Just think. In 500 years, students could be studying the profound influence of our generation's greatest filmmaker:Zhukov said:I can see why he's so lauded, although I'm personally not a huge fan of the old-timey style.
Funny thing. Back in his day Shakespeare's works were considered as artless pap to be enjoyed by the uneducated masses, similar to how a lot of people regard Twilight or reality TV in modern times.
Yes, and that's why we see comparable praise for all of his contemporaries.kasperbbs said:Overrated because it's old, like so many other things in this crazy world.
They weren't considered "artless pap"--they were popular entertainment, yes, but popular with the aristocracy as much as anyone else.Zhukov said:Funny thing. Back in his day Shakespeare's works were considered as artless pap to be enjoyed by the uneducated masses, similar to how a lot of people regard Twilight or reality TV in modern times.
So you've never heard of, say, James Joyce? Haven't read Anathem by Neal Stephenson? (That book was chock-full of neologisms, to the point where sections could be nearly unreadable.) Heck, some fantasy authors positively revel in making up new words for no particular reason, and they often intentionally use skewed grammatical construction.lord.jeff said:I think Shakespear is a bit over rated but I like several of his plays, and I really wish we had modern authors willing to create their own language rules like he did.
Another being, I believe, assassination (I think) though assassin was around well before his time. I was going to add to the comment that words don't tend to be invented, but instead evolve, like adding extensions etc but I cut it out because I thought it sounded a bit pretentious.MetalMagpie said:Actually, most of the words and phrases he "invented" were combinations/extensions of existing words, so they would have been easy for people to work out (especially in context).Daveman said:He's prolific, I'll grant him that. People say he invented a shit tonne of words. I find this unlikely, imagine if you went to a play and half the words were made up and left unexplained. It's much more likely they were in common use conversationally however due to him being so prolific it's likely he was just the first record of them.
The word "lonely" (first recorded in his plays) is only making an adjective out of the existing word "lone" (in the same way I might invent the opposite word "togetherly"). "Eyeballs" is similarly easy to decipher (both "eye" and "balls" were existing words) as is "hot-blooded".
He was particularly fond of adding "un-" to the start of an existing word to create its opposite. Undress, unhappy, unhelpful, unchanging, unclaimed, uncomfortable, unreal, unlicensed, unmusical, ungoverned and uneducated are all his. He also came up with things like unbosom, unfool and unpremeditated, which didn't catch on.
Shakespeare might not have invented every word that first appears in his works, but he was certainly very flexible with language!
As someone who also sucks at Scrabble, I have a lot of sympathy.Daveman said:I dispute being able to invent words as actually being talented. I mean he'd clearly suck at Scrabble.
I actually quite like that one. It draws attention to the anatomical nature of the eye. "I pulled out his eye" doesn't sound as graphic as "I pulled out his eyeball".Daveman said:Also, why invent the word eyeball? Surely it means the same as eye anyway?
What, you mean aside from the fact that he and Henry Chaucer practically invented 'modern' English as we know it? No no no reason at all to include him in an English lesson.CODE-D said:Shakespeare stories are reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally old and I was wondering if anyone here actually held him in high regard or anything.
Was he pioneer of new fiction or was he just lucky at being first, but most importantly why is he so great that I learned of him in english classes in high school when there are many great modern works and pieces made since then that may be better than his.
so
Just like everybody else.bauke67 said:Being the first?
He basically stole all his stories from classic mythology, so no, he's not that great.
Oh yes and on another note. Don't regard old as bad or overrated. Yes history has shown us that shit often floats to the top. But eventually shit floats away. What remains is enduring.CODE-D said:Shakespeare stories are reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally old and I was wondering if anyone here actually held him in high regard or anything.
This by far. Even if you don't like his stories, you can't deny the importance of his work. How could you possibly call someone overrated when they are responsible for shaping a large part of our culture?The Night Angel said:I am a huge fan of his works, he is easily the single most important writer to ever write in the English language. He is nearly single-handedly responsible for the language we speak today. His dialogues are clever and memorable, and often hilarious too.
I get that we have synonyms, but they're generally from different peoples, as we have such an insane mix of cultures in the UK we got a load of surplus words. But eyeball just seems gratuitous in my opinion when he clearly already had the word eye which in every single instance of it's use is identical in meaning.MetalMagpie said:I actually quite like that one. It draws attention to the anatomical nature of the eye. "I pulled out his eye" doesn't sound as graphic as "I pulled out his eyeball".Daveman said:Also, why invent the word eyeball? Surely it means the same as eye anyway?
The English language thrives on almost-synonyms. We can "start" a meeting or we can "commence" it. They mean the same thing, just with a different flavour. (For what it's worth, "start" is from Old English and "commence" is a loan word from French.) It's what - in my opinion - makes English such a great language for creative writing.
I just finished reading Romeo & Juliet for English Honors and Im sure in its own right in its own time it stood as a classic but media from today really just washes material that old down into a mediocre piece.CODE-D said:Shakespeare stories are reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally old and I was wondering if anyone here actually held him in high regard or anything.
Was he pioneer of new fiction or was he just lucky at being first, but most importantly why is he so great that I learned of him in english classes in high school when there are many great modern works and pieces made since then that may be better than his.
so