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From: showard@udenva.UUCP (showard)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re:  critics, Shakespeare, art and all that
Message-ID: <863@udenva.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Sep-85 17:38:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: udenva.863
Posted: Mon Sep 23 17:38:05 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Sep-85 05:37:24 EDT
References: <> <295@proper.UUCP>
Organization: U of Denver
Lines: 32

> 
> But we still read the plays of Shakespeare, despite the fact that most of his
> puns, sexual innuendoes, and slapstick humor are lost on us unless we study his
> writing.  (Of course, a lot of this does come across in stage productions by
> directors who know the work well and can give visual cues as to what the
> increasingly difficult language means.)  But we don't READ Shak. because he's
> the same spinner of rollicking hilarious yarns TO US that he was to his less
> educated contemporaries.  That was exactly the point I made when I said that
> the classics may have been great fun when they were contemporary, but that as
> their language and their references become increasingly obscure to us, we read
> them with more difficulty and for different reasons.  
> 
> Judith Abrahms
> {ucbvax,ihnp4}!dual!proper!judith

   Actually, most people who read Shakespeare in the 20th Century do it for one
of two reasons:
   1.) They have been taught (usually by English professors) that Shakespeare
is, by definition, the greatest writer ever.  [If you don't believe that this
view is held, a friend of mine quoted a textbook which said Johnson was "the
greatest Elizabethan playwright (Shakespeare always excluded)."  Another
acquaintance of mine is seriously of the opinion that every single work of
prose today is directly descended from Shakespeare's writings.]

   2.) They want to show that they are "cultured"--even though they don't
really enjoy it they feel they ought to, because everyone thinks it's so
good.

    --Mr. Blore, the DJ who would not die
    -- udenva!showard
     "I'm a fucking genius!  Like Shakespeare, or Beethoven, or van Gogh!"
                                 --John Lennon


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