Where is Shakespeare

For an anglocentric board who sucks off the canon so much there is a suprising lack of supposedly the greatest english writer. Is he overrated? Has no one here read him? Is there a chart?

Shakespeare is discussed fairly often on here. You must be new. Welcome! Now fuck off and start with the Greeks.

Whenever there is a thread about the greatest writer of all time, a bunch of anglos pop up and imediately say his name. There isn't discussion as much as just praise

His works are too great and lacking in memes for lit's puny brain to handle. Also, lit loves gossiping about an author's personal life and since we know virtually nothing about Shakespeare, there's nothing to say.

The things that happen in his plays are so unnatural, I find them impossible to really get immersed in. For instance, King Lear, the king never recognizes Kent in disguise. How could that be possible? This trope of disguise appears often in Shakespeare and is always unbelievable. It is simply ridiculous they would never, after repeated instances and long conversations, recognize the person in disguise. Shakespeare always relies on these absolutely impossible situations to tell his stories.

Tolstoy pls go and stay go

It is really unfortunate that Tolstoyevsky somehow survived the 19th century.

I think it's just a stylistic thing derived from light comedy, it's like in Cosi Fan Tutte how none of the women recognize their fiancés just because they put on turbans and fake mustaches then claim to be albanian, he's taking that and intentionally breaking immersion by highlighting the artifice of theater.

>Is he overrated?

The thing with Shakespeare is that his tragedies no longer have the same impact on modern readers that they had on readers of the time. A part of this is because his stories have become over-saturated into pop culture, such that any five year old kid already knows the basic plot of Romeo and Juliet before reading it. So even though you're supposed to cry at the end, it's hard to do so now.

With that said, many of the character monologues in the plays are fucking amazing even if the plots themselves are less interesting from a modern perspective. I'm especially partial to the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" speech from Julius Caesar.

I completely disagree. I've seen Hamlet performed about six times, but none nearly made me shed a tear except when I saw it this past summer because the performance and setting (a Norman cathedral surrounded by a forest) really took me there to Elsinore.

On the other hand, when I saw Macbeth at the same location, I had to repress laughter when this horrible neckbearded Macbeth kept grabbing Lady Macbeth's fat arse and chunky thighs.