The Shakespeare Hoax?

Originally posted by Palynka
Interesting. Being a non-native speaker, I was repeatedly told about the extreme difficulty in reading Shakespeare. For me, the myth was the polar opposite. It's definitely not a doodle to me, but if you compare it to Milton and it is far easier to understand what is going on.

I find Milton extremely hard to read. The combination of archaic English and the amount of references and metaphors is just a nightmare.

Milton's English is neither archaic nor English but a hybrid of English vocabulary with Latin syntax penned by an angelic bureaucrat and read almost exclusively in Hell.

Shakespeare's characters use a variety of registers, according to their rank, but always speak recognisable English, even when they are speaking French.

By way of contrast, Ben Jonson, the learned killer playwright, mocked Shakespeare for having little Latin -- yet his works are hard to read nowadays than old Shakes', too clever by half.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Milton's English is neither archaic nor English but a hybrid of English vocabulary with Latin syntax penned by an angelic bureaucrat and read almost exclusively in Hell.

Shakespeare's characters use a variety of registers, according to their rank, but always speak recognisable English, even when they are speaking French.

By way of contrast, Ben ...[text shortened]... little Latin -- yet his works are hard to read nowadays than old Shakes', too clever by half.

*not sure if serious*

Originally posted by Palynka
*not sure if serious*

99%

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
99%

So you don't think Paradise Lost is English literature?

Originally posted by Palynka
So you don't think Paradise Lost is English literature?

Quite what English literature consists of is a subject best left to specialists. But there's no doubt that PL is an important donation. Tortuous syntax and strained verbosity don't exactly disqualify it. Besides, Milton's poems in Latin, not to mention Newton's Principia also form part of English literature!

Originally posted by FMF
The 'Shakespeare is a doddle... He wrote English, unaverage English, but quite recognizable and understandable English... I understood The Tempest the first time I saw it without reading it first...' kind of thing' is a 'hoax' - albeit a harmless one - if you ask me.

Hold on, mate... are you calling me a liar?

Richard

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Milton's English is neither archaic nor English but a hybrid of English vocabulary with Latin syntax penned by an angelic bureaucrat and read almost exclusively in Hell.

I wouldn't go that far, but it's certainly true that he intentionally wrote in a loftier, more intellectual style. Not always; his sonnet on that Oxford beadle - don't remember his name, but he was known personally to Milton and his friends - is much easier. It's also meant as a joke rather than as art, or as theology. Paradise Lost is certainly meant as both of the latter. It's chockful of beautiful lines, but easy it is not.

Shakespeare's characters use a variety of registers, according to their rank, but always speak recognisable English, even when they are speaking French.

After all, Shakespeare wrote not for the elite, but for the averagely-educated theatre-going public of his day. And that would have been just about anyone who wasn't a beggar or a workman, from the lower-middle class craftsman upwards. Most of them could probably barely read, if at all.

By way of contrast, Ben Jonson, the learned killer playwright, mocked Shakespeare for having little Latin -- yet his works are hard to read nowadays than old Shakes', too clever by half.

I've never read or seen anything by Jonson but fragments, so I can't comment. Note, though, that the poem in which he says that Shakespeare had "small Latin, and less Greek" is titled "To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare", and also contains the line "He was not of an age, but for all time!" If it was mockery, it was very loving mockery.

Richard

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
Hold on, mate... are you calling me a liar?

Nothing personal. I just don't believe you about The Tempest. Sorry. It's just for the purposes of this discussion.

Originally posted by FMF
I have been listening to some audio lectures on 'The Story Of Human Language' given by Professor of Linguistics, John McWhorter. He made an interesting 'admission' in a section on 'How Language Changes', which I have taken a moment to transcribe:

"We don't process Shakespeare as readily as we often suppose. With all humility I think there is a kind of mytholo ...[text shortened]... a bit of a hoax going on or is there just something wrong with McWhorter?

My wife and I are part of a group that goes to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival twice a year. We joined this on-going group in 1997. About half of the 11 plays we see each year are Shakespeare, the rest are usually modern. The Shakespeares are often presented in more modern garb such as 60's flower children or Nazi German military or Edwardian England or Roaring 20's, but the language is unchanged. We also attend OSF seminars and have actors, directors, etc. come chat with us at the B&B we take over, and we do a post-mortem on each play. Some of our group are very knowledgeable about the plays. The OSF has a reading room with all sorts of background material on each play of the season. There is a book by Isaac Asimov, of all people, that breaks down the plays, explaining unfamiliar references to gods, etc. I find it to be essential to dip into beforehand, or to look up what something was about, afterwards.

All that said, the Shakespeare play experience is not the same as the non-Shakespeare play experience and I am sure that the audiences in his day "got it" much more readily than we do today. But the plays are making their way into my understanding, and we enjoy seeing how they are going to be presented or what aspects the director will emphasize. The company has some turnover but there are actors we have seen in many roles, and we look forward to seeing how a given actor will approach a role. I do not much enjoy the histories and hope never to see Cymbeline again. I guess there are only about a dozen of his plays that I really look forward to seeing, another dozen or so that I am still marginal about, and the rest I go because it's a group thing.

Originally posted by JS357
There is a book by Isaac Asimov, of all people, that breaks down the plays, explaining unfamiliar references to gods, etc. I find it to be essential to dip into beforehand, or to look up what something was about, afterwards.

Wikipedia says:

Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970), ISBN 0-517-26825-6. Gramercy Books.

Nearly 800 pages long plus an index, the work was originally published in two volumes; Greek, Roman and Italian in the first and 'The English Plays' in the second.

Asimov dedicated the work to his father, Judah Asimov.

Originally posted by FMF
Nothing personal. I just don't believe you about The Tempest

You, sir, are a cad.

Richard

Originally posted by FMF
Nothing personal. I just don't believe you about The Tempest. Sorry. It's just for the purposes of this discussion.

To the casual reader like me, The Tempest seems quite accessible as does As You Like It - but they are light in content and soft in language. Some of the other books are tough going and I've ended up putting them down to be honest.

I remember reading Chaucer at school and to this day all I remember is the Wife of Bath character and being completely bored out of my brain.

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
You, sir, are a cad.

Were you brought up in an English speaking home where you were surrounded by 400 year old diction? No. So how did your comprehension of it develop? It didn't. Understanding 400 year old English comes from studying it. Did you go to see The Tempest, having never read it beforehand, and just understand it anyway? No I don't think so. You may even believe you did but I don't think you did.

In the lecture by McWhorter - who is an erudite, multi-lingual, linguist with an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of English and of vocabulary from all around the world - there is a part that I did not transcribe - he basically predicted the bravado in your first post about what "an intelligent person" can do. As he said, many people just don't want to admit it. If you understand Shakespeare plays fully, on listening to them performed, 'cold', without having ever read them beforehand, then that's good for you. I'm not really being a 'cad'. I just don't believe you.

Originally posted by divegeester
To the casual reader like me, The Tempest seems quite accessible as does As You Like It - but they are light in content and soft in language. Some of the other books are tough going and I've ended up putting them down to be honest.

This thread is not about reading Shakespeare. The OP is about watching a Shakespeare play "cold", without having read it before doing so., and the degree to which one understands the 400 year old diction under those circumstances.

Originally posted by FMF
This thread is not about [b]reading Shakespeare. The OP is about watching a Shakespeare play "cold", without having read it before doing so., and the degree to which one understands the 400 year old diction under those circumstances.[/b]

Despite being in Stratford many times and having the opportunity of several occasions, I've never been to a RSC production for this very reason. I wouldn't understand it.