/lit/ - Literature

>>15870559
t. Frog

>>15870569
Are you calling me a frenchman or a pepe?

>>15870559
Shakespeare is used to because it was a canonical body of works aimed at the masses.

Problems:
1) Wasn't meant to be read off of paper. Was meant to be seen and heard.
2) Most versions are translations from the first folio, and some make adaptations.
3) Great vowel shift happened.
4) Lexicons change continually.

The reality is, his plays were really fucking good for the time, but compared to today's dramas? Hundreds of years of literature? They're pastiche, boring, reductive; when you peel everything back, you find very simple stories, often ones that don't make a great deal of sense. I get its relevance as a history point for linguistics, literature, and art, but it's horribly pointless to study for anything but the historical aspects.

>>15870559
>Quick, tell me what numbers multiply to 12. Don't give me any of that 4 by 3 nonsense, or 6 by 2, and certainly not 12 by 1.
Just fucking use context clues you imbecile

>>15870618
>read Shakespeare
>haha, insight into human condition and the nature of art goes brrr

I'm ESL and I read shakespeare in early modern english and only had to look up words like twice a play

Maybe your English just sucks m8

>>15870559
Your english is just shit

>>15870618
>1)
That can be accommodated by the internet
>2)
Not a big deal
>3
That began sometime around Chaucer's time and was near completion by Shakespeare's
>4
Yes

As for the rest of your post, it suggests that literature progresses over time. I don't agree with that, just see Homer.

>>15870618
cringe

>>15870673
Twice a play, go fuck yourself you self-deceiving ignoramus. There are more one-time neologisms a play than that.

Just steadily work backward through a huge body of English texts over years and it'll be easy
>current year
>80s and 90s stuff
>boomer stuff
>modernists
>Victorians
>Romantics
>Enlightenment
>Early moderns
Done

>>15870669
Yeah, I don't think it's the most compelling insight. I agree, at one point, but I think we've just seen it so many times it's almost baked into the culture, and in its most reductive form, is kind of boring.

>>15870688
>I don't agree with that, just see Homer.
I think progress might be wrong, just more, falls out of favour. It becomes less fashionable. I think it takes far longer for this to happen with literature than many other mediums, and I think it could be a result of having a ton of diluted Shakespearean concepts in current media.

>was near completion by Shakespeare's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYiYd9RcK5M
It's quite unique, it's got a weird mix of a lot of dialects in there - it's far from RP/Estuary/any American dialect I know of.

>>15870559
Just get a version with footnotes

>>15870710
ARIEL
Safely in harbour
Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vex'd Bermoothes, there she's hid:
The mariners all under hatches stow'd;
Who, with a charm join'd to their suffer'd labour,
I have left asleep; and for the rest o' the fleet
Which I dispersed, they all have met again
And are upon the Mediterranean flote,
Bound sadly home for Naples,
Supposing that they saw the king's ship wreck'd
And his great person perish.

PROSPERO
Ariel, thy charge
Exactly is perform'd: but there's more work.
What is the time o' the day?

ARIEL
Past the mid season.

PROSPERO
At least two glasses. The time 'twixt six and now
Must by us both be spent most preciously.

ARIEL
Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,
Let me remember thee what thou hast promised,
Which is not yet perform'd me.

PROSPERO
How now? moody?
What is't thou canst demand?

ARIEL
My liberty.

PROSPERO
Before the time be out? no more!

ARIEL
I prithee,
Remember I have done thee worthy service;
Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served
Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise
To bate me a full year.

PROSPERO
Dost thou forget
From what a torment I did free thee?

ARIEL
No.

PROSPERO
Thou dost, and think'st it much to tread the ooze
Of the salt deep,
To run upon the sharp wind of the north,
To do me business in the veins o' the earth
When it is baked with frost.

This is just a random excerpt from The Tempest, if you do not understand every word in here your English is fucking awful

>>15870739
I do. Even having to divert my eyes to the bottom of the page is a major disruption to my reading pace. If I had to guess, I read Shakespeare at about 30%-40% of my normal reading speed for modern literature. So much of my time is spent decoding his phrases and meaning, looking up words and references. Very grating experience, though rereading has been much more pleasant.

>>15870815
Words I had to look up:
vex
Bermoothes
Naples
Twixt (thought this was a choccy bar)
bate

Native English speaker.

>>15870815
I had Hamlet in mind when I made this post.

>>15870559
Get an annotated edition, anon. I read using Webster and it wasn't bad. Oxford's doesn't seem bad either.

>>15870840
>Bermoothes
Bermuda?

>>15870840

>>15870879
What? Oh come on, who says twixt or betwixt anymore? I like chocolate ok.

>>15870867
Not him but yeah, the tempest is inspired by a story about sailors on bermuda

>>15870618
>very simple stories
Why are plotfags always so brazenly stupid?

>>15871198
>Why are plotfags always so brazenly stupid?
itz deep cus it exploars teenage lust

>>15870815
>At least two glasses
And what does this mean?

>>15870559
bump

>>15871218
it has a lot of interesting reflexive literary aspects (often the characters speak as if they are loosely aware of the story theyre in), it has a lot of interesting ideas about time and permanence, it has the queen mab monologue, it also has some good jokes even!

>>15870559
Read a footnoted edition you idiot. Fairly simple solution.

>>15870618
>1) Wasn't meant to be read off of paper. Was meant to be seen and heard.
Wrong. Why does Shakespeare use eye rhymes if he never meant for his plays to be read?

>>15870559
I love looking up words. And after you look them up, you know new words, so when you reread it and/or come across the words later you know what they are.

What is your favorite William Shakesman line?
>Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war

>>15870833
Boo hoo, that's just what you have to deal with. Aside from a few, most of them aren't that long so who cares?

>WAAAAAHH WHY IS READING HARD
ngmi

>>15870559
Go back to your JRR tolkien books, halfwit. Also you are clearly reading above your teenage reading level and clearly. If you don't like challenges then just do what i suggest in the first sentece.

>>15872878
>reads the footnoted edition of books
>calls others idiots
I can't believe some people are really this stupid. You must be lacking quite a bit in cognitive abilities if you need to be spoonfed.

>>15870559
i keep meaning to read this guy. any good?

>>15873623
How is using an edition with footnotes any different from using one without and then looking up the words you don't know somewhere else? It's just a matter of convenience.

>>15873608
You are a turdmonger. I'm going to shit in your cocoa puffs if you don't erase all traces of yourself from my thread.

>>15870559
I like the Dover Thrift editions. They have a glossary on every left page.

>>15870716
huh, that's not a bad idea

>>15870840
>Mediterranean
>(5 words later)
>Naples
This can't be serious, can it?

>>15870559
u niggas really lookin words up tho? u aint just infer it?

>>15874371
Why would you not want to improve your vocab so you can enjoy these older books and comprehend them better and just enjoy the prose a lot more.

>>15874462
In a previous vocabulary thread I talked about doing this and I was bullied savagely for it. So I thought we were too cool to look things up. I just want to fit in.

>>15874462
Who uses those words, anon? 2020. You are going to use them for reading old books, don't bother remembering them if you get an annotated edition.

>>15874474
>ho uses those words, anon?
The writers who wrote the book? And why would I want an annotated edition that is absolute brainlet mode. I don't want things spoonfed to me. If you read annotated editions you might as well stick with JRR Tolkien.

>>15874493
So make flashcards and memorize them. I wouldn't bother remembering those things unless I were an English teacher or something.

>>15874493
I would unironically memorize some quotes and some dialogues. Shakespeare has a lot of cool ones.

>>15874474
to an extent ... I don't mind looking up 10-15 words per book because I can actually remember most of them
if I have to look up 200 it's pointless, especially because for 195 of them I'll understand by the context

>>15874501
> I wouldn't bother remembering those things
Enjoy your annotated books, brainlet. Some people need a bit more mental stimulation.

>>15874517
Get into programming, anon. Way more fun on that regard.

>>15874371
It's often not good enough. For instance if I tried to guess at the meaning of 'antic' in the context of Hamlet's 'antic disposition' I would think it means he's acting foolishly or perhaps playfully, since those words characterize 'antics' and, to some extent, Hamlet's behavior during his bouts of madness. But it turns out antic just means bizarre, which is along similar lines but definitely not close enough. How am I to know my guess was wrong? If you're always using context to figure out the meaning of a word you can be led astray quite easily and end up with a seriously defective vocabulary.

When you're reading an author as old as Shakespeare the situation is even worse because a lot of words will look familiar or closely related to ones we do know, but have quite different meanings because of the effects of semantic change over long periods of time.

Just imagine being an ESL and not being able to experience the majesty of Shakespeare's plays as he intended it -- in the English language. Damn it feels good to be an Anglo sometimes.

>>15874548
Every once in a while you notice a word that most people have merely inferred a wrong meaning for. The best example I can think of is penultimate.

>>15871461
Hourglasses?