Could one even name a writer who imitates him? There are plenty of other poets and novelists who have lesser imitators, but have you ever heard someone say "he's just a poor man's Shakespeare?"
Is there a writer you think of who is stylistically similar in some manner to the bard? No doubt his influence is great, but I can't think of anyone who consciously imitates his style, just people who admire his work.
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He was shit. The Joss Whedon of his day.
Shakespeare is so complex that it's perilous to try to imitate him. Most writers only learn from the art of Shakespeare's writing and not the surface features.
Jonson was actually more influential in the day, but he now rightfully holds a place as a footnote to English literature at best. Same with Spenser and Dryden. Shakespeare has lasted because his works are simply timeless.
Shakespeare is unironically the most overrated artist ever, and I don't say that lightly.
There are no direct imitators because no one is crazy enough to try to surpass him, and bardolatry didn't take off till a bit of time after his death, so any influence is mitigated by time and new movements (see: Keats). It's similar to a lack of Bach imitators.
Reddit is here folks
dumb phoneposter
shitty poet
>imitate Chaucer like everyone else
>zomg why does nobody imitate him
Are you genuinely retarded?
>Shakespeare imitated Chaucer
He was influenced by him, sure, but his plays aren't imitative of Chaucer at all. If anything, early Shakespeare was an imitator of Marlowe.
>the iambic pentameter was a random chance
Shakespeare stole a lot more from school books than Marlowe to be fair.
This. His sense of humor reminds me of the Canterbury Tales, but that's about it.
>Jonson
>footnote
bloomface.jpg, but let's keep reading...
>Spenser
>Dryden
>FOOTNOTE
See pic.
because nobody watches plays anymore
dumm
Cause he is Marlowe desu
>he now rightfully holds a place as a footnote to English literature at best
What are you, stupid?
Melville to a degree
OP here. I fell asleep and see that few people attempted to answer my primary question, that is, which writers have consciously imitated Shakespeare's style.
Yes, they do say that genius is inimitable, but wouldn't it be interesting to see somebody attempt to imitate him? I would not argue however that imitation is an attempt to "surpass" someone. I'm more interested in seeing someone actually attempt to incorporate elements of Shakespeare's style in their own work.
I'm not asking about Shakespeare's influences. Also, Shakespeare's style is hardly similar to Chaucer's.
This poster is the first to name someone! I applaud you. Melville is a fine writer to recommend. Ishmael's narrative does fit in with other narrative prose from the 19th century, but the dialogue does have a profound Shakespearean influence!
The strongest imitation I've seen of Shakespeare yet is Schiller.
The dialogue is a near constant stream of metaphor like Shakespeare with similar heightened, emotional language, and the plots and character types are as willfully lifted from Shakespeare as Shakespeare did with his sources. I'm reading Die Räuber (The Robbers) now, and Franz is like some sort of composite of Richard III and Iago, and the plot arc in general is in part like King Lear. Even the robbers are these exalted brand of minor characters, such as the guards in Hamlet. And Schiller's genres of play are similar, from cut and dry family/love tragedies to historical portraits (though I don't think he ever wrote a comedy).
On top of it, his plays are peppered with echoes of lines of Shakespeare, and Schiller had translated Shakespeare himself. (I know this is more along the lines of influence than imitation, but you have to be influenced in order to imitate.) Schiller is certainly different in a number of ways, but he often reads as if he were trying to see if Shakespeare were possible in German.
I think your question is very good. It's a question I asked myself often and I still try to answer. I would love to see more writers who have the poetic style of Shakespeare as their influence rather than his plots, his characters and themes.
Unfortunately it is very difficult to find other authors who try to imitate his style (and, in doing so, create their own art). I think this is due in the first place to the fact that the most decisive item in Shakespeare's art is an extraordinary abundance of metaphors, and such a metaphorical exuberance is something few poets are capable of doing. As Aristotle said:
>The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar.
An author who perceived this aspect of Shakespeare's work - a notoriously intelligent and capable author, an author whose artistic concern was primarily a concern with verbal style - was Nabokov. About Shakespeare he said the following:
>The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays. With Shakespeare it is the metaphor that Is the thing, not the play.
It is not by chance that he has been able to read Shakespeare's work so well. He himself was highly influenced by him, and part of his art was very similar to that of Shakespeare.
So I suggest you Nabokov in the first place. He has a language that is crowded with metaphors, like Shakespeare (but not in the same degree). You could even look for a play he wrote, "The Tragedy of Mister Morn". Read the preface:
amazon.com
in it you will find a study of Nabokov's style and Shakespeare's influence on him.
Other authors I can name are:
>Aeschylus (a lover of metaphorical language in drama many many years before Shakespeare)
>Melville (read the essay of F.O. Matthiessen, in American Renaissance, about Melville and Shakespeare)
>Pablo Neruda (a lover of metaphors, but somewhat clumsy and not also a creator of characters and stories)
>Bruno Schulz (short-story writer, a lover of metaphors and similes)
Of course, none of those authors do the same with language as Shakespeare. I will try to think on more examples. If I remember others I will name it.
Are you reading Schiller in the original German? Unfortunately he is not as popular in English today as he appears to have been. My local library in California actually has a bust of him, but I've never met someone who's read Schiller. Would you recommend The Robbers?
I didn't even know Nabokov wrote a play! How interesting. I've read your recommendations and do agree to some extent, but I'd be more curious to read more writers who wrote in English. I definitely agree with you on Nabokov and Melville. Aeschylus certainly influenced Shakespeare in an indirect manner via Seneca, but I am more interested in writers who attempted to write in the vein of Shakespeare. Neruda and Schulz are good writers, but I didn't notice much Shakespeare in their work, maybe because I read them in translation.
The criterion for me is whether or not Shakespeare influenced their work to such a degree that one could say someone's work is in some way imitative of Shakespeare. So far of the writers people have mentioned, Melville, Schiller, and Nabokov seem to fit that. Any others? Whether it's the dramatic Shakespeare or the poetic Shakespeare, I'd love to see what others think.
Christopher Fry, a poet-dramatist with a great love for metaphors.
enotes.com
>Christopher Fry, a poet-dramatist with a great love for metaphors.
here
shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in
One example:
Christopher FryChristopher Fry > Quotes
Christopher Fry quotes (showing 1-19 of 19)
“What after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning
tags: drama, religion 12 likes Like
“One day I shall burst my bud of calm and blossom into hysteria.”
― Christopher Fry
7 likes Like
“I seem to wish to have some importance
In the play of time. If not,
Then sad was my mother's pain, my breath, my bones,
My web of nerves, my wondering brain,
to be shaped and quickened with such anticipation
Only to feed the swamp of space.
What is deep, as love is deep, I'll have
Deeply. What is good, as love is good,
I'll have well. Then if time and space
Have any purpose, I shall belong to it.
If not, if all is a pretty fiction
To distract the cherubim and seraphim
Who so continually do cry, the least
I can do is to fill the curled shell of the world
With human deep-sea sound, and hold it to
The ear of God, until he has appetite
To taste our salt sorrow on his lips.
And so you see it might be better to die.
Though, on the other hand, I admit it might
Be immensely foolish.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning
...
To be honest, Die Räuber is my first Schiller play, so I'm still new to him. And yep, I'm reading it in German. I'm finding it solid and thoroughly enjoyable. The language is beautiful and remarkably imbued with emotion in that overt kind of way that I think people have shied away from after the 18th and 19th centuries, which might be why he's fallen to the wayside. Clever as hell metaphors, great double entendres, and many other usual suspects from Shakespeare, so much so that I do think of him like a lesser Shakespeare, which I mean as a compliment!
I've turned to Schiller out of a growing aversion for Goethe, and so far I do really like what I've read. I'm still brand new to him, but if everything of his is as good as Die Räuber, then I'm sure I'll be reading more. So yes, consider that a recommendation.
Sounds great. I'll look into a good English translation. Cheers.
No, it`s was Francis Bacon obviously.
He also wrote Don Quixote.
Bacon and his group - to be more specific, partly the same group editing KJV-bible.
>No, it`s was Francis Bacon obviously.
>He also wrote Don Quixote.
>Bacon and his group - to be more specific, partly the same group editing KJV-bible.
Who actually reads them?
>Yes, they do say that genius is inimitable, but wouldn't it be interesting to see somebody attempt to imitate him? I would not argue however that imitation is an attempt to "surpass" someone. I'm more interested in seeing someone actually attempt to incorporate elements of Shakespeare's style in their own work.
That's why Shakespeare is so revered. EVERYONE since the 1600s has ripped off Shakespeare to some extent, and his influence is so wide that we don't even notice it.
Karamazov brothers is a schiller rip-off
There is a difference between mere passive influence and conscious imitation. Writers such as Nabokov and Melville consciously imitated Shakespeare for great (????) profit.
John Donne desu
What are you guys even referring to when you talk about Shakespeare's style? What would you have people imitate from it?
If you read the thread, someone wrote well about Shakespeare's influence on Nabokov. If you want to read about Shakespeare's influence on Melville, one need only read some critical matter on Moby-Dick and to what extent Shakespeare influenced the dialogue in Moby-Dick. As far as other writers go, who knows. I don't have a compendium of Shakespearean writers in my head, but I'm curious to see if anyone can positively identify a writer who imitated Shakespeare for better or worse.
Someone whom I thought of is—I'll probably get some hate for this—is G. R. R. Martin. Admittedly, I haven't read the books, but the scale of Game of Thrones the TV shows is rather reminiscent of Shakespeare's histories. I'd even argue that Star Trek feels a bit like the history plays.
But who are some more highbrow writers influenced by Shakespeare?
there is zero evidence donne even knew shakesmeme existed desu
donne worked in a completely different tradition than the dramatic poesy that shakes/jonson/marlowe/etc. were working in.
in fact it's not a huge stretch to say donne's metaphysical poetry embodied the complete opposite traits that shakespeare's verse did. whereas shakes/elizabethans focused on "natural" metaphors (what pope described as "what oft was thought but ne'er so well express'd"), donne/metaphysics (loose term) utilized carefully engineered, elaborated conceits to communicate very specific ideas, and not to evoke broader feelings/comparisons.
I am sick and tired of this. Every day I come to Veeky Forums, and every day there is at least one thread up with an OP image of an attractive old man dressed sharply and posing seductively. It's probably the same one or two people who do it honestly. Let me tell you something, you faggot pieces of shit who are doing this: you are the poster child for everything that is wrong in literature, art, and society as a whole today. You are incapable of coming up with anything creative, thought provoking, or of substance, and you lack even the smallest modicum of intelligence, so you use "style" and "class" and "respectability" in place of it and to draw attention to yourself, because that's the only way your SHIT "creation" and ideas would ever get seen by anyone. And before you say anything, this has NOTHING to do with the fact that I am an hormone addled teenager. Anyway, I will be petitioning the owner of this website to ban your asses, so enjoy being able to post here while it lasts, because it's not going to last long, just like you that one time you convinced your Old English teacher to let you fuck him.
Kek
melville was a broke ass bitch lol. he just alluded to shakespeare heavily cause he was really into him
They were both celebrities in their day, though John Donne was more famous as Dean of St. Paul rather than Shakespeare who was obviously famous for his work. It would be absurd to imagine that they did not know of each other's existence. However, I do agree with you that Shakespeare and Donne worked with completely different traditions. Donne was more intellectual while Shakespeare could reach a broader audience.
>lol
>Shakespeare is so complex that it's perilous to try to imitate him
how retarded are you?
What is Stratford-upon-Avon?