/lit/ - Literature

>You can try all you want but you won't ever achieve even 1% of the beauty and the Truth of the Bible.
oops

How do I begin reading Shakespeare? Where do I start with his writing? What should I know before getting into it? How should I review what I've read?

The last time I read him was 3 years ago in high school and my teacher revealed more in Hamlet than I ever would have been capable for seeing if I read it myself. How do I read the texts so as to not have deep, meaningful prose go over my head?

How can people take this guy seriously he looks like a hipster faggot lmao

Is proclaiming Shakespeare to be the best writer ever a fair statement? Or has it just been said so much that people blindly accept it as being true?

Which plays are the best and which plays do I avoid?

What's the best complete edition of Shakespeare? I want one without those gay-ass commentaries and without excessive footnotes.

>>8995279
Shakespeare: paint me like on of them white boys.
Painter: say no more senpai.

Hamlet is a true masterpiece. King Lear and Macbeth are pretty good (although the plots of both are ridiculous and both are melodramatic). Romeo and Juliet is really good. The historical plays have some good stuff in them. The sonnets are good. A lot of what this dude wrote, though, seems to be just filler romantic comedies, and he really liked to suck up to the royals. His plays are obsessively full of sex jokes and double entendres - nothing wrong with sex jokes r double entendres, but this dude seems like he couldn't resist putting one in almost every other line. His characters are a mixed bag - some are extremely well drawn, but many others are 2-dimensional caricatures.

Don't get me wrong, he's definitely a really good writer, and obviously one of the most influential writers of all time, but why the fuck do so many people consider him to be the greatest writer of all time, without peer, etc?

What do you guys think about his sonnets? I'm reading a collection of them right and and they're comfy af.

>2016+1
>not being able to write a sonnet
What's your excuse, poets of /lit/

As proposed in this thread (>>8913960 → →), this will be a reading group for Shakespeare's Four Great Tragedies:

>Macbeth
>Hamlet
>Othello
>King Lear

I propose we start this week with Macbeth, the shortest of the four.

>Why only those four?

Because they are commonly grouped together by critics since A.C. Bradley as the greatest poetic and dramatic achievement of Shakeapeare. Of course, we can discuss the relevance of that claim and its implications, not just take it as a fact. Also, book clubs here seem to be about reading big works. Not even Hamlet could take that slot, so we are reading the four to "compensate".

>Aren't we doing a "Go Hard With the Bard" reading group?

We can do that, but I don't plan to take responsibility/management for that group. I also think we should do the FGT for now to test the waters and as a sort of introduction to Shakespeare for those who haven't read him. They also offer a set number of plays so that we don't have to choose and discriminate other plays (i.e. why not read X or Y comedy/tragedy/romance/problem play/history??????).

>What about the schedule?

I propose the following: one week for general reading and discussion of one of the tragedies, one week for either rereading the selected play, read secondary sources, and/or watch one or more productions of the play to discuss.
Plays aren't the same as novels and poems: they have a dramatic text and a performance text. They are meant to be read and to be performed, and many interesting things can be done with the performance text. It would bring about interesting discussions.

>You mentioned supplemental reading. What about it?

Secondary sources are optional, but I suggest we use two “main” texts as secondary sources:

>The Meaning of Shakespeare, two volumes, by Harold Goddard
>Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, by Harold Bloom

Here's a link with a lot of supplemental reading and secondary sources on Shakespeare. Goddard and Bloom are in there.

https://mega.nz/#!thsg0Q4S!3jxmsVHZqcaPMX_gwak4OSn7SVPOqWNWUuO2StcQAH0

>What about editions of the plays?

As far as editions go, you can choose from Oxford, Norton, New Cambridge, or Arden. In the MEGA link I shared, there are Arden editions for Hamlet and Othello, and an Oxford edition for King Lear. For Macbeth, here’s a link to the New Cambridge edition: http://bookzz.org/md5/31AFF3A8D2CC72A9EDA1F7110C10789C


Any other questions or suggestions are welcome.

As proposed in this thread (>>8913960), this will be a reading group for Shakespeare's Four Great Tragedies:

>Hamlet
>Macbeth
>Othello
>King Lear

>Why only those four?

Because they are commonly grouped together by critics since A.C. Bradley as the greatest poetic and dramatic achievement of Shakeapeare. Of course, we can discuss the relevance of that claim and its implications, not just take it as a fact. Also, book clubs here seem to be about reading big works. Not even Hamlet could take that slot, so we are reading the four to "compensate".

>Aren't we doing a "Go Hard With the Bard" reading group?

We can do that, but I don't plan to take responsibility/management for that group. I also think we should do the FGT for know to test the waters and as a sort of introduction to Shakespeare for those who haven't read him. They also offer a set number of plays so that we don't have to choose and discriminate other plays (i.e. why not read X or Y comedy/tragedy/romance/problem play/history??????).

>What about the schedule?

I propose the following: one week for general reading and discussion of one of the tragedies, one week for either rereading the selected play, read secondary sources, and/or watch one or more productions of the play to discuss.
Plays aren't the same as novels and poems: they have a dramatic text and a performance text. They are meant to be read and to be performed, and many interesting things can be done with the performance text. It would bring about interesting discussions.

>You mentioned supplemental reading. What about it? What about editions of the plays?

Here's a link with a lot of supplemental reading and secondary sources on Shakespeare.

https://mega.nz/#!thsg0Q4S!3jxmsVHZqcaPMX_gwak4OSn7SVPOqWNWUuO2StcQAH0

As far as editions go, you can choose from Oxford, Norton, New Cambridge, or Arden. In the MEGA link I shared, there are Arden editions for Hamlet and Othello, and an Oxford edition for King Lear. For Macbeth, we can get another good edition from the internet, I guess.


Any other questions or suggestions are welcome.

I'm looking to get into Shakespeare. My question is: how difficult is he to pick up? I read a couple of his plays back in high school, but that was 8 years ago and they were modern English versions.

I've read the KJV Bible, Plato, Descartes, no Aristotle, and I can read old English quite well. Would I be able to comprehend Shakespeare's works?

My friend and I have conceptualized an idea for a play that we're going to begin writing probably sometime in Spring and I wanted to share and hear opinions. I also want to know how you think the ideas succeed and how they fail.

So the play is called King Brad. The whole play is basically a send-up of Shakespearean tragedy/histories. King Brad consists of characters who all speak in iambic pentameter verse except for Brad, who speaks in prose. King Brad essentially is a libertarian who becomes king despite having no interest in helping the citizens of London or having power. Brad struggles with the requirements of the job, and is only interested in fencing.

Brad's hencheman, Friar Nick, is extremely ambitious and despises Brad's good luck and plots to murder him. When Brad and Nick face off, Brad completely disarms Nick. Instead of condemning or killing Nick, Brad bemoans his fortune and admits that he just wants out.

From there, Brad and Nick conspire to get Brad exiled from town so that Nick can be crowned king. However, as the plan unfolds Brad ends up listening and empathizing with his citizens. He bonds with some of the citizens who tell him their woes and beg him to alleviate their pain. He cannot say no due to guilt, so Brad has to figure out how to help the citizens before he follows through on his plan.

Meanwhile, Nick sees all of this and realizes that while Brad isn't ambitious, he's kind of heart and noble. Nick realizes how dehumanized he's become in his thirst for the throne and wonders if achieving his goal will only prove that he has no care for anything except himself.

That's all we have so far, let me have it.

>Shakespeare
>Shakspere
>Shakespear
>Shakspeare

How is he the greatest writer in the English language? Fucker couldn't even spell his own name correctly.

Who else are good playwrights aside from Shakespeare?

Useless faggot

What's a good reading plan for Shakespeare?
Are they any particular editions you recommend?
Is there any prerequisite reading I should do?

I want to into Shakespeare. Is there an agreed upon order/plan for reading through his works?

>>8621502
retard website didn't attach image

What do people mean when they say Shakespeare invented the human?

Is there such a thing as Shakespeare fanfiction?

I'm looking for writers who are like the Romantics, with similar characteristics of the Romanticism era, but their works were published before Romanticism was a thing.

>to be or not to be, that is the question
Woahhh what a genius!