Poll

I am not bound to please thee with my answers.

Read 'em. All's Well That Ends Well.
1 (20%)
Never heard of 'em but  interested. The Comedy of Errors.
2 (40%)
Who's Shakespeare to me that I'll spend the cash? The Merchant of Venice.
1 (20%)
No interest. Much Ado About Nothing
1 (20%)

Total Members Voted: 5

Author Topic: Kill Shakespeare  (Read 25280 times)

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Offline smokester

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Re: Kill Shakespeare
« Reply #15 on: January 17, 2014, 07:30:37 AM »
I have the same issues with Shakespeare as with da Vinci and other "masters".

Yes, they are OK stories executed fairly well by the standards of the day, but what makes them "masterpieces"? Most of his plays are versions/ copies of others, what is it that makes a play (written, let's be honest, in language that is at best semi-comprehensible to a modern person) attributed to him better than the same story in a play by someone else?

Boy meets girl, parents fight, boy and girl meet sticky end. Sounds like a Glee episode: just because it is written in Elizabethan English doesn't make it great, in my view. Anything that has to be read in conjunction with a user guide to help the reader understand what (the author of the user guide considered) was meant is exactly the opposite to great as far as I can see.

Back to the da Vinci bit: If someone discovered tomorrow that a play thought until now to be written by "mediaeval bloggs" was actually written by Billy WaggleDagger™, it becomes an instant masterpiece. (Paintings hanging on a pensioner's wall for decades bought for a tenner in a flea market become multi-million pound properties if someone somewhere decides that they are "an original da Vinci"). balls.

Perhaps the whole 'quill and candlelight' and lack of readily available inspiration like the intarwebs make works of old more exceptional.

Personally, I'm a Homer fan (Bart just irritates me nowadays).
Don't put off until tomorrow, what you can put off until the day after.

There is an exception to every rule, apart from this one.

Offline tarascon

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« Reply #16 on: January 17, 2014, 05:02:42 PM »
I'd love to discuss the pros and cons of Shakespeare--but, lol, this thread ain't about him. It's about the graphic comics. Dint anyone try the op link?  ;D
Estragon: I can't go on like this.
Vladimir: That's what you think.

Offline Beatrix

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Re: Kill Shakespeare
« Reply #17 on: January 17, 2014, 06:56:52 PM »
haha! No.  :P

Offline 6pairsofshoes

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Re: Kill Shakespeare
« Reply #18 on: January 17, 2014, 07:42:50 PM »
People are into hero worship and setting standards.  Chaos is too hard.  Then there's always the question of quality.

You have on the one hand Jackie Collins, and on the other, Shakespeare.  There's an order of magnitude in ranges of quality there.

Offline dweez

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Re: Kill Shakespeare
« Reply #19 on: January 17, 2014, 08:02:40 PM »
I read the OP link. :D
--dweez

Offline 6pairsofshoes

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Re: Kill Shakespeare
« Reply #20 on: January 17, 2014, 08:53:17 PM »
My brain is like a sieve.  That, plus there was too much bass in the OP link.  It gave me the willies.

Offline Maudibe

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Re: Kill Shakespeare
« Reply #21 on: January 19, 2014, 05:45:11 PM »
Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war

Offline tarascon

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Re: Kill Shakespeare
« Reply #22 on: January 25, 2014, 11:49:02 AM »
My brain is like a sieve.  That, plus there was too much bass in the OP link.  It gave me the willies.

Clever.  ;)

Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war

I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space...

> So has anyone checked out the comix or am I solomente in a void?  ;D
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Vladimir: That's what you think.

Offline Maudibe

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Re: Kill Shakespeare
« Reply #23 on: January 26, 2014, 07:00:56 PM »
TV or not to TV

Offline tarascon

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Re: Kill Shakespeare
« Reply #24 on: January 26, 2014, 07:38:52 PM »
Estragon: I can't go on like this.
Vladimir: That's what you think.

Offline brickbatz

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Re: Kill Shakespeare
« Reply #25 on: February 02, 2014, 06:29:56 PM »
I'm ate up with this damn game. A bandit Psycho recites Hamlet


O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead!—nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,—
Let me not think on't,—Frailty, thy name is woman!—
A little month; or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body
Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,—
O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer,—married with mine uncle,
My father's brother; but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month;
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married:— O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good;
But break my heart,—for I must hold my tongue.

Offline tarascon

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Re: Kill Shakespeare
« Reply #26 on: February 02, 2014, 10:43:01 PM »
^ He should be spared for that performance. Or perhaps not.

Spoiler (hover to show)
Estragon: I can't go on like this.
Vladimir: That's what you think.