I find it impossible to get into Shakespeare...

I find it impossible to get into Shakespeare. What happens in his plays is so unbelievable that it is impossible to suspend disbelief. I started reading King Lear and in the first few acts you have:

>Lear immediately casting out his daughter, Cordelia, and immediately wanted her out of his life, for one simple statement she said.
>Lear never recognizing Kent in disguise.
>Lear immediately accepts the disguised Kent to work for him, despite not knowing who he is at all and having no reason for another servant
>Gloucester immediately believes Edmund that Edgar is plotting against him, without any questions or further investigation into the matter.
>Kent for some reason strikes at Oswald and grows furious with him for no reason at all
>Edgar engages Edmund in combat simply because he asks, without questioning why

All of these situations are so unbelievable that getting immersed in the play is impossible. Shakespeare is utterly incapable of setting up believable situations

It's like the plot was adapted so that it could happen on stage over the course of a few hours or something

It's just like my anime desu.

Seriously though. And what's up with the fool?

are you retarded?

The dialogue is Shakespeare also sucks. This is someone trying to describe a bad storm:

>Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero, I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen the ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, to be exalted with the threatening clouds: but never till to-night, never till now, did I go through a tempest dropping fire. Either there is a civil strife in heaven, or else the world, too saucy with the gods, incenses them to send destruction.

Nobody talks like this, not even people with a flair for the dramatic. Also, why does he not know how to use a colon?

he used the colon correctly

Tolstoy pls go and stay go

(You)

its not real dude

kek ikr

What's wrong with this? It's fantastic.

So Tolstoy was just butthurt that a greater writer than himself existed right?
I can feel it, imagine writing War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and still not being No.1. Gotta burn

>too saucy with the gods

>So Tolstoy was just butthurt that a greater writer than himself existed right?

No, that's just what everyone else says about him. We don't actually have any reason to think that he wasn't just being completely honest about what he felt, and genuinely felt nothing aesthetically for the bard's work due to having fundamentally different values of taste. Most people who have commented on what Tolstoy wrote are just projecting their own ideas of him onto him.

You just have to assume that everyone is an overly dramatic retard.

Englad never developed civilisation bcuz there were no horses ther and systemic racism. Duh.

nah, he was clearly butthurt.
>muh no one talks like that
it's a fucking play.

>nah, he was clearly butthurt.

Again, projection.

>it's a fucking play.

People can speak like humans in a play, and Tolstoy valued that in his works and others. Again, you're assuming his expression was dishonest because everyone else does, as if he was so petty that he's just make up some reason as to why he was really the best. Does that strike you as something he'd do in writing something like that.

This is fucking great you massive pleb

>no one talks like this
Literary realism is a 19th century invention. No one talks like all of the dialogue in the great works of pre-modern fiction.

judging from the fact that tolstoy admitted that his works were ultimately created in pursuit of acclaim, yes. he strikes me as a man so petty as to attack the greatest literary figure in history to assuage some feelings of inferiority. you placing tolstoy on some pedestal immune to the baser instincts of man does him a greater justice than any comments on his envy i might make.

*injustice

also, in regards to plays, yes, and they can be overtly dramatic as well, and often are. don't be a fool.

>Nobody talks like this
How about go sit in a cafe and transcribe common dialogue faithfully with no omissions. Then consider whether that is something you'd like to read.

Have you ever considered all the stupid things you've said in idle conversation with a friend? It is realistic dialogue. Yet devoid of all interest.

The "this is not realistic" argument is the ultimate brainlet criticism of dialogue.

exactly, it's as though he had no other way to attack what was absolutely flawless. i guess you can't blame the guy for being impotent to critique the near infinite genius shakespeare engendered. even i feel a twinge of annoyance having to fellate shakespeare a bit.
he was just that incredible, though.

How out of touch with reality are you? All of these thing were common in the past.

Mad regents, duels on a whim, even employing strangers was not uncommon.

Read recently about Italian lord that employed a beggar that came to his door. He turned out exceptionally secretary, married all his daughters to princes, and then as the court became jealous of him and demanded financial overview, he took his staff and went begging again. As for mad kings, you have Ivan the Terrible, Caligula, Tiberius, Elagabalus, Nero... All of these were capable of worse feats than Lear.

Being a pleb you can't expect to understand the actions of patricians, and literature is truly only about ... patricians.

i don't know anything about anything but they didn't have much entertainment back then and this all seems intentionally stylized for enjoyment

For all his enormous merits, Tolstoy was that guy, especially as he got older.
I can easily see Shakespeare upsetting him, especially how Shakespeare is more of a rough diamond working class guy compared to the aristocratic Tolstoy. Tolstoy's views on the peasantry conflict hugely with the relaxed comedy and jibes lower class rural people get in Shakespeare. And that's before we even consider sex

I personally can't stand Shakespeare, despite loving the Greek tragedians and Homer. I blame it on his being influenced by Roman plebs like Ovid.

>reading plays

>posting text on an imageboard

>Jiub
"Look at me
I am the captain now"

"not even last night's morality play could wake you"

shakespeare rules, fight me

you've got to read it with the mentality that you're reading something that was meant to be performed on stage though. if you didn't like reading it you should probably just watch Akira Kurosawa's film version, Ran.