>be Italian >costantly study overlords Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio in middle school and high school, while ignoring foreign literature traditions >21 now >I literally don't know what's the deal with Shakespear
I'm completely clueless on the matter and I still have to read any work of his. Why is he so highly regarded? What should I know about him before delving in his plays? Is it worth it to read him translated? (while my english is not that good, my reading comprehension is solid enough, yet I don't know if his lexicon is too archaic for me).
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Jonathan Walker
>Why is he so highly regarded?
He was really, really, really clever. Like that 0.00000001% of humanity who's so smart that he just utterly BTFO everyone else.
It's hard to get across if you're not a native English speaker, but he single-handedly invented an expansion pack for the English language, and all the stuff he made up is still in use to this day both in English literature and common street talk.
Alexander Murphy
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
>Why is he so highly regarded? Because the British and provincial as fuck and will grasp at any halfway decent author.
Alexander Green
ty
Nathaniel Rodriguez
FUCKING THIS. FUCKING THISSSSSSS!
FUCK UK
Parker Bailey
classico?
Jonathan Sanders
>world's largest empire and most widely spoken language >provincial
Zachary Russell
>largest empire
That would be the French Empire
>most widely spoken language
That would be Chinese
Fuck off Anglo piece of shit
Luke Russell
Dante è molto migliore che Shakespeare, cazzo!
t. ammiratore di Dante E di Shakespeare
(Just kidding. They are equals. Start with the Tempest, As You Like It, and the Sonnets. Shakespeare was a giant. I wouldn't be what I am without his works. Also, perdonate mi italiano.)
Ayden Lewis
This tbqh.
I've realized a anglophone pattern of overhyping authors (some of them even good ones) to the point it becomes obnoxious and probably drives people away from them.
Authos like Hemmingway, Dickens, Twain and Shakespeare get memed so much it becomes kinda sickening. I mean, Shakespeare is pretty good, one of the GOATS, no discussion here, but if we take the "foundational works", Shakespeare will lose to every other author (Cervantes, Rabelais, Dante, etc.)
Parker Rogers
> muh numbers This is what I mean by being provincial. If you had any decency or shame or perspective you'd let your art stand or fall by its own merits, and not grasp at muh appeals to imaginary dicksize.
Lincoln Sullivan
>shakespeare is pretty good >one of the GOATs
Retard foreigners
Cameron Turner
Dante is shit tbqh
Levi Long
You're not even trying.
Henry Gomez
Dante, while not as great as French, is still better than anglo, overhyped trash like Shakespeare. It sickens me people think Shakespeare is the greatest, when that belongs to the French. Fuck you if you think any Anglo shit is worth my attention.
Cooper Lopez
It's you who mixed up the time periods by claiming both largest empire and largest language.
Back when Britain had the largest empire, they did not have the largest language. And, now that "they" (it's Americans) have the largest language, the French have the largest empire (kind-of-but-not-really).
Colton Carter
>Dante, while not as great as French, is still better than anglo, overhyped trash like Shakespeare.
Absolutely wrong. Shakespeare's influence over writers (non-"anglos" included) is immense. Also some of the best non-Western writers are watered-down versions of the best the West has to offer. (Rushdie is discount Pynchon, in case you haven't read Midnight's Children.) The rest of the world offers "post-colonialism" and "magical realism" which are two of the greatest cop outs imaginable, in my personal opinion.
Jonathan Allen
Don't be stupid. Every society grasps at any halfway decent author. Even shows that, with his instant assumption that we are talking about Anglophones in general.
In any case: this is partially why Shakespeare is so hyped. But only partially. Shakespeare is a legitimately great playwright, which is why the British could advocate for him so easily -- but don't forget they had to find Shakespeare first. He was by no means hyped until a bunch of faggots in the eighteenth century raved about him.
In any case, it's stupid to think acclaim has any relation to quality. Judge him on his own merits.
Cameron Morris
You'll be disappointed. You have tons of writers superior to him.
Adrian Gomez
What do you mean? Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats are equals of Dante and Cervantes, as far as I'm concerned... I do not comment about Chaucer, sinceI have only read a few bits, because his language is difficult for me.
However, I must say I agree about authors like Hemingway and Mark Twain. I don't see how they can be considered as great as Americans will deem them to be. Same applies for authors such as William Carlos Williams, ee cummings, Saul Bellow, and others. As a Brazilian, I can cite a few Portuguese and Brazilian authors who seem to me to be quite superior to them, and who have much less fame: Fernão Lopes (definitely superior), Antônio Vieira (definitely superior), Almeida Garrett, Eça de Queiroz, Antônio Lobo Antunes (definitely superior), João Guimarães Rosa (definitely superior). If I remember correctly, the great poet Robert Lowell, after he read Euclides da Cunha's Os Sertões, said the book was better than War and Peace...
The source of the problem is that people tend to have a higher regard for the authors they themselves have read and, since Hemingway and Twain wrote in English, their works attract much more readers and, therefore, much more admirers. Almost all writers of the world know English. How many of them know Portuguese or Korean, however? Very few, so they have to rely on translations. This is particularly unfortunate for Portuguese, because poetry is, by far and far and far, our greatest strength in literature. If you think Saramago is a great genius, as Harold Bloom does, I have to inform you our language has produced at least ten poets, if not more, who are better than him (and I love Saramago). The problem is that they don't have many translators, much less good ones...
Owen Martin
>he rest of the world offers "post-colonialism" and "magical realism"
>yeah that's a pretty good realist novel you wrote >unfortunately, due to the time and place it covers, it can be described by this phrase that can be put in scarequotes so it doesn't count
Luke Lee
Could you rephrase that? I'm afraid you aren't making any sense.
Eli Nguyen
>Could you rephrase that? Yes. >you aren't making any sense Wrong.
Connor Hall
I didn't say anything about time periods. That was all in your tiny head. The British had the largest Empire. They have the most widely spoken language. Or is that the Chinese? You can't seem to decide which alternative facts you're arguing.
Jayden Walker
I don't think monoglots can really weigh in on the matter.
Zachary Adams
>you My friend, I am merely another user who saw the autism and was compelled to jump in.
The British had the largest empire a century after Shakespeare became famous, and they had the largest language two centuries after Shakespeare became famous. Your points are therefore irrelevant.
However, England's never really had trouble with literary fame. Even when it was some shitty backwater in the medieval period, French (chivalric) Romanticists were cumming buckets about it.
Josiah Rogers
...
Matthew Richardson
The autism is you not being able to understand what's meant by "Largest empire and most widely spoken language".
Xavier Clark
...Are you saying they DID have the largest empire and most spoken language in the early-mid 1700s?
Carter Long
I'm saying you have autism.
Henry Jones
Do you know where you are?
Brandon Morales
Great comeback! Much wit.
Jose Miller
Though ’tis no wisdom to confess so much Unto an enemy of craft and vantage, My people are with sickness much enfeebled, My numbers lessened, and those few I have Almost no better than so many French, Who when they were in health, I tell thee, herald, I thought upon one pair of English legs Did march three Frenchmen. Yet, forgive me, God, That I do brag thus. This your air of France Hath blown that vice in me. I must repent.
Henry V - Act 3, Scene 6
Fucking beautiful.
Angel White
In the jungle?
Kevin Diaz
If here is anything, it's a mildly run-down car park.
