Much larger Devil In Detail: no Shakespear

[reformer]

ok, since the no SNL post, this board has had a fad with devil's in detail, noticible differences with cultural not politial or enviornmental or military PODs.

So how about doing one a little more important: Shakespear, or whoever else wrote his plays, became a town drunk/out of work actor, and his plays and poetry are either not written or completely forgotten. How does this effect world culture over time?

[jolo]

Personally, I see Shakespeares greatest contribution in making people think more realistically, less superstitious. Maybe he was just expressing what was happening anyways - but I believe he helped stabilize, maybe even further a development which led to enlightenment, which in turn made industrialization much more likely. So the UK without Shakespeare maybe a much weaker UK, and the Development of all of Europe may have been more in line with the development of the rest of the world. Many possibilities for PoDs... :-)

[Grettir Asmundarsen]

Personally, I see Shakespeares greatest contribution in making people think more realistically, less superstitious. Maybe he was just expressing what was happening anyways - but I believe he helped stabilize, maybe even further a development which led to enlightenment, which in turn made industrialization much more likely. So the UK without Shakespeare maybe a much weaker UK, and the Development of all of Europe may have been more in line with the development of the rest of the world. Many possibilities for PoDs... :-)


LOL! Sounds like you're regurgitating what they told you in a lower-division English class.

If Shakespeare had never existed, the English would've found another writer to worship--Ben Jonson maybe. Shakespeare is more a symbol of English nationalism and a convenient linguistic boundary-line between Middle English and Modern English tha an example of a good playwright or poet. His stuff is just plain lame.

[reformer]

oof, come on folks. . . shakespear had a larger influence than language transition and superstition . . .

[Grettir Asmundarsen]

oof, come on folks. . . shakespear had a larger influence than language transition and superstition . . .

Yeah, he made the abomination of melodrama acceptable and permanently destroyed English dramatic poesy.

[Count Dearborn]

Ones to step up:

Christopher Marlowe
Benjamin Johson
Sir Francis Bacon
Or if you go with a certain Victorian essay, his apochyphal sister, Judith.

[Forum Lurker]

I'd expect Marlowe to be the major filler of the niche; many of the two authors' plays had similar plots, and I believe they used similar poetic methods as well.

[reformer]

But none of them are nearly as good as shakespear. . . i mean think about the impact he had. . . there have to be at least twenty operas bassed on his plays, and over a hundred movies. . .

[Grettir Asmundarsen]

But none of them are nearly as good as shakespear. . . i mean think about the impact he had. . . there have to be at least twenty operas bassed on his plays, and over a hundred movies. . .

And all of them are lame.

[jolo]

LOL! Sounds like you're regurgitating what they told you in a lower-division English class.

If Shakespeare had never existed, the English would've found another writer to worship--Ben Jonson maybe. Shakespeare is more a symbol of English nationalism and a convenient linguistic boundary-line between Middle English and Modern English tha an example of a good playwright or poet. His stuff is just plain lame.

When you read his words without understanding them, they are lame. I also thought so in school. Still, his influence goes far beyond mere cultural. And later artists would not have had such an influence until today.

[Grettir Asmundarsen]

When you read his words without understanding them, they are lame. I also thought so in school. Still, his influence goes far beyond mere cultural. And later artists would not have had such an influence until today.

Shakespeare's continuing influence is based solely upon English nationalism. His stuff is lame--no different than the afternoon soap operas.

Shakespeare does melodrama--melodrama is lame by definition. Even Samuel Johnson, the guy who wrote the Preface to Shakepseares collected works, admits that melodrama, hence Shakespeare, is lame.

And I got an A in my upper-division Shakespeare class, which was required for my AB in English.

[Count Dearborn]

No Shakespeare, no Star Trek. Roddenbury was a big fan of Shakespeare.

[Rick Robinson]

No Shakespeare, no Star Trek. Roddenbury was a big fan of Shakespeare.

Which explains why about one in three episodes of the original Trek were ripoffs of The Tempest. :D

If you want melodrama, try John Webster's Duchess of Malfi; Shakespeare is not particularly melodramatic for the theater of his time.

To the point, doing away with Shakespeare obviously does away with all the various borrowings of his plots, down to West Side Story and 10 Things I Hate About You. No Romeo and Juliet references, and the letter J has some other name in the military phonetic alphabet. Hundreds of familiar cliche lines (they weren't cliches when Shakespeare wrote them!) evaporate. A good many words vanish from the vocabulary of the English language.

Kit Marlowe steps into the place of Leading Elizabethan Playwright - Jonson is more Jacobean. But since Marlowe's output was so much smaller than Shakespeare's, the Elizabethan theater will loom less large than in OTL.

John Belushi can no longer be accused of speedballing himself to death before he ever had a chance to play Falstaff.

Henry V is a big loser - he is remembered now almost entirely due to Shakespeare's character, not the historical king himself.

Richard III is sort of a wash. On the one hand, he's no longer remembered mainly as the villain of the play. On the other hand, as a relatively obscure historical figure there's no active movement to rehabilitate his reputation, so he's still hung with offing the Princes in the Tower, though the whole episode is less well known.

Perhaps the Arthurian cycle is a bit of a winner. It's an oddity that Shakespeare never drew on Arthurian themes, so they probably loom a bit larger in the literary tradition than they already do.

Is the general shape of English literature in the last 400 years changed, beyond the lack of specifically Shakespearean echoes? Probably not, because on the whole Shakespeare more amplified existing trends rather than sending English lit off in a new direction.

-- Rick

[Grettir Asmundarsen]

Most of Shakespeare's stuff was ripped-off from Italian and French playwrights anyway. He was not original at all--he just was willing to mix tragedy and comedy.

[Sgt Ed]

Shakespeare's continuing influence is based solely upon English nationalism. His stuff is lame--no different than the afternoon soap operas.

Shakespeare does melodrama--melodrama is lame by definition. Even Samuel Johnson, the guy who wrote the Preface to Shakepseares collected works, admits that melodrama, hence Shakespeare, is lame.

And I got an A in my upper-division Shakespeare class, which was required for my AB in English.

I know I'm going to open up a can of worms here, but to me it sounds like a lot of people are complaining about Shakespeare because they were forced to take a class in school. Yes, to the modern ear a lot of his stuff is hard to understand. Yes, a lot of his stuff is melodrama.

So what.

The reason that Shakespeare is still popular after 400 years is that he understood the concept of the archetype. Good vs Evil. The battle that goes on inside each and every one of us. His plays speak to that, and it's as true today as it was then. If it wasn't, we wouldn't still be talking about him.

Now I'll be the first to admit that Hamlet should have ran his sword through Uncle Claudius the moment he got back to Denmark, and not spent 5 acts pissing and moaning about "To be or not to be". But if he had done that, Hamlet wouldn't have been much of a play, now would it?

As for his contributions to the English language, let's take a look at his record, shall we?

Hamlet:
This above all; to thine own self be true.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, that are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

Julius Caesar:
Cry "havoc" and let slip the dogs of war.
It was Greek to me.
Et tu, Brute?

Henry IV:
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Henry V:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...

Romeo and Juliet:
That which we call a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.
A plague o' both your houses!

I could go on and on. A world without Shakespeare would be a poorer one indeed. I realize that it has become fashionable to denigrate the man, not to mention the repeated claims that he didn't exist, or someone else wrote his plays, but give the guy a break.

And quit blaming the man because you had to sit through "Troilus and Cressida" in English Lit!

OK, rant over. Let the lambasting begin.

[fortyseven]

*claps loudly*

[Grettir Asmundarsen]

Shakespeare's "archtypes" were invented by the Italians and perfected by the French.

And none of those quotes has any real meaning in the modern world, they just sound "literate."

He was merely a nationalist symbol.

[Sgt Ed]

Shakespeare's "archtypes" were invented by the Italians and perfected by the French.

And none of those quotes has any real meaning in the modern world, they just sound "literate."

He was merely a nationalist symbol.

Guess again. Archetypes, if they were "invented" by anyone, it certainly wasn't the French or the Italians. The Greeks you might be able to make a case for, 2000 years earlier, but I imagine they got their ideas from the Egyptians, Phoenecians, and Minoans. Who got them from some time so far back they didn't leave written records. Unless you count cave paintings.

No meaning in the modern world? Allow me to "translate" then:

It was Greek to me-I don't understand
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown-It's lonely at the top
This above all; to thine own self be true-Be true to yourself

Heck, that one alone accounts for most of the self-help books and advice columns you see.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark-Something ain't right here
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't-I know this looks crazy, but I have a plan

If these sayings, and the others like them, truly had no meaning in the modern world, then we WOULDN'T use them anymore! How often do you hear people talking about busking? Phlogiston? You don't, because THOSE ideas have no meaning in the modern world.

As for being a Nationalist symbol, I assume you mean an English-speaking one. English is the language of the modern world. Period. Not Latin. Not French (Though they still refuse to accept that. Don't get me started on why they use "poste d'electronique" instead of "email" like everyone else.) And certainly not Swedish.

Case in point, what language is this board in again? English is THE language of the modern world.

Deal with it.

[Leo Caesius]

How often do you hear people talking about busking?Actually, quite often. Maybe it's a Boston thing.

[Grettir Asmundarsen]

No meaning in the modern world? Allow me to "translate" then:

It was Greek to me-I don't understand
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown-It's lonely at the top
This above all; to thine own self be true-Be true to yourself

Heck, that one alone accounts for most of the self-help books and advice columns you see.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark-Something ain't right here
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't-I know this looks crazy, but I have a plan




Wow, those all make great slogans for printing on T-shirts or coffee cups; or maybe things that Brooke would say to Beau on "Days of Our Lives."

Yogi Berra quotes are less lame than Shakespeare.

(And the only reason you know those passages at all is because a bunch of English nationalists got together back in the 17th and 18th centuries and decided that you would know them.)

[Leo Caesius]

Were there even people answering to the modern description of "nationalist" in the 17th century?

[Sgt Ed]

Wow, those all make great slogans for printing on T-shirts or coffee cups; or maybe things that Brooke would say to Beau on "Days of Our Lives."

Yogi Berra quotes are less lame than Shakespeare.

(And the only reason you know those passages at all is because a bunch of English nationalists got together back in the 17th and 18th centuries and decided that you would know them.)

So your arguement has descended down to sarcasm? Boy, did you EVER cross swords with the wrong person!

Show of hands, all those who believe Shakespeare was one of the most influential writers in the last 500 years? OK, that would be just about every writer, teacher, professor, and reader since 1600.

Opposed? 1

The ayes have it.

Grettir, get some therapy. Or better yet, just try growing up.

[Grettir Asmundarsen]

Grettir, get some therapy. Or better yet, just try growing up.

LOL! I'm not the one resorting to ad hominem attacks.

The reason that so many poeple, like you, refuse to recognize Shakespeare for the lame rip-off artist that he is is because it's what you've been programmed to regurgitate.

Many of my English professors (and fellow students) thought little of Shakespeare, but were afriad to voice their criticism in print--for fear of being burnt at the stake of literary orthodoxy.

Read Johnson's "Preface to Shakespeare"--even he recognizes Shakespeare's lameness, before remembering to praise it.

[Imajin]

Can't we just agree that people have different opinions on how good Shakespeare was, rather than trying to "convert" each other to each others opinions?

[Ivan Druzhkov]

Can't we just agree that people have different opinions on how good Shakespeare was, rather than trying to "convert" each other to each others opinions?
You dare to suggest that the viewpoints of others are as valid as mine? To the scorpion pits with you!

[Sgt Ed]

The reason that so many poeple, like you, refuse to recognize Shakespeare for the lame rip-off artist that he is is because it's what you've been programmed to regurgitate.

Many of my English professors (and fellow students) thought little of Shakespeare, but were afriad to voice their criticism in print--for fear of being burnt at the stake of literary orthodoxy.

Read Johnson's "Preface to Shakespeare"--even he recognizes Shakespeare's lameness, before remembering to praise it.

Taking your "arguments" in order:

Programmed? My school barely touched on Shakespeare, it wasn't until I was older that I rediscovered Shakespeare on my own. And no one programs me about anything.

If your professors lack the moral courage to stand up for their beliefs, then they have no business teaching. A teacher instructs not only by what he or she says, but by what they do.


And to quote the esteemed Dr. Johnson's Preface: Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.

Hmm, seems to me that he had a great deal of respect for the man. Maybe you see something there I don't.

And the sections where he is less than praising of Shakespeare and his works, I think we need to examine Johnson's body of writings. Primarily he is known for his English Dictionary, an important work to be sure, and his various essays. Essays today would be called Editorials, or Columns. They are a reflection of Dr. Johnson's beliefs and his attitudes, and while he was a formidable intellect, he wasn't a writer in the sense that Shakespeare was. Johnson did write a handful of poems and storys, such as Rasselas, but his works were overwhelmingly non-fiction.

Dr. Johnson was, first and foremost, a critic. And what was is true today about critics was just as true then; "Those who can, do. Those who can't, criticize."

A philosophy that I see from your posts you have taken firmly to heart.

[Grettir Asmundarsen]

Rasselas was a better piece of writing than anything Shakespeare ever did. And, it has a lot more bearing on today's world than anything Shakepseare wrote. The "Vanity of Human Wishes" has had a lot more impact upon today's society than everything Shakespeare wrote, combined. He hides in verse what Paine says in ranting invective--30 years earlier.

And Johnson was commisioned to write his Preface for a collection of Shakepseare's works--that's why you need to read between the lines. Modern Shakespeare-nazis like to claim that Johnson is just following the rules of argument in presenting Bill's weaknesses; problem is: those rules did not yet exist. Shakespeare was already established as the official English poesy purveyor by the time Johnson was writing, criticizing him was tantamount to treason. It still is, literarily speaking.

That's why college professors cannot criticize Shakespeare (unless they've already got tenure. But then they have to continue paying their false obeisance to him in order to not be accused of intellectual dishonesty in their pre-tenure effusive praise).

[Rick Robinson]

My reaction to reading Shakespeare was that I expected hype, and concluded that he deserved it. He is more complex and less melodramatic than the norm of the Elizabethan theater, but there's a bigness to him - bad Shakespeare is spectacularly BAAAD; e.g., Titus Andronicus.

Remember that in his time and context he was the equivalent of a Hollywood screenwriter; the theater was not particularly reputable. Nor was he especially reputable when Johnson wrote the Preface - he violated the "unities," then held in high esteem.

Having said all that, this is not a lit-crit forum. Whether or not Shakespeare deserves his reputation, he has it, and his impact on subsequent English lit has been enormous. A POD that eliminates him would have all sorts of impacts on subsequent literature, from the dramatic to the subtle.

-- Rick

[Sgt Ed]

My reaction to reading Shakespeare was that I expected hype, and concluded that he deserved it. He is more complex and less melodramatic than the norm of the Elizabethan theater, but there's a bigness to him - bad Shakespeare is spectacularly BAAAD; e.g., Titus Andronicus.

Remember that in his time and context he was the equivalent of a Hollywood screenwriter; the theater was not particularly reputable. Nor was he especially reputable when Johnson wrote the Preface - he violated the "unities," then held in high esteem.

Having said all that, this is not a lit-crit forum. Whether or not Shakespeare deserves his reputation, he has it, and his impact on subsequent English lit has been enormous. A POD that eliminates him would have all sorts of impacts on subsequent literature, from the dramatic to the subtle.

-- Rick

Rick, I couldn't agree more.

[Max Sinister]

Nor was he especially reputable when Johnson wrote the Preface - he violated the "unities," then held in high esteem.

That's a good point: AFAIK, before Shakespeare, all the plays had to adher to the unity of time (ie no "...two days later") and unity of space (no "meanwhile in the castle" either). Scrap that, and unless $ANOTHER_GENIUS comes up with that idea instead of Shakespeare, you'll get a completely different culture. Try to imagine the latest flick or TV show you saw without jumps in time and space. Read some Roman or Greek play and compare with Shakespeare, you'll see the difference.

[Melvin Loh]

Linguistically, would English have developed the same as it did without Shakespeare ? Would American English esp have sounded as it does today had Shakespeare not been around by the time of English colonisation of the New World ?

Ah, can't imagine a literary world without the classical likes of HENRY V (my favourite Shakespeare play), ROMEO & JULIET, HAMLET or MACBETH...