/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13588262]

Post good analyses of Shakespeare.

[Anonymous No.13588325]

marlowe was better

[Anonymous No.13588337]

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[5] 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[6] discover in him non-existent merits,—thereby distorting their esthetic and ethical understanding,—is a great evil, as is every untruth.

[Anonymous No.13588682]

>>13588262
Playwright from The Middle Ages

[Anonymous No.13588689]

>>13588337
Therein lies the origin of the fatal fallacy, by which it is possible to treat the great man of literature as if he were but a dream-monster, a personified image of an imagined world, and yet it is not impossible for one who has never even met with one of those images to become convinced of some vague idea of Shakespeare, of him as an image, or a hero, or even of himself. This does not imply that men have no art of their own, and not merely that the art is as worthless as the idol. It certainly implies, but it is not necessary, that men have no skill of their own, or that their skill requires some qualification or a qualification, in order to be able to write properly or to speak correctly.