<p>do u like him? do u not like him? all opinions-including those of haters-are welcome.</p>
<p>p.s. i, personally, can not stand his plays. i mean, sure, he invented a bunch of new words, but, content-wise, do ALL of his characters have to be basically variations of one another? must EVERYONE die? does there really need to be the same themes shown throughout all of his works?!?! why have we read so many of this guy's plays?! i just end up spark-note-ing most of it, anyways. gah, it's frustrating :|</p>
<p>NO. I abhor him. Why? Because my English teacher assigned us to memorize lines of various Shakespearean plays. And his writing does not have substantial effect as many early writers have. It’s not his writing that makes him popular but the plot. But yeah, I feel ya.</p>
<p>I agree about the plot part. But I think that his writing is regarded highly because it’s difficult to write. Seriously, try writing like he did with all the rhyme schemes and meters plus a deep meaning, it’s hard. I only liked some of his works though. Like Macbeth and some of his sonnets. I disliked King Lear for killing practically everyone, and Romeo and Juliet for its pervertedness. o.o</p>
<p>I have my problems with Shakespeare and appreciate thoughtful criticism of authors who are usually proclaimed, even by the ignorant, as amazing, but you’ve made several inaccurate statements.</p>
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I don’t know how much Shakespeare you’ve read, but his main characters, at the very least, do seem quite different to me. I’ve mostly read tragedies, and all of his tragic heros have different tragic flaws.</p>
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If you’re reading a tragedy, yes, EVERYONE must die. It’s a Classical rule of tragedies, and Shakespeare did not make it up. Check out Sophocles’ Theban tragedies. Everyone dies.
If you want to read a play where no one dies, make sure you don’t read the ones that start with “The Tragedie of …” and continue to “Othello, the Moor of Venice” or “Rome and Juliet” or “Julius Caesar” or “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.” No one dies in A Midsummer Nights Dream. No one dies in All’s Well Than Ends Well. Only people who actually died in history die in Shakespeare’s histories.</p>
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Most authors, unless they go through a dramatic evolution sometime during their careers, write about the same themes throughout their works.</p>
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I can understand your POV on all of the other complains, and I’m cool with that, but as a huge proponent of cultural literacy, I wish I could force everyone in the West to read Shakespeare. Seriously. Check out Flannery O’Connor’s Total Effect and the Eighth Grade. She puts it perfectly: </p>
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<p>If you want to read real Shakespeare criticism, look into TS Eliot’s commentary. He considered Hamlet to be a failed play, wherein, to put it as Hamlet might say “the numbers [could not] try the cause,” ie: Hamlet’s motive was too weak. Tolstoy, too, was vitriolic in his criticism of Shakespeare, saying that general love for the playwright was a “mass psychosis.” I’m not sure when Tolstoy came up with that idea. If it was in his later years when he hated “created” art, I can see why, but if it was in his youth, I really don’t know.</p>
<p>All of the above probably sounds like I love Shakespeare. I really don’t. He’s my sister’s thing. But I love Hamlet, and could sit here right now and type out over 200 lines for you. The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, black as his purpose, did the night resemble, when he lay couch</p>
<p>I like Shakespeare. It’s interesting to see how some of the world’s most beloved cliches/story lines all originated from his works. Plus, he may reiterate themes, but they’re fundamental ones that are prevalent and true throughout all of our lives, even today. I think that’s what I like the most about Shakespeare; his works are relevant even though they were written centuries ago. </p>
<p>Here’s my brief personal opinion on all the Shakespearean works I read in high school:</p>
<p>Really? I’ve read and enjoyed most of the tragedies I’ve read so far, and I’ve read a lot.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>All characters in all books are essentially variations of each other. Just like how all pieces of literature can be traced back to other pieces of literature. Writers feed off of each other. Besides, it’s not like there are many variations among people in the real world either (trust me, I could come up with a list of attributes and personalities that could describe almost every single person you’ll ever meet). Nevertheless, Shakespeare does include subtle differences among his characters (especially in his main ones, although he may use secondary characters to parallel certain themes), whether it be the character’s motives, weaknesses and strengths, or whatever - all which play an important role in affecting the character’s response to a situation. </p></li>
<li><p>Of course everyone has to die. They also have to fall from grace, lose their identities, gain insight from an unlikely source, etc. etc. Shakespeare, Star Wars, whatever. It’s how the author wants the audience to perceive these things that is always different.</p></li>
<li><p>Themes of struggle, identity, disorder and chaos, and insanity? What else more do you need to describe the darker side of humanity? Heart of Darkness uses those same exact themes.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>^lol, I find the crudeness quite off-putting personally, but it does add an interesting undertone.</p>
<p>I actually have started to enjoy Shakespeare, but I do think that it’s somewhat dumb to read the script to a play rather than seeing it performed–if you had to read the script to Wicked rather than see it, it would be 100x worse. Also, his plays were never meant to be intensely struggled over by English students, they were meant to entertain people at all levels of society. So I do think that reading Shakespeare is relatively stupid, but I nevertheless have been enjoying Hamlet as I read it.</p>
<p>I think his plays are great when performed. He didn’t have stage directions in his plays, so the variety of interpretations (not just the overly indulgent contemporary versions either) are really interesting. </p>
<p>But Eliot’s essay criticizing Hamlet makes a good point. I think Shakespeare’s sort of the James Cameron of his day, but somewhere along the line, his work became canonized just because it was so old and people were still reading it.</p>
<p>I loved the comedies the most. I’ve read Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado about Nothing for comedies and I absolutely loved the word play that is flippantly thrown around. I feel that the majority of the tragedies aren’t that great plot-wise anymore since everything is so cliche and obvious these days, but I still love the themes and the subtle implications that several scenes imply. Some of them seemed very very similar though, such as Macbeth and Richard III.</p>