealousy of other characters destroy them. That is why Othello is one of the greatest play of The Bard. Othello, Roderigo, Cassio, Emilia, they all destroy themselves.

>>6103532
Most people think that Fahrenheit 451 is about censorship. Pointing out that this isn't the case isn't smug. Harping over a grammatical error and using words like "deluded" and "kid" is smug.

>>6103019
I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: “King Lear,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamlet” and “Macbeth,” not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole of the civilized world to be trivial and positively bad, or whether the significance which this civilized world attributes to the works of Shakespeare was itself senseless. My consternation was increased by the fact that I always keenly felt the beauties of poetry in every form; then why should artistic works recognized by the whole world as those of a genius,—the works of Shakespeare,—not only fail to please me, but be disagreeable to me? For a long time I could not believe in myself, and during fifty years, in order to test myself, I several times recommenced reading Shakespeare in every possible form, in Russian, in English, in German and in Schlegel’s translation, as I was advised. Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself, I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the “Henrys,” “Troilus and Cressida,” the “Tempest,” “Cymbeline,” and I have felt, with even greater force, the same feelings,—this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent merits,—thereby distorting their esthetic and ethical understanding,—is a great evil, as is every untruth.

>>6103698
Search in Shakespeare for statesmanship, or even citizenship, or any sense of the commonwealth, material or spiritual, and you will not find the making of a decent vestryman or curate in the whole horde. As to faith, hope, courage, conviction, or any of the true heroic qualities, you find nothing but death made sensational, despair made stage-sublime, sex made romantic, and barrenness covered up by sentimentality and the mechanical lilt of blank verse.

All that you miss in Shakespeare you find in Bunyan, to whom the true heroic came quite obviously and naturally. The world was to him a more terrible place than it was to Shakespeare; but he saw through it a path at the end of which a man might look not only forward to the Celestial City, but back on his life and say: ‘Tho’ with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get them.’ The heart vibrates like a bell to such utterances as this; to turn from it to ‘Out, out, brief candle,’ and ‘The rest is silence,’ and ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded by a sleep’ is turn from life, strength, resolution, morning air and eternal youth, to the terrors of a drunken nightmare.

>>6103698
>>6103703
>slavposting in a bardthread

fuck off

>>6103495
Iago is the fullest character in Shakespeare after Hamlet.

>>6103698
>>6103703
You would have that a person, such as Shaw, who had read so much poetry would know better.

>Search in Shakespeare for statesmanship, or even citizenship, or any sense of the commonwealth, material or spiritual, and you will not find the making of a decent vestryman or curate in the whole horde. As to faith, hope, courage, conviction, or any of the true heroic qualities, you find nothing but death made sensational, despair made stage-sublime, sex made romantic, and barrenness covered up by sentimentality and the mechanical lilt of blank verse.

It should be one of the basic meanings of pleb to try and force art into some neat little definition of what is and is not. According to him, the only thing that would deserve to be known as art is something is something with stock heroic characters of little complexity.

Muh Rankings
Lear
Hamlet
Henry IV Part 1
As You Like It
Othello
Antony and Cleopatra
12th Night
Henry IV part 2
MacBeth
King Richard II
The Merchant of Venice
King Richard III
The Tempest
Henry V
Romeo and Juliet
Julius Caesar

And I haven't read the rest. I've got Coriolanus; The Winter's Tale; A Midsummer Night's Comedy and Measure for Measure sitting on my shelf. Which one should I read next?

>>6103795
Coriolanus, him and the villain basically gay out at one point

>>6103812
Sounds gay. Will read. And fap.

>>6103223
I understand someone not liking Troilus, but calling it his worst? He's at the top of his game with both prose and verse and turns the most beloved war story in Western culture into a farce. If it's been a while since you've read it, I encourage you to try it again.

>>6103507
The "noblest" character in Troilus is a diseased cripple who spends the entirety of the play shitting on the other characters and getting beaten.

>>6103304
Hamlet has within it the most famous sequence of words ever written though

>>6103975
>HURR LE FAME IS LE EQUAL TO QUALITY POST LE REDDIT GOLD UPBOAT XDDDDDDDD DDDD DD K DID U KNOW UTJR [ZX;.DSAK'
'FGsd

>>6103975
Thou shalt not kill ?

>>6103019

I really enjoyed Hamlet

I really fucking hated Taming of the Shrew

>>6103864
I read it right after I read Chaucer's Troilus, which is both actually about Troilus and just blows it out of the water. Shakespeare's felt all over the place in terms of tone, and not in the Lear/Tempest way where it seemed like he had control of the mix of tones.

There's some decent stuff in it. Even the worst Shakespeare play is better than 99% of what's out there.

>>6104599
>Even the worst Shakespeare play is better than 99% of what's out there.
lol you're drank the kool aid.

My favourite, my least favourite.

I love the merchant of Venice, dislike Macbeth

Twelfth Night

Hamlet

The Importance of Being Ernest.