Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Shakespeare
One thing I’d like to do before I die is to read completely through Shakespeare. Take a whole year, a whole leisurely year, and read one play after the other, slowly, with understanding and appreciation.
Of his 38 plays, I’ve read 5. I recall trudging through Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and King Lear, like Napoleon’s army through snow-bound Russia, way back in high school. I read parts of Othello and Hamlet looking for selections for my public speaking class in college. About ten years ago me and my wife (fiancé at the time) saw Kelsey Grammar (!) star in Macbeth off-Broadway. And around the winter of 2007 I made headway into about half-a-dozen Shakespearean sonnets.
That’s it.
But what really bugs me, the thorn in my literary side, so to speak, is that I just don’t get Shakespeare. And I want to. Those five or six sonnets I waded through – that took a supreme act of will. I’m shaking my head as I write this, because I want to read them. I want to enjoy them. I want to appreciate them. And while I was reading them it was like I was reading Esperanto. In fact, I made a similar comment to my wife right after our Grammarian Shakespeare experience: It’s like watching a play in a different language.
Yet this is something I must do! I have read that William Shakespeare and the King James Bible are the summit of the English language. I wholeheartedly believe that statement. I have to believe it; if not them, then who? At some point in my life I will master the Bard.
Some things have to fall into place, obviously, before I can do the Shakespeare Project. First, my girls need to grow up. There’s no humanly possible way I can get through even a scene – no, even a page – with the six dozen plaintive hey-daddy?s I’m bombarded with daily. Also, I’d need some income and financial security. Nothing is as drearily debilitating as being suddenly yanked out of the novel you’re reading wondering if you paid the mortgage or the credit card bill with money you have for neither. And, yeah, it would be nice to have a little bit stronger physical health. Consistent bone-deep fatigue is not conducive to reading high lit.
Will there ever be a time in my life where these three conditions are optimal? Probably not. But if I haven’t done it by … let’s say age 50, then that will be the present to myself. While some may view reading all of Shakespeare one play after another Purgatory or at the very least cruel and unusual punishment, there is a sizeable minority of us who actually consider such a project as a too-brief vacation in Paradise.
Now – did you ever hear the controversy that Will may not have written those 38 plays attributed to him? I think I did, once, a long time ago, but I dismissed it out of hand. A few days ago I just read something that has inspired me to do a little research into this intriguing piece of literary detective work. I’ll talk a little bit about that tomorrow …
I think you could get through the plays now! They get easier to read the more you immerse yourself in the language. I just started doing exactly what you're talking about: the Shakespeare in a Year Challenge. I started last week with "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and I've already moved on to "Comedy of Errors." If you're really interested in doing this, you could join me in the process: www.shakespeareinayear.com. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteSounds interesting ... I will investigate the website and if I choose to do it I'll post about it.
ReplyDeleteI have read a few of those entertaining "Shakespeare is Fun and Easy!" type books. They all pretty much say that the more you read him, the easier it is to understand and get in to the flow of the Elizabethan linguistics.
Thanks for commenting!
If you want some info about the Shakespeare authorship question, check out this fun video as an introduction: http://www.itsasickness.com/lounge/joe-plummer-obsessed-shakespeare-controversy. The interviewee talks about Sir Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe as possible suspects. There's also a new theory that a woman by the name of Amelia Bassano wrote the plays. Really interesting stuff!
ReplyDeleteJeremy, I already cued up tomorrow's post on my own personal introduction to the who-wrote-Shakespeare question. But I will check out your video link later today and if there's anything that clicks with me I'll post about it on Friday. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate enough to be introduced to Shakespeare in the sixth grade as part of my AT (academically talented) reading class. It was pretty much the ideal setting for being introduced to such a new and frankly confusing subject. The class was small--only about 10 students--and the teacher had a lot of experience with Shakespeare already. Needless to say, at eleven years old, I would have been WAY over my head attempting Shakespeare if it weren't for the books we used. As good as the teacher was, I didn't even understand what the characters were saying most of the time. Preemptively, the teacher ordered books that had a modern day translation on the opposite side of every single page. I could understand how some people might consider this insulting to Shakespeare, but is it better to be exposed to to a "dumbed down" version initially than to not be exposed at all? I understand this is a somewhat childish approach, and surely you're well beyond needing that sort of assistance, but it made it easier to understand initially. And of course as I transitioned to Regis, I was "upgraded" to a less easy version. However, even when we read Shakespeare at Regis, we still used a book that had some helpful information on the opposite page. They were mostly small things, such as definitions of uncommon words or even short explanations. And again, you may not want to bastardize the works of Shakespeare by going this route, but it served to be extremely helpful to me, and I eventually discovered that the more I read, the less I relied on the "help" on the opposite page. I, like you, wish I had more time for Shakespeare, but my college work is very consuming. However, I wish you luck on your Shakespearean journey, and hope you find this little bit of input helpful. If not, hopefully you enjoyed learning how my first relationship with Shakespeare began!
ReplyDeleteJake,
ReplyDeleteI have a couple of paperback plays packed away in one of the several boxes of books in the basement. They're the Signet Classic books, if I remember correctly, and have tons of footnotes and mini-essays to help explain WS to the hapless reader.
I guess I should just bite the bullet and go dig one out. Should make for a couple days' interesting reading.
Thanks for the comment!