How did Shakespeare come to know so much?

CplFerro

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CplFerro
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Shakespeare, from what I have heard, is the most famous author of all, widely acclaimed as the best writer in history. He obviously went to a lot of trouble to produce his scores of plays and poems, but, my question is, presuming that these plays and poems have anything wise and valuable in them to say, how did Shakespeare acquire the wisdom needed to write them? If you tell me "he was a genius" am I to believe that he simply walked the Earth for a few decades, living the life of the common man, and through sheer brilliance of intellect induced his pearls of wisdom? Or was he exceptionally well-educated?

Curiously yours,

Cpl Ferro
 
Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Also, if you look at Shakespeare's work in the order he wrote it (to the extent such dates are known), his skills definitely improved over time. He was writing plays and poems at the same time he was accumulating the life experience and exposure to other literature that informed his work.
 
Bill Bryson's Shakespeare* gives a good account of his life: it goes over his education at grammar school which would have covered a good deal of Latin rhetoric and literature** though not so much maths, history or geography.

* - Harper Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-00-732523-8
** - possibly more so than a present-day degree in Classics.
 
Oh puleeeaase! He obviously watched the History Channel and BBC 2 documentaries.
 
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Didn't he often "borrow" material from others? I seem to recall reading that Ben Jonson called him out on it back in the day.
 
AtomicMysteryMonster said:
Didn't he often "borrow" material from others? I seem to recall reading that Ben Jonson called him out on it back in the day.
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Everyone, including Jonson, borrowed material, but I don't recall Jonson making that particular accusation against Shakespeare. Perhaps you are thinking of Robert Greene's Groats-worth of Wit, in which the author called Shakespeare (presumably) "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers."
 
AtomicMysteryMonster said:
Didn't he often "borrow" material from others? I seem to recall reading that Ben Jonson called him out on it back in the day.
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Some of Shakespeare's works were reinterpretations of much older stories. Romeo and Juliet is the best example. I wouldn't say he "stole" the work any more than James Cameron "stole" Avatar from whomever wrote Ferngully. The story is old, the genius is in how he told it.
 
CplFerro said:
Shakespeare, from what I have heard, is the most famous author of all, widely acclaimed as the best writer in history. He obviously went to a lot of trouble to produce his scores of plays and poems, but, my question is, presuming that these plays and poems have anything wise and valuable in them to say, how did Shakespeare acquire the wisdom needed to write them?
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I don't think they're wise, they're insightful. Shakespeare was obviously someone who had an intrinsic grasp of the human animal. This isn't a particularly unique trait on its own. Some people just understand things better than others.

In Shakespeare, however, you had this combined with a genius grasp of language and in particular in quite clever modes of expression and way of phrasing things. Combine those two factors together and you get magic. Neither is really about learning or picking up knowledge; they're talents some people are just born with.



CplFerro said:
If you tell me "he was a genius" am I to believe that he simply walked the Earth for a few decades, living the life of the common man, and through sheer brilliance of intellect induced his pearls of wisdom? Or was he exceptionally well-educated?
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Many people through history have been exceptionally well educated and yet failed to produce as Shakespeare did. I don't think he was a particularly knowledgeable person - one only need consider his exotic settings and how poorly they represent the actual locations to see his ignorance at play.

Again, his unique talent was an instinctive grasp of what it means to be human, combined with incredible language talent.
 
Loss Leader said:
Some of Shakespeare's works were reinterpretations of much older stories. Romeo and Juliet is the best example. I wouldn't say he "stole" the work any more than James Cameron "stole" Avatar from whomever wrote Ferngully. The story is old, the genius is in how he told it.
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Well, Ferngully is a much better movie than Avatar.
 
godless dave said:
Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Also, if you look at Shakespeare's work in the order he wrote it (to the extent such dates are known), his skills definitely improved over time. He was writing plays and poems at the same time he was accumulating the life experience and exposure to other literature that informed his work.
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Shakespeare coined about two thousand words. Most English speaking people quote Shakespeare at least once a day without knowing it.
 
Er, just because those words are first attested in Shakespeare's works doesn't necessarily mean he coined them, does it?
 
Slayhamlet said:
Er, just because those words are first attested in Shakespeare's works doesn't necessarily mean he coined them, does it?
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Hey! You know a guy is a genius when you see one of his plays and about a third of the nouns and verbs are made-up words you've never even heard before.
 
theprestige said:
Exactly. It wasn't so much that Shakespeare coined these words, but that he made a record of them. An extremely popular, long-lasting record.
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I wonder how many of these phrases were in use before Shakespeare wrote them down. This is just a sample.

A fool's paradise
A sea change
A sorry sight
As dead as a doornail
As pure as the driven snow
At one fell swoop
Bag and baggage
Beast with two backs
Dash to pieces
Discretion is the better part of valour
Eaten out of house and home
Fair play
Fancy free
Good riddance
Green eyed monster
Hoist by your own petard
I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
It is meat and drink to me
Lay it on with a trowel
Milk of human kindness
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows
More fool you
More honoured in the breach than in the observation
My salad days
Out of the jaws of death
Pound of flesh
Primrose path
Rhyme nor reason
The game is afoot
Up in arms
Vanish into thin air
Breathed his last
Brevity is the soul of wit
Refuse to budge an inch
Cold comfort
Elbow room
Fool's paradise
It was Greek to me
In a pickle
Play fast and loose
Pomp and circumstance
Too much of a good thing
Towering passion
The world’s mine oyster
 
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