Do we venerate him because he's simply the best Anglo-Saxon writer and Anglo-Saxon culture dominated the world through...

Not to mention that he invented the human.

what about my prior point? you don't think shakespeare's language is partially lost to modern english readers?

In France we never studied Shakespeare at school, we've got so many incredible French authors to study that we can't spend time studying foreign ones.

It's like learning a new dialect. If you read enough 17th century literature he becomes clear. It's only a problem for casual readers.

Same in Italy. We've studied for something like 2 weeks and that's it.

personal taste is valid, and i can completely understand that people consider shakespeare extraneous compared to a vaster body of literature, but shakespeare by himself appeals to the rest of the world more than 10 major french authors put together do.

You can't just talk about the aesthetic quality of his verses as separate from the characters he was able to draw. Keats elicited awe through his use of words as well as Shakespeare did, but Keats never came up with characters that resonated so much to so many people. It's that combination of beauty and psychological realism that made Shakespeare special.

Who would be your top 20?

his character's words aren't always our words though, as they would come across as poorly paced and artificial. they can be strange. like when characters in an opera get stabbed, but instead of screaming, they break out into song. those kind of quirks disrupt willing suspension of disbelief.

as much as i love shakespeare, many of the criticisms against theatrical stylings are legit.

i just did, as do many others. i made a distinction between plays' lines and poetry. his poetry is not spoken by his characters. keats is the better poet. what's the problem?

Not really, he's just more famous due to the current influence the English language and culture has.

You accept stylistic anachronisms because they exist in literally every medium. You judge those aspects of his plays through the prism of Elizabethan England, like you judge Citizen Kane through the prism of 1940s cinema.

>his poetry is note spoken by his characters
That's not true though. Many of his plays are written in verse rather than prose. Henry V basically stars like an epic poem.

but i don't judge it from that prism, and neither do many readers today. if it can't speak to readers immediately through language, then it will diminish in value. maybe not as art, but certainly as entertainment and in the play's ability to speak to people, regardless of high ideals.

well yes there are exceptions like in twelfth night or his humorous verses, but not his sonnets. you knew what i meant.

I don't think a work's ability to speak to the average person can be judged as a virtue. I think you're right that less English-speakers are going to understand Shakespeare the further along we get, but foreign language speakers, who get their Shakespeare translated into modern versions of their languages, are going to claim him the same way that the world has claimed Homer.

i agree, and they'll be our betters when that happens.

shakespeare is eternal.

Literally most of the famous soliloquies are written in iambic pentameter. I really don't think that you can separate his poetry from his play writing. He did put out a bunch of sonnets, but most people know Shakespeare for his plays rather than his sonnets.

No, you idiot. The cult of the Bard as we know it now was started by German professors in the late 18th century.

Truly one of the plebbest of questions.

Wasn't it fucking started by Milton and his bros in the late 17th century?

the conventional view is that those aren't poems, even if they have a poetic quality. you should get onto changing people's minds about that, especially in uni departments.

Dumb bards and their dumb lutes.

oops, sent this too early

but like bloom said, there probably isn't a future for literature in america. bring shakespeare to china and brazil instead.

We aren't talking about what are and aren't poems, we're talking about the use of language, and how Shakespeare's use of language compared to the Romantics. My point is that Shakespeare's use of language in his best verses is superior to Keats' or Blake's use of language in their verses because he was able to combine aesthetic beauty with deeper characterization.

unfortunately your ideals are not shared by the public at large. you may be right, but something about your position isn't persuading me. and as a poet, shakespeare's poems are outshined by keats and byrons. which is why they're more widely thought of as english's poets. forgive me if i'm being redundant.

Why exactly do you think characterization is a better way to judge art? Science shows that the anthropocentric view is mere chauvinism. Characterization might be an important aspect of literature, but it doesn't reign over all.

>KING RICHARD II
Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown;
Here cousin:
On this side my hand, and on that side yours.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen and full of water:
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

>HENRY BOLINGBROKE
I thought you had been willing to resign.

>KING RICHARD II
My crown I am; but still my griefs are mine:
You may my glories and my state depose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.

>HENRY BOLINGBROKE
Part of your cares you give me with your crown.

>KING RICHARD II
Your cares set up do not pluck my cares down.
My care is loss of care, by old care done;
Your care is gain of care, by new care won:
The cares I give I have, though given away;
They tend the crown, yet still with me they stay.

>HENRY BOLINGBROKE
Are you contented to resign the crown?

>KING RICHARD II
Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be;
Therefore no no, for I resign to thee.
Now mark me, how I will undo myself;
I give this heavy weight from off my head
And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,
The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duty's rites:
All pomp and majesty I do forswear;
My manors, rents, revenues I forego;
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny:
God pardon all oaths that are broke to me!
God keep all vows unbroke that swear to thee!
Make me, that nothing have, with nothing grieved,
And thou with all pleased, that hast all achieved!
Long mayst thou live in Richard's seat to sit,
And soon lie Richard in an earthly pit!
God save King Harry, unking'd Richard says,
And send him many years of sunshine days!
What more remains?

How is this not poetry? It's in rhyming iambic pentameter.

i'm not the one you need to convince. tell the literature departments.

i never said you were wrong about it. i don't view different genres and mediums as truly distinct.

I don't privilege characterization over aesthetics; I think both are valuable. My point is that when judged on pure aesthetic terms Shakespeare and Keats are competitors, but when you add in the fact that Shakespeare was better at forming memorable characters along with his beautiful prose, then I think i'm justified in calling him a superior poet.

it's an ambiguous claim, but one i find intriguing, and worth hearing more about.

when keats wrote poetry, his personal characterization is reflected in each of his poems, and keats is an exquisite consciousness himself.

What was his fucking problem?

He's not one of the greatest writers in any language. I keep asking what is his relevance for history of literature, and I can assure you that beside characterization and prose people are not giving me any points.

He was an indecisive pussy, and invented by the jews so that Western cultures to come would follow his example, and degenerate the Western world, so they could take control.

When Keats delved into his own consciousness to create his admittedly astounding art he was writing about one person. What Shakespeare was able to do was to articulate similar complexity when it came to people who were nothing like he was.

>beside characterization and prose

Lol. Literally the two most important things for literature.

Then your classes are plebs.

He knew he had to kill that fucker, but he also knew that murder was wrong and that ghost weren't a good source of information. Not that hard to get.

If that's really what you think, I'll place Dante over Shakespeare.

I don't know. You're comparing one astonishing, immortal work when it comes to Dante, to multiple fantastic works when it comes to Shakespeare. Are multiple 9/10 works worth more than one 10/10 work?

kek

OP asks:
>Hey anons ^^ Is Shakespeare the best because A or because B?

Anons answer:
>Ugh, to be honest user, I'm not quite really that sure if I would place them inside Top 10 mine.
>Hear, hear.
>Top 10? My fellow dear you must be mad, he's not approaching nearly mine Top 20!
>Hear, hear!
>Keats is a better writer than Shakespeare I say!
>This! Yes!
>Prithee, I say, well if you truly do think characterization must be considered for good literature, I'll place my Dante over your Shakespeare any day!
*the crowd starts laughing loudly, mockingly looking OP directly in the eyes for the fool that he'd made out of himself*

never change Veeky Forums

They won't be immortal after the brown invasion is done with Europe.

I don't see why it couldn't be a combination of both. It isn't unreasonable to think that a society that is culturally exceptional would also be imperially successful.

What the fuck did Bloom even mean by that?

Billy is a beast and the best English playwright bar none (though not the best English writer since Milton exists). A lot of writers are well known because of the diffusion of imperialism yet aren't deserved (e.g., Orwell), but Shakespeare is genuinely wonderful. Probably any annotated Shakespeare should be helpful in getting into his works. Obviously Harold Bloom is a paramount Shakespearean scholar.

He means that Shakespeare is the first playwright to invent truly rounded, multi-faceted characters with unique personalities, desires, foibles, etc.

These questions are only the concern of legit proles. What determines the quality and reception of art is in the art itself, not some whacko bullshit generalizations like biases and psychological responses and all that. People who have read Shakespeare know he's great. That's it.

Orwell is known for his anti-imperialist writings, which why the third world admires him so much.

Orwell's reputation precedes his actual writings. He pretended to be many things so could walk in a number of groups, but Orwell is not admired so much in the third-world except among rightist circles. His very pro-imperialist writings are not circulated as well as 1984 or Animal Farm. Even Homage to Catalonia is less an anti-imperialist text than it is an anti-"Stalinist" screed. This is a man that gave away names to the British Empire of people he didn't like whether they were communists or not (most weren't iirc).

Dante, Petrarch, Virgil: I honestly think these are infinitely superior to him.

He wasn't even the best playwright of his generation. That was Marlowe.

true

Why is he regarded in such high esteem as a poet?

Shut the fuck up

THIS is the problem. I agree if lads say he's the greatest playwright ever, but in poetry... please... there are so many better than him.

Bullshit, I'm from a third world country and while there are right wingers who ony read his memes, a lot of people are aware of Orwell's leftsoc views

The distinction between poet and playwright isn't clear when like over half of his plays are written in verse. He also write two long narrative poems, and over 100 sonnets.

is that an earring?

Take the stage directions out of the Henriad and you have the world's greatest epic poem.

>over 100 sonnets
So what? Dante and Petrarch wrote about 400 sonnets each one. When poetry is serving theatre (then stage action) it loses the best of what it has to offer.

These are the forgeries of jealousy.
And never, since the middle summer’s spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By pavèd fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or in the beachèd margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have sucked up from the sea
Contagious fogs, which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents.
The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.
The fold stands empty in the drownèd field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock.
The nine-men’s-morris is filled up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable.
The human mortals want their winter here.
No night is now with hymn or carol blessed.
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension.
We are their parents and original.

What the fuck does this lose by "serving theater"? This is Ovid-level good.

doesnt rhyme mate

What's good about this?

The part where it's beautifully written

Tripfag please leave.

Good argument

Circular reasoning

Not everyone converses on this site to have a fucking argument, sperg. Get over yourself.

>not everyone cares enough to think long and hard enough to have a rational basis behind their post.

Thanks for your glib and easily ignored posts?

Not even that sperg, but you clearly don't hold yourself to a high standard. In fact, you don't seem to hold yourself to any standard, and that shit is fucking sad.

We venerate him because western society right now is anglocentric.
This is honestly the worst timeline.

Petrarch is a boring writer. Romeo and Juliet is practically a snubbing and one-upping of Petrarch. Dante's Comedy is ultimately just a self-indulgent series of neat references of people he likes and doesn't like. Shakespeare may not be as skilled a poet as Dante but his entire body of work is much, much richer. Even Joyce said so.

:)

OK. Nice opinion but it's a bit worthless

You fuckers are retarded. You think that Shakespeare is considered so great simply because of his command of the English language? It's because of his IDEAS. His grasp of human nature.

Do you think he was just writing pulp fiction? Re-read "The Merchant of Venice" and note how Shylock is the perfect representation of narcissism, hundreds of years before Freud wrote about it.

Of course you would have to understand what things like narcissism are first, which you don't.

The more I learn about him and his writing the more impressed I am, consistently

>Dante's Comedy is ultimately just a self-indulgent series of neat references of people he likes and doesn't like.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

>narcissism, hundreds of years before Freud wrote about it.

lol, you mean Narcissus, the personification a concept that probably predates antiquity

MoV is deadly with that shit though

Who's the best Shakespeare character and why is it Beatrice?

I have a soft spot for Hal/Henry V. Such a towering, mighty character, even when he's not being taken seriously.

The Henriad is probably my favorite thing of all time

You'd better not use a name: I read many of your posts around Veeky Forums and 90% of them are retarded.
>Petrarch is a boring writer
You'd look much more smarter by saying you don't understand him.
>Dante's Comedy is ultimately just a self-indulgent series of neat references of people he likes and doesn't like
The Divine Comedy is the most complete and immersive brand experience I've ever had in literature. It's a universal understanding of history, reality, nature and human condition. Like philosophy – but better, because it's poetry. In order to alleviate your inferiority complex, I suggest you to read Dante again – and maybe study him seriously, this time.

I'm probably stupid I don't understand why he is good.

Neither, really. He's great, but it was the timing of his career that enabled him to jump-start his country's literature ahead by a good century or so. He was the right man at the right time.

No one outside of Anglo countries venerates him, lol. God, you anglos are so insufferable

>No one outside of Anglo countries venerates

There are videos on youtube relating to Shakespeare in other languages that have hundreds of thousands if not millions of views. Shakespeare very much is venerated world wide

No, he's right instead. Of course every country reads Shakespeare, but not every one thinks it's the greatest. This is where you Anglos fall miserably. America has Whitman, Germany has Goethe, Italy has Dante, France has Baudelaire. And I can assure you that no one of these nations places Shakespeare above their great poets. And that's fair, since everyone has its own tradition, even if we live in a globalized era etc etc. Stop believing you're the centre of the world.

You get my (up)vote.

No one fucking said that he's a the poet laureate of every single nation across the globe. We say he's venerated worldwide, which is as close to fact as you can get when it comes to broad generalized statements. Cultures are capable of admiring more than one writer at a time, you fucking retard; America isn't forced to choose between Whitman and Shakespeare.

>Typing in the Anglo language, on the Anglo invented Web, on the Anglo invented computer
Who cares about your backwater shithole country?

I said "before Freud wrote about it" not "before Freud discovered it."
Obviously I know people knew about it as a concept before Freud, considering I was using Shakespeare as an example of someone who understood it. But it didn't exist as an official categorization of a psychological condition before Freud.

We place Shakespeare above our own poets here in America

What is this? The ultimate colossal bait?
>the Anglo invented computer
KEK everyone knows that the first personal computer was invented by Olivetti, an ITALIAN company
>who is Federico Faggin
I'm pretty sure you need to refresh your memory about the man whereby the computer could be developed definitively
>Anglo invented muh wah wah
Overall, the growth of the internet and the computers world was possibile thanks to many different inventors all around the world. U.S. were the leader of the change, but not all credit goes to them.

My post was in response to OP who bigheadedly assumed that Shakespeare is widly considered the greatest poet of all times and all languages. That's just bullshit, because 90% of non-Anglo people don't think so, period. Then you see your post is basically trash talk and random insults because you're butthurt as fuck.