I think we also covered Chaucer before Shakespeare in English Literature. I found Chaucer somewhat interesting, if only because it involved translating Middle English into modern English, and I found the evolution of the language enjoyable. Shakespeare bored the crap out of me. It wasn't that Shakespeare was difficult, or even that I was unable to appreciate the historical significance that his writings had on English literature; I just couldn't stay awake through anything by Shakespeare. I used Cliffnotes for Shakespeare, not because Shakespeare was too complex, but to avoid having to actually read Shakespeare.
I think we began with Beowulf in the original. After that, even Chaucer wasn't bad. If you understand all the sex in the old works, it makes it more fun. Thomas Bowdler ruined Shakespeare for all the horny teenagers in the future.
My father was named Hamlet (from Shakespeare) Lee (after the general) Ward. My brother was a junior and went by the initials H.L. to avoid all the teasing about his original first name.
Rock Singer David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) sets Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 to music --- very beautiful ballad.
Words Shakespeare Invented The English language owes a great debt to Shakespeare. He invented over 1700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original. http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/wordsinvented.html
The ability arrange words for maximum impact was a skill then as well. I think that has sadly fallen by the way. “Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove.” -Shakespeare, sonnet 116 “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” ― Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
I wish I knew more about this stuff because language fascinates me. The mix of Latinate, German, Norse and aboriginal has made English a great language for prose, poetry and the sciences (although German is slightly better for the latter, and French superior for poetry.... my opinion.)
It is rumored from the evidence taken from Shakespeare’s clay pipe and what he grew in his garden that the man was a pot head. Perhaps A Midsummer Night’s Dream wasn’t the product of genius so much as the product of a really magical moment with some killer bud. Friends, Romans, Dudes and Dudettes, like, lend me uh…..what was that next line again? (from the play, Orange Julius)
Does anyone else remember when the 1930s movie used to air on TV? I think for a while it was an annual event, similar to The Wizard of Oz (although I might be misremembering.) Mikey Rooney played Puck. I guess that viewing experience, too, might have been enhanceable with the right weed. It blew my little mind. I've never enjoyed Shakespeare...for all the adult book reading I did at an early age, he's too tough to slog through for me.
They say Shakespeare is easier to enjoy as a play than in written form. We did a skit of Julius Ceasar in high school. I'm not sure it's a comedy, but it was when we got through with it.
Friends, Romans, and countrymen, I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.
well, that is not proven. The only thing that is proven is that someone who used that courtyard smoked pot. They can't even really nail it down to Shakespeare's generation, much less to a specific person from Shakespeare's generation. His stage manager could have been a big pot smoker and that could have been the source. Or, that could have happened 25 years before or after Shakespeare was around, maybe even a much larger window.