Poll: Is shakespeare great?

[Don Savik]

I preferred West Side Story to Romeo And Juliet....

AND I HATE MUSICALS. So....bad writer? I'm no englishographer so I wouldn't know. For his time you can tell he was leagues ahead of most, but alas, like all things, has become a bit too dated. His work just can't make the connection as it does to readers today. The wording used is so nonsensical sometimes I can't even fathom how people in his era talked on a day to day basis. SO I GUESS HE'S "TOO SMART" FOR ME LOL. Anyone can make good poetry, its only a matter of popular opinion to be honest. Are some of his lines clever? Yea, but it still doesn't make it enjoyable.

Plays aren't really.....you know, I think its a medium that's dated as well.

I'd rather play vidya games. Like the rest of everyone here.

 

[Erttheking]

They are dry...really REALLY dry...and not a whole lot happens in them.

Have you actually read them? lol

Most are filled with politics, sexuality, magic, suicide and murder.

Maybe it was a language barrier for you so you did't get the stories and/or your teacher didn't.

Personally I cracked up hearing Hamlet tell his wife to be that she should just become a whore instead of marrying him because his kids would be evil like him lol.

Many modern stories are just retellings of Shakespear.

Allow me to rephrase that, it is true that he can come up with interesting ideas and fascinating situations, but simply reading it and it way that it's worded, it FEELS like nothing is happening. Yeah there was a bit of a language barrier, it makes it easy for me to believe that you can Major in this because I'm pretty sure you need a major to understand it 100%. For the record, I read romeo and juilet, macbeth, king lear, and the tempest.

 

[Dansen]

He's a good writer, he is not overrated at all, I've liked all his works except for Romeo and Juliet, that is by far his worst play.The main characters are boring and Shakespeare kills off Mercucio, the only interesting person in the whole play. I am reading MacBeth right and I'm really liking it.

Best Part:

Murderer: "What, you egg? [Stabbing him] Young fry of treachery!"

Son: "He has killed me, mother. Run away, I pray you!"

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

Allow me to rephrase that, it is true that he can come up with interesting ideas and fascinating situations, but simply reading it and it way that it's worded, it FEELS like nothing is happening.

Well, there's the problem. Shakespeare is kind of dry on the page with big events being denoted by stage directions like "They fight" or "He dies". Some of the really over-the-top moments don't get stage directions at all--King Lear, for instance, has a guy's eyes being torn out on stage, and you can only tell from the dialogue.

To get the full effect, you really have to see Shakespeare being performed by a good company, and especially one that isn't afraid to cut the script down a bit. (I'm enough of a sad nerd to want to see the entire four-hour conflated Hamlet, but not everyone is.)