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/lit/ - Literature

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16012644 No.16012644 [Reply] [Original]

Read any Shakespeare? How difficult do you find it? Have you needed companion notes? Anyone just went with completely translated prose versions?

>> No.16012659

Melville and Joyce are more difficult. Shakespeare is not very hard and you don't need companion notes for any literature. Richard III was his masterpiece.

>> No.16012683

>>16012644
How is Shakespeare any difficult, I loved it as a kid. Romeo and Juliet was my favourite thing together with Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Pushkin's Ruslan and Ludmila and Andersen's The Snow Queen and The Little Mermaid.

>> No.16012707

>>16012659
>Melville
>difficult
I'm reading Moby Dick right now and it's more like all over the place (with narration, I don't mind the non-narrative parts at all), not really difficult. Didn't finish it yet so can't really judge, but so far I don't see why does /lit/ love it as much as it does.

>> No.16012721

>>16012644
Pretty hard at the beginning as I didn't pay any attention to his or anyone else's work when I was in school. Gradually started getting better, then I taught myself to at least be comfortable reading Chaucer and stuff like Shakespeare and Spenser out of nowhere became pretty easy to read. Bit weird but I'm not complaining.

>> No.16012743

>>16012644
Notes are definitely useful and good. It's arrogant to think you can intuit Elizabethan slang, and it's pathetically incurious not to care about that.

This anon >>16012659 is retarded. Richard III is not even top 10.

>> No.16012756
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16012756

>Notes are definitely useful and good.

>> No.16012758

>>16012721
>Bit weird
What's weird?

>> No.16012797

>>16012644
Read King Lear last week, not in prose though, but translated(Russian). It had footnotes here and there, but overall it was a fun read, and I didn't experience any difficulties, apart from remembering characters names. Going to read Hamlet and Macbeth next.

>> No.16012837

>>16012797
>translated(Russian)
How's the translation? I was thinking about re-reading Shakespeare in a more coherent age, but I'm kinda discouraged from it because it feels like I'm having trouble properly comprehending poetry.

>> No.16012854

reading Shakespeare is like learning to ride a bike

>> No.16012896

>>16012797
How do they try to get across the archaic style in Russian, like what period of Russian literature does the translation resemble?

>> No.16013053
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16013053

>>16012644
>Anyone just went with completely translated prose versions?
To do so is sin.
I do read scene summaries to make sure I'm not missing any details, however.

>> No.16013088

>>16012758
Just a bit weird that even though I didn't spend any time actually reading Shakespeare, reading him after learning to read Chaucer became so much easier.

>> No.16013267

>>16013088
Ah, gotcha. Isn't Chaucer like straight up not even English?

>> No.16013322

I have to admit i wasnt as good with the old english as i thought, though it depends on which play. I haven't read much but I found Julius caesar to be the easiest to read so far, macbeth wasn't too bad either but it wasn't quite as easy as caesar was

>> No.16013446

>>16012644
The only good thing Shakespeare gave us was that big tiddy teen topless scene in Romeo And Juliet.

>> No.16013932
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16013932

>be me
>read Finnish translations of Shakespeare by a poet who also translated Milton's Paradise Lost and killed himself in the 50s
Yeah I'm thinking it's kino

>> No.16013976

>>16013932
>be you
>read translations

>> No.16014004

>>16013267
not the anon you were talking to but it's late middle english iirc

>> No.16014485
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16014485

>>16012644
>Anyone just went with completely translated prose versions?
If you are an adult with English as a first language there is no excuse for this.
>>16013267
Shakespeare's not hard to read for an adult native English speaker who reads
Chaucer needs notes and to learn Middle English pronunciation, and you should really subvocalise because some words are visually recognisable but not from hearing them and some are vice versa, but overall he's manageable
Beowulf is unreadable

>> No.16014556

>>16012644
you get used to the syntax after a bit. other than that, it's useful to read a version with some annotations for some phrases or words, like when there's a word whose definition has changed since shakespeare's time

>> No.16014585

>>16012644
They read Shakespeare in schools. Unless you're an ESL it's easy -- the average person may need to look up a few archaic words every now and then

>> No.16014601

>>16013322
>good with the old english
There's one in every thread.

>> No.16015004

>>16012644
No Fear Shakespeare is a pretty great resource; and they have quite a lot of his works.
I only did Romeo and Juliet and King Lear in secondary school. R&J was an easy read and not a terribly interesting one; even for my standards back then.
Needless to say Lear was a lot harder but a lot more gratifying. The exam questions they asked didn’t do it justice though; though they understandably made them kind of vague and approachable. Nevertheless I cannot comprehend how someone could write a 1000+ word essay on Cordelia besides writing “she’s honest” 500+ times.

>> No.16016851

bump