How did Shakespeare come to know so much?

[Calrid]

I think we're avoiding the big question here and that is was Lsyander gay?

 

[Damien Evans]

Once upon a time, but none of these writers' works are remotely as widespread as Shakespeare is today. I think a lot of it has to do with Shakespeare's incorporation in the curriculum of the English-speaking world at school. Sure, a lot of people trace their revulsion to Shakespeare from that time, as this thread demonstrates... but a lot of people like me trace their appreciation of Shakespeare to those same classes.

Widespread enough for a film based on The Iliad to gross nearly $500 million worldwide 7 years ago.

I don't remember a Shakespeare film in the last 10 years that was anywhere near as successful, nor one with such a recognisable cast as this:
Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger,Owain Yeoman, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Julie Christie, Peter O'Toole, Rose Byrne, Saffron Burrows.

 

[Aitch]

If it's a recognisable cast you want, try Branagh's Hamlet.

 

[Calrid]

If it's a recognisable cast you want, try Branagh's Hamlet.

I prefer Branagh's Henry V shorter and more wars. It's an action drama instead of a tragedy.

Much ado about nothing has Keanu Reaves and Denzel Washington in it. And of course the Merchant of Venice has Al Pacino as that damned Jew, and Joseph Feines and Jeremy Irons. Although it is a little more racist than usual. Given the English had kicked all the Jews out of England around this period this is hardly surprising though. No one likes bankers.

 

[Damien Evans]

If it's a recognisable cast you want, try Branagh's Hamlet.

I'll watch that, looks to be a pretty interesting adaptation. I will note it's not from my arbitrary timeframe though.

 

[marksman]

Widespread enough for a film based on The Iliad to gross nearly $500 million worldwide 7 years ago.

I don't remember a Shakespeare film in the last 10 years that was anywhere near as successful

The Lion King was based in large part on Hamlet and made $784 million worldwide since 1994. (While that's not within the last ten years, I think that should count. After all, the only other movies based on Homeric epics were Ulysses (1955), Time Bandits (1981), Helen of Troy (1927), and Helen of Troy (1956). None of those made much money.

And Lion King boasts a cast of Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones, Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, Jeremy Irons, Robert Guillaume, Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, and Cheech Marin.

Also, the Banquet (2006) was based on Hamlet and while it grossed only $22 million is a pretty kick-ass remake!

 

[marksman]

And I hate to say it, but Gnomeo & Juliet is still in theaters and has already grossed $176 million.

 

[ddt]

Homer, obviously (coming up on 3,000 years in his case)

Homer wasn't a playwright, so all comparisons are moot.

 

[gumboot]

Widespread enough for a film based on The Iliad to gross nearly $500 million worldwide 7 years ago.

How well a film based on the Iliad might have done really has no bearing at all on how widespread discussions about the original work are. How many films based on Shakespearean works have been released in that same seven years, hrm? Over 400 films have been based on Shakespeare's plays, making him the most adapted author in cinema history. Over fifty adaptations have been made just of Hamlet.

I don't remember a Shakespeare film in the last 10 years that was anywhere near as successful

What happens if we take all of the films adapted from or inspired by Shakespeare's plays in the last 10 years and combine their grosses?

nor one with such a recognisable cast as this:
Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger,Owain Yeoman, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Julie Christie, Peter O'Toole, Rose Byrne, Saffron Burrows.

Really? You sure you want to go there? There's literally dozens of films adapted from Shakespeare with utterly legendary cast (at least two of the cast you've listed above made their break in "Troy" as well, by the way).

 

[Damien Evans]

Homer wasn't a playwright, so all comparisons are moot.

That still leaves all the classical dramatists, though.

 

[HistoryGal]

I prefer Branagh's Henry V shorter and more wars. It's an action drama instead of a tragedy.

Much ado about nothing has Keanu Reaves and Denzel Washington in it. And of course the Merchant of Venice has Al Pacino as that damned Jew, and Joseph Feines and Jeremy Irons. Although it is a little more racist than usual. Given the English had kicked all the Jews out of England around this period this is hardly surprising though. No one likes bankers.

Actually, Jews were expelled from England during the reign of Edward I (Longshanks). That was in 1290. They were formally allowed to return in 1655, but there were actually numbers of Spanish Jews who arrived in England after 1492 (expulsion from Spain). Shylock was supposedly based on Rodrigo Lopez, Queen Elizabeth's physician.

 

[AtomicMysteryMonster]

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."

Thanks for your insight and I apologize for taking so long to respond. The name "Greene" definitely rings a bell, so I suspect that he was the one I was thinking of. The anecdote was presented in one of my college English classes that was taught by a HUGE Shakespeare fan. While lecturing about the Bard's wit, he told us of someone [presumably Greene] who complaining of Shakespeare copying others' works. In response, he apparently reproduced the original complaint and presented it as his own. The professor claimed that while the criticism was true, copyrights didn't exist then so Shakespeare wasn't technically stealing/plagiarizing/etc. At the time, I looked up the quote to see if this incident was true, saw that it was, and eventually forgot about it over the years.

 

[Lucian]

Thanks for your insight and I apologize for taking so long to respond. The name "Greene" definitely rings a bell, so I suspect that he was the one I was thinking of. The anecdote was presented in one of my college English classes that was taught by a HUGE Shakespeare fan. While lecturing about the Bard's wit, he told us of someone [presumably Greene] who complaining of Shakespeare copying others' works. In response, he apparently reproduced the original complaint and presented it as his own. The professor claimed that while the criticism was true, copyrights didn't exist then so Shakespeare wasn't technically stealing/plagiarizing/etc. At the time, I looked up the quote to see if this incident was true, saw that it was, and eventually forgot about it over the years.

Regarding the highlighted bit: do you mean he, Shakespeare, reproduced Greene's complaint and presented it as his own? If so, I don't think that's quite right. This is the passage that refers to Shakespeare:

[He warns three colleagues not to trust actors]: those Puppets (I meane) that spake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours.... Yes trust them not: for there is an vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. (Riverside Shakespeare, 1835)

"Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde" is an allusion to the line "O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from 3 Henry VI, so Greene is parodying Shakespeare. There is also some question whether Greene is actually accusing Shakespeare of plagiarism, or if he is simply miffed that an actor, who has spoken the lines of Greene and the other playwrights he's addressing, has dared to become an increasingly successful playwright. Greene had an M.A. from Cambridge. The writers he is addressing were also "university wits," though they are unnamed, so there's a certain amount of snobbery in the complaint.

Stephen Greenblatt has suggested that Shakespeare alludes to Greene's comments in Hamlet. Polonius quotes Hamlet's letter to Ophelia, "To the celestial and my soul's idol, the most beautified Ophelia," and comments, "That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase, 'beautified' is a vile phrase" (2.2.110-111, Riverside Shakespeare). Greenblatt argues that Polonius's dislike of the word "beautified" is a reference to Greene's comments (Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, 215-216, but I found the reference in Wikipedia, to be honest).

Interestingly, Henry Chettle, another playwright, who had printed Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, included a letter in one of his own works in which he notes that a couple of playwrights were offended by Greene's work, and since Greene was dead, they blamed him (it has been suggested that Chettle was actually the author: Greene had died by the time the work was printed and couldn't complain that it wasn't his). Chettle says, "With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them [almost certainly Christopher Marlowe] I care not if I neuer be." He feels a bit bad about the other one (presumably Shakespeare), with whom he has since become acquainted, and wishes he had "moderated the heate" of Greene's attack, because, "my selfe haue seene his demeanor no lesse ciuill than he exelent in the qualitie he professes: Besides, diuers of worship haue reported, his vprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that aprooues his Art" (Riverside Shakespeare, 1836)

 

[AtomicMysteryMonster]

Regarding the highlighted bit: do you mean he, Shakespeare, reproduced Greene's complaint and presented it as his own?

That's roughly how I remember it, but the lecture in question happened several years ago and I could be mistaken. I'm afraid none of the quotes you have presented jog my memory, so I can't say whether or not they are from the work that was discussed in that old class.

You clearly know a lot about the subject and have presented some very interesting material, which leads me to ask the following: Do you know anything about the claim that the "blaspheming Jew" comment in the witches' speech in Macbeth was not written by Shakespeare and inserted by another party? I personally find that a bit hard to swallow, especially after reading The Merchant of Venice.

 

[Lucian]

That's roughly how I remember it, but the lecture in question happened several years ago and I could be mistaken. I'm afraid none of the quotes you have presented jog my memory, so I can't say whether or not they are from the work that was discussed in that old class.

You clearly know a lot about the subject and have presented some very interesting material, which leads me to ask the following: Do you know anything about the claim that the "blaspheming Jew" comment in the witches' speech in Macbeth was not written by Shakespeare and inserted by another party? I personally find that a bit hard to swallow, especially after reading The Merchant of Venice.

Possibly. It is generally accepted that Macbeth includes interpolated material. More specifically, it seems likely that Thomas Middleton edited/adapted the play sometime after Shakespeare retired. That happened fairly often: a company hired a playwright to update an older play. Two scenes in particular are considered questionable: 3.5 and 4.1; the latter scene includes "liver of a blaspheming Jew" in the "Double, double, toil and trouble" spell. These are the only two scenes that include Hecate, and both include song cues, to "Come away, come away" (3.5) and "Black spirits" (4.1). Both those songs appear in Middleton's play The Witch. So, it's likely that Middleton at least revised those scenes; it's possible that he wrote them.

 

[AtomicMysteryMonster]

Possibly. It is generally accepted that Macbeth includes interpolated material. More specifically, it seems likely that Thomas Middleton edited/adapted the play sometime after Shakespeare retired. That happened fairly often: a company hired a playwright to update an older play. Two scenes in particular are considered questionable: 3.5 and 4.1; the latter scene includes "liver of a blaspheming Jew" in the "Double, double, toil and trouble" spell. These are the only two scenes that include Hecate, and both include song cues, to "Come away, come away" (3.5) and "Black spirits" (4.1). Both those songs appear in Middleton's play The Witch. So, it's likely that Middleton at least revised those scenes; it's possible that he wrote them.

Interesting, I'll have to look into that. Thanks!

 

[llwyd]

I find Shakespeare a very, very scary writer. Yes, he did write some relatively bad plays, but he is the best, the most universal writer of our modern Western civilization - and what makes this even more remarkable, is that this civilization had barely begun when he wrote his texts.

Another strange thing is that is exceptionally hard to discern what Shakespeare himself actually thought about his themes and subjects. He is especially peculiar about religion, very distant in many ways from the inner spirituality of Christianity which, in his era, was pretty much a universal world view. Usually you can pretty easily imagine the writer based on his/her texts - you often get a relatively shrewd idea what the writer thinks about issues, what kind of a temperament he/she has etc. etc.

With Shakespeare it's different - I suppose I would guess that he was a pretty neutral, easygoing person, good company but keeping much hidden. But you can't really get a living image of him based on his plays. His point of view is scarily distant, objective, all-encompassing. He must have been a very strange person, underneath.

 

[gumboot]

I find Shakespeare a very, very scary writer. Yes, he did write some relatively bad plays, but he is the best, the most universal writer of our modern Western civilization - and what makes this even more remarkable, is that this civilization had barely begun when he wrote his texts.

Another strange thing is that is exceptionally hard to discern what Shakespeare himself actually thought about his themes and subjects. He is especially peculiar about religion, very distant in many ways from the inner spirituality of Christianity which, in his era, was pretty much a universal world view. Usually you can pretty easily imagine the writer based on his/her texts - you often get a relatively shrewd idea what the writer thinks about issues, what kind of a temperament he/she has etc. etc.

With Shakespeare it's different - I suppose I would guess that he was a pretty neutral, easygoing person, good company but keeping much hidden. But you can't really get a living image of him based on his plays. His point of view is scarily distant, objective, all-encompassing. He must have been a very strange person, underneath.

I think you're applying to much of a modern view to your reading of his works. In a time where writing the wrong sort of play could get you executed for treason or blasphemy I seriously doubt many writers were entirely honest about their view of things as weighty as politics or religion in their works.

For example Shakespeare's character assassination of Richard III is almost certainly a direct result of very astute awareness that the reigning monarch was the granddaughter of Richard III's vanquisher.

 

[Spektator]

Usually, Shakespeare usually writes dullard men -- Falstaff, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern, Caliban -- for comic relief. (snip)

Falstaff a dullard? My opinion differs.

(snip)
All Shakespeare's plots were borrowed. Okay, there's no known source for the main plot of The Tempest, but otherwise, they're all borrowed. And all the other playwrights did the same thing. Sometimes they even updated older plays. Thomas Middleton seems to have edited and added to Macbeth, and Ben Jonson was hired to add scenes to Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. And then there's the Ur-Hamlet.

(snip)

The main plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream is original, although the Mechanicals raid Ovid's Metamorphoses for the play-within-a-play "Pyramus and Thisby."

 

[llwyd]

I think you're applying to much of a modern view to your reading of his works. In a time where writing the wrong sort of play could get you executed for treason or blasphemy I seriously doubt many writers were entirely honest about their view of things as weighty as politics or religion in their works.

For example Shakespeare's character assassination of Richard III is almost certainly a direct result of very astute awareness that the reigning monarch was the granddaughter of Richard III's vanquisher.

Yes, Tudor England was a police state in some senses (especially as regards the monarchy and religion), but I don't know if we can read from the absence of certain personal conviction that he was a radical anti-monarchist or an atheist. There are many places in the text where you can certainly construct a relatively conservative stance, but nevertheless you are really left in the dark as to his personal views. I think that Richard III certainly left rich pickings for a negative view in any case, regardless of Tudor propaganda (though in a macchiavellian sense he might have a been a good ruler).

In any case we have scholars arguing, for example, that Shakespeare was a good Elizabethan Protestant, a Catholic (leaving "secret codes" all over the plays), an agnostic and a militant atheist. I personally wouldn't know - but I guess like all people I would read him to be closest to my own views, so that he was a sceptically inclined agnostic who still took religion relatively seriously. No-one can really tell.