dagblog - Comments for "Ask Me About Shakespeare, Round Two"

Thanks, everyone.

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 14:08:00 +0000

In reply to Ask Me About Shakespeare, Round Two

Thanks, everyone.

I'm going straight from work to the airport today, so my responses will slow down after this. But thanks for making the thread fun.

;)

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 03:07:43 +0000

In reply to Last year was less

;)

Last year was less

ocean-kat — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 22:21:56 +0000

In reply to I love this thread, Doc, even

Last year was less interesting because we got into a long diversion about who actually wrote Shakespeare's plays. This year we're all ~~pretending~~ agreeing that ~~that fraud~~ Shakespeare wrote the plays.

Got it. Thanks!

Michael Wolraich — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 21:52:24 +0000

In reply to Both sides of the argument

Got it. Thanks!

Both sides of the argument

Doctor Cleveland — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 15:58:43 +0000

In reply to Fascinating and revelatory

Both sides of the argument have ulterior motives, and both sides of the argument are responding to genuine artistic values. I don't mean to make one side the party of enlightenment who appreciates real art and the other the side of politically-motivated Philistines. People's responses to art are always both real AND influenced by the society around them.

I like Shakespeare's artistic approach myself, and I am not a British nationalist. Nationalism is certainly not the only reason to appreciate him. But much of the case that got made in the 18th and 19th century for why Shakespeare breaking the classical rules was made on *explicit* nationalist grounds. People would write that English genius could not be constrained by a foreigner like Aristotle, blah blah blah, or they would especially contrast Shakespeare's practice to those decadent, neo-Classical French. Shakespeare's non-classical approach became a way to contrast British culture from French culture during height of the British and French Empires' rivalry.

Fascinating and revelatory

Michael Wolraich — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 14:39:09 +0000

In reply to Thanks, Michael. I'm glad you

Fascinating and revelatory (to me at least)! Thanks so much for the detailed explanation.

You seem to play down Shakespeare's violation of classical rules by describing England's belated appreciation for him as "nationalist," which makes the sentiment seem artificial, even pernicious. But couldn't it be the other way round? That English art culture was too conservative and elitist to fully appreciate Shakespeare before the 18th century? We often talk that way about transformative artists who were not appreciated until after their deaths--we say that the world wasn't ready for them.

The Disney formula: something

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 05:32:56 +0000

In reply to Thanks, Michael. I'm glad you

The Disney formula: something for the kids, something for the parents. A good fight, a bit of humor, and if lucky a little (implied) toss in the hay.

Thanks, Michael. I'm glad you

Doctor Cleveland — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 03:02:00 +0000

In reply to I love this thread, Doc, even

Thanks, Michael. I'm glad you're enjoying it. And an excellent question, which I'm going to have to take a deep breath to answer.

The when part of the question is easier: Shakespeare climbed to his current height of reputation over stages, from something like the lowest ebb in 1660 to established King of all media in the mid-1700s, and finally to his absolute apex in the second half of the 19th century, by which point he was a secular idol. How is harder to answer, because it's tied into the question of why, and there's ongoing debate about that. My own answers inevitably reflect my positions in those debates.

I want to point out one basic thing before I get really rolling: the list of Greatest Writers is constantly shifting, slowly but endlessly, and the list of "All-Time Greatest," especially, changes over time. You'll notice that my list of English playwrights with Shakespeare stuck in Third-and-a-Half position doesn't feature Christopher Marlowe at all. But by the twentieth century, Marlowe had clearly become English Renaissance Playwright Number Two, next-best after Shakespeare. John Donne has clearly been a Top Ten Renaissance Poet for the last hundred years, but didn't rate anything like that high over the previous centuries. This goes for classical Latin and Greek, too. The canon of Latin and Greek poets that were considered most important in Shakespeare's lifetime is not the canon we have today, although there is some important overlap. A bunch of classical works and poets we consider minor were much bigger deals to Shakespeare's generation. In four hundred years, the list of Most Important Greeks and Romans will probably look different again.

So, anyway:

In 1660, the London theaters reopened after an 18-year closure (Civil War + government by theater-hating Puritans), and Shakespeare's acting company was gone by then. Shakespeare was English Playwright #3 or #4 (and note that we're talking about English playwrights, not English poets) after Beaumont/Fletcher and Jonson. He's not as hip or as intellectual as the others: there's something faintly middlebrow about liking him. But he's still a substantial figure: after all there were only three-and-a-half playwrights who rated a big, fat volume of collected plays (Beaumont and Fletcher shared a collection), so the sheer fact that you could get all of dramatic Shakespeare in one place helped ensure his importance. He was no longer as big a deal as he used to be, and he was kind of square, but you remembered that he had been a big deal once upon a time.

Two new London acting companies formed in 1660 on royal authority, and those authorities divided up all the old plays between those two new groups. The favorite company, the new King's Men, got the "best" plays, meaning almost all of the Beaumont/Fletcher and the Jonson, with only a couple of Shakespeare pieces. (Seriously, they took Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew because it was part of a set with Fletcher's sequel to Taming of the Shrew. It was really like that.) The second-favorite company, the Duke of York's Men, got the leftovers that the top company didn't want, including almost all of Shakespeare. But over time, the Duke of York's Men turned out to be far and away the better, more innovative acting company. They adapted the hell out of Shakespeare to fit current tastes; their leading man became a huge star with a career of almost half a century, the first great "Shakespearean actor" who hadn't acted for Shakespeare's original company; eventually the "senior" company collapsed completely and the "junior" company absorbed them.

By the time the 18th century rolled around, and increasingly so, Shakespeare's plays became the backbone of the English theatrical repertory, while the other pre-Civil-War playwrights fell into less favor. By 1769, the great actor David Garrick decided to hold a big "Shakespeare Jubilee" at Stratford-on-Avon, the first time the cult of Shakespeare got rolling in the birthplace. You'll notice that Garrick didn't have the idea in time for Shakespeare's 200th birthday in 1764; and in 1664, celebrating a hundred years of Shakespeare wouldn't have crossed anyone's mind. By the 300th birthday in 1864, Shakespeare was basically the sacred embodiment of English culture.

And by the Victorians, Shakespeare had not just emerged as Playwright Number One but Poet Number One. He wasn't just considered better than Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher, but as bigger than Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, all of whom would make a perfectly good National Poet. Chaucer, who could be called the Father of English Literature, had the disadvantage of being much harder to understand than Shakespeare (because English changed more between 1400 and 1600 than it has changed from 1600 until today). The choice of national poet came down to Shakespeare or one of the lofty, highly-learned epic poets, Spenser and (especially) Milton. Milton's the last one Shakespeare passed; in the late 1700s, you were still not allowed to say bad things about John Milton without people losing their minds. If you didn't like Milton, you basically weren't English.

Why did Shakespeare win? Partly because he was popular, in the sense of fun and playing to a broad audience instead of just the elite. He had highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow appeal. Shakespeare performances weren't just for the elite in the 1800s, either. They were still popular entertainment. And there were all kinds of adaptations and spinoffs. He was basically King of All Media. On the other hand, there's not a more fun, lowbrow version of Paradise Lost. It's always a sublime and lofty epic. Milton is High Art, and even the dirty jokes, which are few and far between, don't feel especially naughty to everyone.

Another reason that Shakespeare won out (and there are lots of reasons or arguable reasons, more than I could ever cover here), is nationalism. He became recruited as a symbol of Great Britain. John Milton is also a good nationalist figure, but Shakespeare has an advantage in the very things that once made him look lowbrow compared to Fletcher and Jonson. Shakespeare doesn't follow the classical literary rules for writing plays. He mixes comedy and tragedy! He has multiple plot threads! He keeps switching tone! In 1660, this made him a crude, unpolished artist who didn't understand The Rules the way Jonson did. Bu the 1700s, this made him a "natural genius," who lacked education but did it all through his amazing artistic instincts and intuition. But by the middle of the 1700s, and definitely in the 1800s, it made him essentially English, doing things in his own English way and ignoring all those classical rules that the French, for example, were obsessed with. Shakespeare got turned into the most English of English writers, who set his own national standard.

Anyway, those are parts of a long, complicated story.

a. The rest is silence

Doctor Cleveland — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 16:05:00 +0000

In reply to Okay, now that you've

a. The rest is silence (Hamlet V.ii)

b. The Stooges, whom I also like, aren't so Shakespearean. They're more like Moliere.

c. Merchant wasn't scandalous at the time, and since Jews were legally forbidden from living in England at the time (from the late 1200s until sometime in the 1650s), no. No Jews involved in Shakespeare's theater.

But some people have written about the persecution and execution of Elizabeth I's ethnically-Jewish converted-Protestant physician, Dr. Lopez, which happened very publicly in 1594. He was convicted on (totally bogus) charges of attempting to poison the (not-poisoned) Queen, and a whole lot of anti-Semitism was on display

Okay, now that you've

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 15:47:12 +0000

In reply to Anyway, probably the thing

Okay, now that you've opened & daresay violated Pandora's, er, Box, let's get your opinion on:

a) what Shakespearean secret was Harpo hushing up? [Da Vinci code II?]

b) the Shakespearesque qualities of the 3 (actually 5) Stooges, and speaking of Stooges (not Iggy) & Marxes,

c) was there any notable Jewish influence surrounding Shakespearean theater, aside from the scandalous Merchant?