SHAKESPEARE REDPILL

He, together with Cervanres, significantly increased the depth of characterization, their characters' inner life is as (if not more) important as the physical plot. Then, his writing itself is incredible. Of all premodern anglo writers only Melville is comparable with him in the purely aesthetic regards, and that's mainly because Melville was strongly influenced by him.
Then there's the massive cultural impact. His words and phrases entered the common language, his scenes and stories are known to the whole world, ballets, operas, incidental music and countless movies were inspired by his dramas etc etc etc
Just get a decent edition of his complete works (in english of course) and read it.

>I come from a country where English is not the first language and Shakespeare is not that studied
In which godforsaken place do you live? Shakey is respected and memed everywhere.

Chaucer, Marlowe, Kyd, whoever created Beowulf
You fucking spic

>Ask for non shitty writers
>Get a bunch of dreadful writers
You sure proved me

>Really it became great later
When was that?

Your trolling isn't very good desu.

they actually don't - Eng. Lit is translated and studied massively in every first world country. Maybe not...Africa or the darker parts of South America ofc.

Unless you're like...Joyce or Tolstoy, nobody cares about your thoughts about Shakespeare. Really lads, have a think about what youre doing here.

Well this is partially true. English literature was eager for a voice. It was always essentially the new kid on the block, lacking in literary tradtion.

But Shakespeare was brilliant, it's hard to argue against that.

his stories are unironically enjoyable, even hundreds of years later

He was the first true master of the English language.

He was the first author to truly have great character development. Took human psychological and spiritual depth to a high level and is perhaps unsurpassed.

He shaped one of the largest languages in the world greater than any single human being.

His poetry and poetic depth are so vast that perhaps not a single author has ever come close to reaching how good he was at expressing things artistically through language.

Okay do you know what Iambic pentameter is? An iamb is a type of foot in poetry. In words there are stressed syllables and unstressed syllables. For instance, when you say "I am behind the house" you accent the HIND in "behind". If you read aloud "beHIND the house" and "the animals BEhind" you can hear the difference in whats accented vs what isn't.
So an iamb is an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable and iambic pentameter is five iambs per line. Now do you know the famous soliloquy "To be or not to be"? That whole thing is in iambic pentameter [the image], which is pretty impressive.
Shakespeare's command of language, metaphor, meter and a lot of other things make him one of the best writers in the history of the English language.

I could keep talking but you should really just pick up Hamlet. Its one of my favorite books.

He wrote a ton of timeless classics.

It's difficult to believe one man wrote the sheer volume of works that he did with such quality.

Quotes from his plays are used in everyday parlance as expressions, whether you even know they're Shakespeare or not.

His command of imagery and metaphor is by far the greatest of any single writer who ever lived (so excepting Homer). Shakespeare's imagistic brilliance is so powerful that he even has a habit of smashing metaphors into each other to the point of incoherence. For example, the greatest line ever written in English:

>O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space -- were it not that I have bad dreams

Not only is Hamlet "bounded in a nutshell" (the prison of Denmark) but he could be a "king of infinite space" (the quality of human imagination) if he didn't have "bad dreams" (his melancholy nature).

Other writers (like myself) have to wrack their brains to come up with a metaphor that is both fresh and appropriate to the sense. Shakespeare seems to have a striking, original and beautiful metaphor come to him every second line he writes.

This reminds me, I never got why teacher's jerked over the fact shakespeare wrote in meter. It's not that impressive.

>Quotes from his plays are used in everyday parlance as expressions, whether you even know they're Shakespeare or not.
This. William Tyndale probably wins this award but Shakespeare is a close second. Unfortunately, nobody knows who Tyndale is.

>Spanish had ONE (1) good book at the time
Loving
Every
Laugh

the birth of john green

It is impressive, you dumb fuck. Meter is difficult to write in and when done as skillfully as Shakespeare does it it makes the text sound so much better. Just read the opening of Macbeth aloud, with emotion (not like how they do it in movie versions). It's fucking music.

>I come from a country where English is not the first language and Shakespeare is not that studied, there.
>'there' not 'here'

You could argue your point about any other English author, so I'd really like to know of that country of yours where he is not studied, because I do smell some heavy bullshit.

>"not that studied"
>means "not studied", which is implausible, I do smell some heavy bullshit.
stop exposing yourself you self projecting EFL cunt

The fuck's your problem?

Question is: if english isnt your first langauge, why you should care about Shakespeare, instead of reading much more important for your greatest authors from your country

we only had to read translated macbeth in high school and thats all, i dont give a shit about shakespeare

>red pill

Oh boy.

You really should mate
He isn't a meme

pretty much

He didnt wrote his works
Consider yourself redpilled

Because its not just the meter its what he's saying with it. If you arnt impressed with the amount conveyed by that soliloquy I dont know what your standard is.

Just read it, you'll get why. Get yourself a commented edition, whatever college garbage, go for the comedies or short tragedies. For the comedies, try the Tempest, the most serious one, has a comedia dellarte plot (easy to follow, cliché characters but funny story), and it's easy to understand. For the comedies, go for Macbeth, it deals a lot with language, hypocrisy and overacting which leads to great but almost cheesy lines from the couple protagonists. Also watch the plays, it helps a lot, go for Shakespeare's Globe stagings : they're intended to be as entertaining as we believe they were at the time, colourful costumes, comedic direction that lightens the burden of following up to three hours of play. I would advice some of the films, but if I said which ones I would be burned at stake.

Here's a real question: what's his best work?

King Lear

>lol like why even discuss anyhting? hahah. . right guys/.??

I feel bad for you

The Tempest, son

You guys are so easy to bait. Hurr hurr shakespeare wasn't so great I could do that xP

Propaganda from English speakers.

Cynewulf, the Beowulf poet, Malory, Skelton, Marlowe, Chaucer, Spenser, Layamon, the Pearl poet, Duc d'Orleans, Kyd, Wycliffe...
The fact that you can't even spell his name suggests you don't know dick about fuck when it comes to premodern English

Even if he was a shit author (he wasn't) you have to read him because everything has references and allusions to Shakespeare.

Troilus and Cressida

In all truthfulness its a goldmine. Few things to consider. It was written for small audience. By Cressida's entrance, it's arguable that the part was written for a woman actress. Almost everything Troilus says or does is meant to be totally ironic. Mysterious man in armour is comedy gold. His demise by Hector a part of one of Shakespeares best scenes.

Sourced plays from history books. Portrayed royals as flawed and human.

Full spectrum dominance over language and characterisation. Such an intense presence he changed the language itself and left his artform basically moribund as he was unfollowable.

It is true though that if its got a king's name in the title typically its deliberate, knowing propaganda relevant to the politics of the time. Today we make do with Dank Pepes, and call it progress.

The Quixote has no character development until the final few chapters. Are you memespouting?

>increased the depth of characterization.
what the fuck does even that mean? Sophocles and Aesquilus had deep characters too.

He's one of the playwritters that understood humanity, just like Aesquilus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Ibsen, Bernard Shaw, O'Neill, Arthur Miller, Tenneesse Williams, Rodolfo Usigli and Luisa Josefina Hernández.

>The fact that you can't even spell his name
In all fairness, neither could Shakespeare.

Well for one thing, Spanish and French literature was in much the same situation as English literature at the time, perhaps a generation further ahead in the case of France. All three of those languages were trying to prove during the 16th century one could write equal to the ancients in their vernacular.

If anything, Shakespeare's near contemporaries are tremendously underrated by some due to the obscuring effect of his supreme brilliance. The Elizabethan era is commonly described as the Golden Age of English literature after all.

Henry IV Part 1

I dunno, ask the Germans who canonised him as their national author.

wtf? Why not Goethe?

you should read shakespeare and the greatest authors of your country

Because Goethe literally worshipped Shakespeare

He is a forerunner of existentialist thought and the modernist idea concerning the power and importance of individuals.

Shakespeare gave the individual a power they hadn't had before, in both the fate of themselves and their impact on the world. Regular, seemingly unimportant people too, not just focusing on the ruling classes but also dealing with the power of the average man.

I don't think he set out to do this. Shakespeare also created some of the most complex characters in literature. Hamlet is still considered one of the best characters in all of world literature (which i don't personally agree with, but is the general consensus among academia). His characters weren't only a manifestation of various traits tied together to create a portrait of a villain or hero, but realistic depictions of the conflicts of the average person that up till then had not had a voice in literature.

He understood people. He saw their imperfections and humanity. He realized that no one is wholly good or bad, wrong or right. He wasn't the first person to reflect this, but he executed it with the most depths that had ever been seen, that perhaps wasn't equaled except by a select few modern writers.

Before him, literature was genre fiction, serving little purpose aside from to entertain or convince, or to spread some kind of religious dogma. He was the first major explorer of the human condition.

His skill is subjective. He was read for centuries by many great thinkers, mostly because of the reasons above. His influence is undeniable. His skill, however, is stifled in it's ability to convey a unique voice. His genius of characterization comes from content, not from voice.

His vocabulary was especially large when compared to even that of the average educated man of the day. He was a genius in terms of linguistics and the human understanding.

While it may not initially impress us that he understood man to such an extent, many writers since have arguably provided a deeper understanding, we also must realize that they may not exist without Shakespeare. He was the first to think to explore the depths, highs, and downfalls of the human condition. This is made more impressive by the fact that he developed this attribute as an artist independently. His depth of understanding the human condition wasn't a product of gradual evolution and advancement in the ideas of the time. No, think of this evolution as a hill sloping gradually upwards ever since the ancient Greek plays, flat-lining at a point or two. Shakespeare's work is giant spike in this evolution. He realized the importance of the individual and conceived, independently, a way of expressing his understanding through language.

Think of him in terms of great scientist, whose life's work furthered his field hundreds of years beyond where it had been. That is why Shakespeare is so important.

>Well for one thing, Spanish and French literature was in much the same situation as English literature at the time, perhaps a generation further ahead in the case of France
Kek. Spanish literature was a couple of centuries ahead of English literature. The Canterbury Tales which were a plagarization btw alredy had a Spanish counter part 2 centuries before. Spanish literature alredy had modern models while English literature had little prose written.

Tragedys: Hamlet, Macbeth, Otello, Romeo and Juliet.
Melodramas: Tito Andronicus
Happy Ending Comedys (a sub-specie of Melodrama): Midsummer's Night Dream, Two Hidalgues of Verona.
Comedys: The Taming of the Shrew

Shit plays: Henry VIII

Shakespeare is better than most of the Spanish literature of that age. All the Spanish Golden Century plays are Happy Ending Comedys like today sitcoms, with really few exceptions like Life's a Dream (La Vida es Sueño).
Shakespeare had Tragedys, just like the Greeks (Sophocles and Aesquilus), because he understood hisself, and in consequence, he understood humanity.

Goethe is shit. His Faustus is boring as hell. Now, Christopher Marlowe's Faustus, that's a real play.

Then why didn't Goethe praise these supposedly superior Frenchmen and the Spanish of that time, but preferred Shakespeare instead?

Best playwright who didnt understand humanity and based his work off that is W.S. Gilbert

>Goethe praise these supposedly superior Frenchmen and the Spanish of that time.
But he did you moron

This.

Shakespeare was an invention of the British empire, nothing else.

I haven't read him, but based on what I'm reading right now on Wikipedia, he wrote Comedys.
Tragedy is the result of watching humanity with compassion, that's to say, not justifying anti-ethical actions... but understanding the causes of those actions, tha's to say, understanding that' even myself can commit those actions in specific circunstances. It's to understand every life is valious.

Now, Comedy is the result of the exact opposite. It's to judge anti-moral actions (vicious) of men and make mockery of that, that's to say, with any sense of compassion.

Now, I want to clarify, Ethics isn't the same as Morals. Ethics is what, when you broke it, it has fatal consequences to every human in every time in history. Morals is what, when you broke it, has disastrous consequences in social level. So, Moral change with the time, and the worst it can happen when you broke it is social isolation, just like happens in Comedy.

Can you recommend me some good plays from that autor?

Marlowe, Milton

The Spanish Tragedy or whatever is called that thing is utter shit, so Kyd doesn't count.

Whom exactly? He was disdainful of the French for sure

>English literature has tons of great stuff but Sheakespeare is not one of those
0/10 contrarian bait

Calderón

Italian lit was the best at the time though. Petrarch, Boccaccio, Dante, Daniel, etc

Milton wasn't before Shakespeare

Was going to create a new thread, but I might as well use this one.

Are there any good annotated Shakespeare online editions? Or digital versions of the Folger texts that include annotations?

If you're comparing Chaucer to El Cid you have no idea what you're talking about. If you're ignoring the popularity of prose Arthurian romances in the 15th century and even earlier then you have no idea what you're talking about.

Anglo propaganda

Chaucer just plagiarized Boccaccio. Even then I wasn't ecen talking about El Cid. You have el Conde Lucanor which is basically 100 years older than Canterbury Tales and are pretty much the same. And this is not counting all the literature that was developed in between. English literature was as poorer than Occitanian literature at the time.

at least post the real picture senpai

woke af lmao #100