I set myself a sort of casual goal, a long time ago, to read every single play in the canon. Including bad plays, like Two Gentlemen of Verona, and apocryphal ones, like Edward III. I didn't go after the goal at all seriously; I put it on the back burner at leisure, reread my favorites, put down my Riverside Shakespeare for months at a time. It's been years since I set that goal, but yesterday afternoon I dug through the last impenetrable line of Love's Labour's Lost, and I was done. At one point in my life or another, I have read every surviving play at least once. Yay, me. So...anybody on here want to discuss The Bard?
Yes, I know, this is a pretty math-and-science-nerd kind of board, and there are probably forums out there dedicated to discussing Shakespeare. But I assume that such forums, like academia itself, will have become infested by perverted PoMo jagoffs of the worst description. If you don't know the kind of people I'm talking about, you might not want to know. Let it suffice to say that most Shakespeare criticism these days is not about Shakespeare, it's about Marxism, or Psychoanalysis, or "Queer Theory," or some other hack ideology the critic wants to use a literary masterpiece as an excuse to talk about.
Anybody have a question/comment/argument/complaint about Shakespeare? Favorite, or least favorite, play? He's really not as inaccessible as most people seem to think. Yes, the works are peppered with references to obscure events or concepts, words that no longer exist in the English language, and puns so complex they resemble a verbal ball of yarn. But any half-decent annotated edition will help you with the first two when context won't, and as for the latter, those barrages are generally employed for throwaway gags anyway. Give him a shot. You'll be rewarded in proportion to effort.
Yes, I know, this is a pretty math-and-science-nerd kind of board, and there are probably forums out there dedicated to discussing Shakespeare. But I assume that such forums, like academia itself, will have become infested by perverted PoMo jagoffs of the worst description. If you don't know the kind of people I'm talking about, you might not want to know. Let it suffice to say that most Shakespeare criticism these days is not about Shakespeare, it's about Marxism, or Psychoanalysis, or "Queer Theory," or some other hack ideology the critic wants to use a literary masterpiece as an excuse to talk about.
Anybody have a question/comment/argument/complaint about Shakespeare? Favorite, or least favorite, play? He's really not as inaccessible as most people seem to think. Yes, the works are peppered with references to obscure events or concepts, words that no longer exist in the English language, and puns so complex they resemble a verbal ball of yarn. But any half-decent annotated edition will help you with the first two when context won't, and as for the latter, those barrages are generally employed for throwaway gags anyway. Give him a shot. You'll be rewarded in proportion to effort.
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