Does Shakespeare annoy the wits out of you?

Post Reply New Topic

Shakespeare was part of the curriculum for my English exams at school. I really struggled with it. In the books we had, the play was on the right hand page and the meanings of the old words were on the left hand page. I had to keep looking at the meaning and completely lost my train of thought. It was much easier to decipher a foreign language. Then the teacher showed a film of the play and it all made sense, as it should. My husband got all As for his subjects at school, but a C for English and he blames Shakespeare Shakespeare is the reason he never studied English at a higher level..

I don't think I have the capacity to read and understand Shakespeare. It's in plain English, but I don't understand it!

sometimes, though, his antiquated English surfaces very vivid poetic imagery:

But this is how I like my Shakespeare: in small, bite-sized doses, without too much brain-wracking on thees and thous; and I believe the reason why I like them is because saying the words is a fresh way of expressing the same stories. Mind you, I like Eminem and Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park) as way, so I should not be mistaken for anything other than an unenlightened lout.

Three different schools in three years, Julius Caesar each time! Damn!

Never insult Shakespeare in front of a theater major or else you'll be enemies for life.

What a painful loss that would be.

Shakespeare's wording style is hard for me to grasp when I read it but I really liked the plots & storyline that I've read in high-school English. I'd rather learn Shakespeare by listening to music

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLTdmBq4_Vg[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6-bxgyQe04&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

I cannot understand any of it for the life of me.

I have seen a couple of Shakespeare's plays as films and I quite enjoyed them.

However, I have had to read some Shakespeare's plays in class and I really hated that.

I think that English Literature courses are the enemy of enjoying English Literature.

I suppose it depends on your perspective (and educator). They can greatly enhance one’s enjoyment.

Shakespeare was easily my favorite class in college. It was a magical experience with one of my favorite professors.

We worked our way through 12 plays. We watched a few productions, including a live play. Some of my other favorite classes were Classical Literature and Victorian Literature. I had always loved reading, but I especially loved being able to discuss what I was reading with other literature/philosophy nerds. Some of my professors were excellent, too. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… Dickens but still true.

I was math.

Part of why I didn't enjoy Shakespeare may have been that I took it after having heart surgery and wasn't feeling well that semester.

That must’ve been very difficult.

Nah. I just kind of wimped out.

The bad thing is that the classroom was only about 200 feet (walking path) from my dorm room. Out the door, down some steps, across a parking lot, up the sidewalk, in the door, turn right, and voila. I had no excuse with that class.

I wonder how many people truly enjoy many of the classics. I usually find them really dull. Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Hamsun, 3 authors we were forced to read in school, all so boring you could fall asleep trying to read them. I like Jory's list over famous people who couldn't stand Shakespeare! Wonder how many people really like this stuff and how many just don't dare voice what they think is an unpopular opinion. The language is impossible and the stories don't engage at all.

I would never have become a reader if I thought that was all books could be like. no wonder so many people don't read a lot.

This. Same goes for my native language.

^That's a good point. The wording of old formal English like Shakespeare is very overly complicated & has lots of extra unnecessary words. Plus nobody outside of Shakespeare fans & English & acting classes ever talks like that today in the US. Even the standard wording formality for job resumes in the US are not worded like Shakespeare. Non-college US English classes teaching Shakespeare are doing a disservice to their students by taking time away from teaching them common current proper English.

I enjoy most classics, Shakespeare included. I find it very annoying when people that, for some reason, don't enjoy the classics assume that other people then can't enjoy them either.

He used to do when I was force-fed him at school. I was about 14 or 15 years old and the language made no sense to me at all, and I was struggling to follow the plots of almost anything that had more than 2 or 3 characters. I felt quite relieved when the English teacher happened to say that the scene we'd just covered had been "rather dreary and political." I'd been thinking I was the only one who thought so.

I could never focus on boring things at all in those days (I'm not much better now), and much worse, I had no idea about the meaning of poetic and symbolic language. To me it was all gobbledegook. The teacher asked me if I'd been paying attention and I said "I've been trying but I can't understand it." He was angry and never did anything to help except scowl at me.

But a bit later on we got a less nasty teacher. We had to do Twelfth Night for the literature part of the 'O' level, and I was starting to get a bit more used to the language. I suppose it's one of Shakespeare's less tedious plays, being a fairly light comedy, and my brain must have developed a bit. So it started to click, and I must have picked up enough to pass the exam. Over the years since then I've seen the play a few times, and once I knew the plot fairly well it was a bit easier. And little by little my brain came to understand the flowery language of poetry and symbolism instead of being entirely bolted to concrete ideas, and that helped. I even enjoyed some of it.

So all in all I feel fairly good about Shakespeare, because my exposure to it was a story of success in comprehension and the realisation that I wasn't stupid and I didn't have brain damage. I'm not saying that people who can't fathom it or just don't like it are stupid or uncultured, because I know just how it feels to have Shakespeare rammed down your throat and for jerks to tell you you're somehow inferior for not getting it and appreciating it. Different strokes for different folks, that's how it really is.

I don't much bother with Shakespeare these days but it's nice to know that if I looked at one of his plays I'd probably understand it and might like it. If they put a new production of Twelfth Night on, I'd be interested in seeing it, and I saw one version I liked a lot, that I can't find in my collection, so I'd like to get myself a copy of that. I'm interested in watching plays in general because I've developed a great liking for the performing arts over the years so I've got something of a bias towards anything that's about the stage.

There's a lot in Shakespeare's stuff that interests me. Somebody once said that he usually portrays the Fool (clown, or jester) as the only one who knows what's going on. I like ideas like that.