/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6731198]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11694297/William-Shakespeares-jokes-are-just-not-funny-Sir-Richard-Eyre-admits.html

tl;dr: A patrician guy says that Shakespeare isn't funny.

PRETENTIOUS TRYHARDS BTFO

[Anonymous No.6731214]

>>6731198
this guy has no authority over my opinion

[Anonymous No.6731256]

the article just says modern tards dont into word play.

He is right about that, but its not Shakespeare's fault modern audiences are retarded.

[Anonymous No.6731262]

Look at him! He thinks patricians cannot disagree with each other.

[Anonymous No.6731263]

>>6731198
cool, now I can pretend that I do understand Shakespeare and still don't find him funny.

[Anonymous No.6731285]

>>6731198
I make my decisions from my own experiences. I laughed a lot reading Shakespeare's plays

inb4 >laughing because he's shit

He's genuinely hilarious

[Anonymous No.6731286]

To be honest, Shakespeare has never elicited more than a smirk from me.

The funniest English poet to me is Rochester.

[Anonymous No.6731317]

The thing is, you really can't judge stage comedy based solely on how it comes across on the page, as many people tend to do with Shakespeare. His plays can actually be very funny in performance but it largely depends on the delivery/ comic timing of the actors.

[Anonymous No.6731329]

>>6731317
>can't judge stage comedy based solely on how it comes across on the page
Sounds like you just don't know how to read tbh

[Anonymous No.6731337]

>>6731329
No, he's right. Shakespeare was initially experienced as a stage performance, any reading that doesn't account for possible performance-driven eventualities is trying too hard to do too much with too little.

[Anonymous No.6731341]

>>6731337
Oh look, another illiterate.

[Anonymous No.6731342]

>>6731329
Plays are great by themselves, but you cannot deny that seeing them acted doesn't fulfill them completely.

[Anonymous No.6731357]

>>6731329
>>6731341
Sounds like you've never been on stage tbh

[Anonymous No.6731361]

>>6731342
More like render Shakespeare's words completely meaningless. There's not an actor dead or alive that can perform Hamlet as well as I can in my bedroom. I guess it takes someone with Shakespeare's own cognitive powers to truly appreciate him.

[Anonymous No.6731367]

>>6731361

[Anonymous No.6731368]

>>6731361
eh, worthless bait.
have a nice day

[Anonymous No.6731376]

>>6731342
Shakespeare is Shakespeare because of his language, not his stage directions. It's extremely difficult to pick up on the nuances in live theatre, especially considering the pace at which the dialogue is delivered and the fact that we're not accustomed to the sort of syntax and diction that's often used in Shakespeare's verse.
Another thing, it takes many years of experience to be able to detect the metrical shifts and manipulation of Shakespeare's verse when it's spoken aloud in a theatre setting. Every poet worth their salt will tell you to read a poem out loud and as slowly as possible; this is so one can get everything out of a line of verse, ie the sound of it, the feel of it, and the meaning of it.
It doesn't matter that Shakespeare wrote the plays to be performed; he still WROTE them. Do you think he expected the common pauper that went to see his performances to pick up on every detail he put into his lines? Hardly. One gets the most out of Shakespeare when one reads and studies the verse itself. One can easily imagine what it'd look like when performed, if one desired to do so. The plot is the least important aspect of a Shakeapeare piece; they're all literally ripped from Greek and Roman myths anyways. If you're interested in the plot of a Shakespeare play, you're better off reading the myth he based it on. He's regarded as the greatest english bard because of his language, which one can only get intimate with when reading.

[Anonymous No.6731379]

>>6731341
Sorry you can't into theater, the truly patrician art invented by the Greeks themselves
Pleb

[Anonymous No.6731397]

>>6731376
>Shakespeare was only Shakespeare insofar as we ignore the form in which most of his work, including his best poetry, was presented to every publisher and audience
>Character and drama and pathos are best experienced textually and having actors involved removes too much from the experience of the work for it to matter
>No one can get muh textual nuances onstage
>Performances can't be as moving as or compliment the text as well as my masturbatory self-aggrandizing obsession with an artificial division between poetry and other elements of poesis

Idiot

[Anonymous No.6731407]

>>6731397
I'd be more inclined to explain this to you if you were capable of writing like a big boy as opposed to responding in memes. No wonder you're misinformed, watching a play is much easier for a child than reading one.

[Anonymous No.6731415]

>>6731407
See
>>6731357
>>6731379

[Anonymous No.6731474]

>>6731379
>>6731415
>invented by the greeks themselves
Fuck does that even mean? I don't know how that's supposed to lend any weight to whatever you're trying to say.

Anyway, no one ever said Shakespeare shouldn't be performed, but in my experience it's always been far less enjoyable than what I pictured while reading. Kenneth Branagh spent millions of dollars to make Hamlet into a film, but it was a bad reading of the play. The tone and representation of the characters was dull and the comedy wasn't there in places it should have been.

The point is Shakespeare's plays would be better experienced read alone by a good reader than seen in an incompetent production.

[Anonymous No.6731477]

>>6731474
Admit it, you've never even set foot in a real theatre, did you ?

How can you possibly think your feeble mind can alter the text to the point that it drifts from Shakespeare's original intend of having it played, to a simple novel ?

Surely you jest.
The only plays meant to be read are those written to be read, like Lorenzaccio.

[Anonymous No.6731487]

>>6731477
Fuck of ESL faggot. It's widely accepted Shakespeare intended to be read, which is why his plays were never performed in full.

[Anonymous No.6731492]

>>6731487
Pleb
That's literally the only possible response to you

[Anonymous No.6731493]

>>6731487
>author intent
LOL
O
L

look at this pleb over here

[Anonymous No.6731495]

>>6731487
so fucking disgusting holy shit

[Anonymous No.6731496]

>>6731474
>This movie wasn't what I imagined with my utterly abstract understanding g of what theater consists of
>Therefore there have never been good productions of Shalespeare's plays

[Anonymous No.6731500]

>>6731492
You don't even speak English, m8. It's no wonder you'd rather see Shakespeare performed badly than read him, because it's still an improvement on your own capabilities.

[Anonymous No.6731506]

>>6731493
You don't know what authorial intent means. And you completely ignored that the guy I was arguing with was claiming Shakespeare was meant to be performed.

[Anonymous No.6731509]

>>6731500
>You don't even speak English
Kek, you think anyone who thinks ks there's value in performance is ESL? You'll tell yourself anything to feel superior.

[Anonymous No.6731514]

>>6731506
If Shakespeare wasn't meant to be performed why did he publish so much of his output in play form?

[Anonymous No.6731517]

No one likes Shakespeare's comedies though. It's only his tragedies that are well regarded. And if you think feeble puns and pathetic wordplay is "funny" or even good, you need to off yourself.

[Anonymous No.6731519]

>>6731514
>authorial intent

[Anonymous No.6731525]

>>6731519
You're the one arguing that it *wasn't* meant to be X. Negative intent is still intent. It doesn't seem like you know who you're arguing with because there are so many people calling you stupid, I'm not the authorial intent guy.

[Anonymous No.6731533]

>>6731517
>implying dad humor is not humor in its most patrician form

[Anonymous No.6731535]

>>6731525
Not this guy
How can you understand Shakespeare when you can't even figure out wich interlocutor you are responding to ?

[Anonymous No.6731540]

>>6731525
>You're the one arguing that it *wasn't* meant to be X
lol. except the complete opposite.

[Anonymous No.6731549]

>>6731517
>No one likes Shakespeare's comedies though. It's only his tragedies that are well regarded.

Yeah, this is objectively false.

[Anonymous No.6732003]

>>6731517
LOL
>Twelfth night
>the merchant of Venice
>a midsummer night's dream
>the tempest
>much ado about nothing

[Anonymous No.6732018]

>>6732003
>good

[Anonymous No.6732050]

>>6731506
>And you completely ignored that the guy I was arguing with was claiming Shakespeare was meant to be performed
is this le bait?

[Anonymous No.6732083]

>>6732003
Prospero is ma nigga, tbh.

[Anonymous No.6732090]

Can this be a "favorite Shakespeare comedy" thread, now?

As You Like It.

It's great laughing atJaques' pretensions and I think I'm in love with Rosalind. Even and especially when she was a he. No homo.

[Anonymous No.6732117]

>>6732090
as you like it is my sentimental favorite play. that play just makes me happy as fuck every time i think about it.

[Anonymous No.6732385]

>>6732090

Measure for Measure. I love the Dukes bizarre, amoral scheming and the scenes with Angelo and Isabella are sexy as hell. It's fun to watch his infatuation-cum-rage-boner for her go off the rails and see them talking past one another until it dawns on her what he's saying.