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/lit/ - Literature

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14893914 No.14893914 [Reply] [Original]

Why is he so popular even though his work is relatively high brow?

>> No.14893918

>>14893914
Some famous quotes and he's ruled West End for centuries.

>> No.14893919

>>14893914

Everyone reads him in school. If academia had a low opinion of him then he would be more obscure.

>> No.14894108

>>14893914
Because authority constantly drills his status on the minds of the masses. You think your average normie could differentiate between Shakespeare's works and the fanfic I wrote of him when I was 17? They only think his works are OMG SO GOOD because they were told so again and again.

>> No.14894117

>>14894108
Until you read his work more closely and realize it's almost on par with the bible for the insight it gives on the human condition.

>> No.14894119

>>14894117
>it's almost on par with the bible

So not good at all? Have you read the Upanishads?

>> No.14894120

>>14893914
You mean "low brow" right?

>> No.14894127

>>14894117
I agree that Shakespeare is indeed "OMG SO GOOD" but the average people could not have realized this by themselves.

>> No.14894146

>>14894127
How is he?

>> No.14894147

>>14894117
>insight on the human condition
is there a more generic pseud praise phrase than this?

>> No.14894148

>>14894117
>almost on par with the bible for the insight it gives on the human condition
The bible gives no such insight. It's full of 1-dimensional cardboard characters.

>> No.14894152

>>14893914
He put in a lot of stuff for poorer less educated people in the audience who were what i think were referred to as "penny pinchers".

>> No.14894157

>>14894152
How do you do that?

>> No.14894168

>>14894157
Do what?

>> No.14894236

>>14894168
Write for poor people

>> No.14894277

>>14894236
Ever see a network tv sitcom?

>> No.14894289

>>14894277
no

>> No.14894303

>>14893914
Because popularity and sophistication are not inversely proportional. Plebs will like something if it's appealing enough and popularity will only increase if critics like it because plebs want to appreciate good shit even if they don't understand it.

>> No.14894305

>>14894108
lol the average normie hates Shakespeare because the words are too difficult

>> No.14894324

>>14894305
Shakespeare wrote for the normie plebs of his time.

>> No.14894329

>>14894305
Not the normies I've seen. Maybe you're surrounded by sub-normies.

>> No.14894344

trickle down culture

>> No.14894348

>>14893914
I might be talking out my ass but Shakespeare really isnt high brow, its just old and therefore uses old language that seems high brow to us.
In its time, it was probably seen as "low brow", it feels like it was made for laypeople rather than aristocratic theater goers - hence its maintaining popularity.

>> No.14894405

>>14894348
His comedies MAYBE but how the hell can you call something like Hamlet or King Lear low brow? There was far more low brow entertainment on display than Shakespeare at that time. Plus, not all his plays were performed at the Globe, some were written specifically for Court events and performed ONLY to nobles.

>> No.14894429

>>14894405
Theater in general was for plebs. The equivalent of movies today.

>> No.14894552

He wrote for a popular audience with the goal of making money. Audiences expected to hear great poetry coming from the actors and for anyone who couldn’t catch all the sophisticated wordplay there were plenty of dick jokes and sword fights.

>> No.14894599

>>14893914
its because they were PLAYS, not meant to be READ, as in they were very dramatic, and they display human emotions at their archetypal extremes. the poetic language is just icing on top of the cake: anyone can appreciate/understand a good human drama

>> No.14894678

cause he was the first. 'he' is fake tho.

>> No.14894793

>>14894147
I mean, he did imply Shakespeare is on the same level as the Bible.

>> No.14894809

>>14894429
Go read some books please

>> No.14894904

>>14893914
There's something in his plays for everyone. They work at every level of analysis, from melodrama to sublime poem. Bloom said something to the effect that our interpretations don't illuminate Shakespeare, his work illuminates our interpretation. As long as you can understand the words themselves, you can't be too low-brow (or too high-brow) for Shakespeare.

>> No.14894944

>>14894119
Grow up anon, literature isn't a top trumps game.

>> No.14894958

Shakespeare, with a little help from Boccaccio, Rabelais and Chaucer, invented psychology as we know it today. Hegel uses Shakespeare as a symbol of the break between ancient and modern tragedy in his Lectures on Fine Arts, and I'd recommend everyone to read around the pp. 350 in the Knox translation. For the first real time, the characters we see are not totems. There is no 'good guy' who does things because he is the 'good guy', instead Shakespeare's characters act in accordance with their individual desires, voices, intuition, and so on. Each has their own flaws, foibles and personalities. You can see early versions of this psychology Chaucer's pilgrims, but it really reaches fruition in Shakespeare. People love the Bard because they see themselves in the characters on stage. It's like when Hamlet addresses the Player King, and asks him to 'hold a mirror up to nature'. That's what Shakespeare did best: reflection.

>> No.14894965
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14894965

>>14894127
>>14894147
>>14894148

>> No.14894996

>>14894958
good post. I'd add in Milton, Dante, Homer, Plato, Thucydides, Aesychlus, Sophocles, Herodotus, Montaigne, Cervantes, Ovid, and Virgil as well lol

>> No.14895033

>>14894996
Undoubtedly, Shakespeare wasn't born in a vacuum.

>> No.14895308

>>14894809
Take your own advice.

>> No.14895495

>>14893919
This applies to every author the academy pushes

>> No.14895501

>>14895495
Nobody reads Milton, Chaucer, or Joyce in high school or required college courses.

>> No.14895510

>>14894324
>The Lord Chamberlain's Men
>The King's Men
Uh, no
Though a few do fit that description

>> No.14895519

>>14895501
Milton and Chaucer in required survey courses ftmp
But not Joyce, so one out of three

>> No.14895520

what do American elites of our time uphold as great? Broadway shows like Hamilton, movies like Parasite? books like Ta-Nehishi Coates? Elites are retarded

>> No.14895524

>>14895519
>Milton and Chaucer in required survey courses ftmp
Chaucer is translated to make it easier, I meant in the original middle-english. I've never met anyone who's heard of John Milton let alone Paradise Lost, maybe some of his other works are required though.

>> No.14895526

>>14895510
Having a royal patron means nothing.

>> No.14895529

>>14895520
Pop elites are as you say, and they have the power of general influence, bwm:
Parasite's not good? I was going to see it last week but the local theater shut down

>> No.14895533

>>14895520
High brow/ low brow isn't a thing anymore. Its all mixed

>> No.14895535

>>14894117
Shakespeare was a plagiarist.

>> No.14895542

>>14895524
Usu L'Allegro and Il Penseroso and Book IX of PL. But youre right about Chaucer- The Prologue, Wife of Bath and Pardoner's Tales are dolled down

>> No.14895546

>>14895529
>Parasite's not good? I was going to see it last week but the local theater shut down
DESU I didn't like it much at all. It felt like a slapstick pseudo-Kafkaesque Korean film that ultimately is safe and unthreatening. It's much better than Coates and Hamilton though, and the ending was very well-done, but it's not great cinema at all. I guess it's worth seeing because of the praise, but I really still have no strong opinion of it.

>>14895533
You mean esotericism? There's certainly esoteric films.

>> No.14895549

>>14895542
I'm surprised about Milton though, I think the best things I read in school were Hamlet and Crime and Punishment.

>> No.14895562

>>14894236
he regularly included lowbrow humor, easy to understand language (for the time), and IIRC specifically chose theaters accessible to poor people

>> No.14895568

>>14895526
Today, yes; then it meant among other things that one had to be very careful not to offend the powers, and some plays (like 12th Night, I believe) were commissioned by these powers.
It's interesting to see how he was viewed ca 50 years after his death in Pepys' Diary; though conditions were filthy, bright young men and their whores comprised much of the audiences

>> No.14895595

>>14895549
Milton's hard to appreciate until reading the great Romantics and then going back and rereading him; it's only then that his great power becomes apparent. His lyrical poetry is especially good fwiw. ..One Summer I read Palgrave's Golden Treasury and was stunned at how good his verse was when comparing it to most anyone's, even Shakespeare's.

>> No.14895710

>>14895535
God bless him for showing us those stories the way he did then. It's not like giving credit to some one else now would make any difference.

>> No.14896426

>>14893914
Because he's also utterly based