What is Shakespeare's magnum opus?

The one nobody else has mentioned :)

/Thread

Yeah, I thought the traditional "trilogy" was Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear (Young man > Middle Aged Man > Old man)

>young man

Isn't Hamlet like 30?

The Complete Works of Shakespeare

That is still young, just not 'youthful'. It's a liminal period in a life, prior to the attaining of real wisdom but too old to claim innocence in ignorance.

Often I don't know if I should be envious of how much Bloom sees beauty in Shakespeare of if I should be sorry for how autistic he is,

>autistic

Bloom's tastes are quite eclectic and tend toward an interest in human drama. 'Autistic' is, or was, anot adjective basically synonymous with 'solipsistic'. I hate how it has become a catch-all term for 'interested in' and maybe 'slightly pedantic about'.

romeo and juliet

No, I honestly mean autistic.
This is "More real than real humans" Bloom we're talking about.

Holy shit, a famous writer Veeky Forums doesn't dismiss as "entry level" or "high school."

is this a shadow pynchon thread

It's usually poets user. And of course people will still call Shakespeare "high school" and I agree with them. Some other authors that come to mind that aren't even ironically called entry level are Milton and Beckett

Hamlet the character seems to have originally been conceived of as a young man in the range of 18-22 or so (all the stuff about him being a student at University is a holdover of this). Shakespeare fudged up the age so that his favorite lead actor Burbage could play him.

Now of course, that's all based in conjecture and what not, but stuff I consider fairly strong. In effect, its one more thing that adds to the forever undefined, always flitting about the peripheral quality of that play that leaves me to adore it (other such qualities: Why is the opening scene of Hamlet so incredibly strange? How can one guard sneak up on his replacement, especially when the one knows to expect the other? How can a scene that begins at midnight and consists of only two hundred lines end at dawn?).

I thought he was a playwriter

Bah! Mere biography! The actual trilogy, "one finds," (YOU clearly found nothing, regardless of what a certain "one" may look for or find) is the first three great tragedies (Ham, Othello, Lear), for they trace the development, not of Shakespeare himself, but of his Daemon, his Gnostic double (or "Mask" in Yeatsian terminology; "the mysterious one who yet / Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream" in Yeatsian poetry)--namely that very selfsame soul that is first Hamlet, the greatest mind that has ever been or will ever be but a poor dramatist, then Iago, a great but flawed mind and a great but fatally flawed dramatist, and finally Edgar, who is all dogma and vision and no mind, but who is yet the greatest natural dramatist ever to grace the pages of a book, just as Shakespeare the soil of the Earth. I am convinced that all the truth and beauty of the world is contained in those three plays, and could ne unlocked by a perfect observer. The Tempest is a great poem (in spite of, or because of, its dramatical inadequacy), but the Aristotelian God would not see Himself reflected in it, whereas we are brpught somewhat closer to that perfect self-contemplation every time that we read Shakespeare's great tragedies with a discerning eye.

The Merchant of Venice

>Edgar

You mean Edmund.

No, I mean Edgar. Edgar in the guise of Poor Tom is second only to Lear as the most sublime character in his play, in a play of sublime personages--and it is vital to realize that it is Edgar who brings Lear to the culmination of his madness. That's part of why I say Edgar is the greatest natural dramatist ever known.

why was he considerd good?

Try reading him sometime.

The Tempest.

Winter's Tale

Objective answer: the Henriad.

Is Shakesmeme worth reading or can I just settle for a TV adaptation from the BBC?

His whole opus.

Read it aloud and you'll understand it. Feel free to let the natural rhythm and inflection come to you and be expressed in your speech.
I read Merchant of Venice aloud in one sitting around middle school because I was out of school the whole time they were doing it, and holy shit it was a much better experience than the start-stop collective *CHORE* they made of plays in school.

The timing and the way the characters and the phrases play off each other is unbeatable.

Next-best thing is to go to a proper production of the play - no altered scripts, no "unorthodox" casting, and period clothing a plus. If they're any good and you give it your undivided attention you'll hopefully gain an appreciation for Shakespeare.

Thanks for the reply. I think I'll try that.

Do you have an opinions on these though?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Age_of_Kings
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wars_of_the_Roses_(adaptation)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Television_Shakespeare

I started watching Wars of the Roses on YouTube and it is pretty great so far.

overrated