And then I read Shakespeare, the plays, the sonnets, the poems
– read all. I beheld a new heaven and a new earth; Shakespeare,
who knew the brain and heart of man — the hopes and fears, the
loves and hatreds, the vices and the virtues of the human race:
whose imagination read the tear-blurred records, the blood-stained
pages of all the past, and saw falling athwart the outspread scroll
the light of hope and love; Shakespeare, who sounded every depth –
while on the loftiest peak there fell the shadow of his wings.I compared the Plays with the “inspired” books — Romeo and
Juliet with the Song of Solomon, Lear with Job, and the Sonnets
with the Psalms, and I found that Jehovah did not understand the
art of speech. I compared Shakespeare’s women — his perfect women
– with the women of the Bible. I found that Jehovah was not a
sculptor, not a painter — not an artist — that he lacked the
power that changes clay to flesh — the art, the plastic touch,
that molds the perfect form — the breath that gives it free and
joyous life — the genius that creates the faultless.The sacred books of all the world are worthless dross and
common stones compared with Shakespeare’s glittering gold and
gleaming gems.Robert Green Ingersoll – “Why I Am An Agnostic”
Comments
23 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.even ingersoll could get in a good ZING every now and then.
very nice. i think most people with a literature background would tend to agree with him here. having read most of shakespeare works and all of the bible, i know i do.
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Admittedly the Bible is probably the most boring of any holy book I’ve read.
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First thing Ingersol has said that I don’t agree with, as far as I recall.
The bible, as any other religious text, is worthless – but I’d not call it worthless when the dangerous label is far more appropriate, I find that misleading. Shakepeare, on the other hand, can have the “worthless dross” label with my blessing, along with “pretentious”.
Now, wherefor art thou, flame-retardent undergarments?
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he still has the best puns of all time, in my humble opinion. From Titus Andronicus:
-Have you seen the Moor?
-More or less.
BWA HAHAH HAHAHAHA!!
that kind of humor just gets me. love it.
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Schmoo,
“wherefore art thou” doesn’t mean what you think it means. And so, it’s HIGHLY likely, you’ve missed more of Shakespeare’s whit and whismy that you know. Might oughta look into it a little more seriously.
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I’ve always regretted not buying a book I saw, called “Shakespeare without the boring bits.” It nailed it completely…
For one, his jokes requires explanatory footnotes — and jokes that have to be explained are never funny. Additionally, even if you didn’t need the footnotes, the jokes are about as humorous as Bill Cosby and Pauly Shore.
Secondly, he had a huge cast, and wrote parts for them just so they could all get a little stage time. So you got all these extra character milling around, that have no relevance to the plot. Face it, something like this would get slaughtered in a movie review.
Thirdly, the language is archaic. Update it. It’s not as if you’re gonna lose any great puns…
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Neil, “wherefore art thou” doesn’t mean what you assume I think it means. Maybe you missed a little whimsy in my post? Maybe I’ve looked into a bit more seriously than you assume, and still dare to form an opinion that doesn’t agree with yours?
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well, since we ARE on r&j:
Mercutio: “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”
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There is a tremendous volume of great literature out there. I never found Shakespeare very economical. In the time spent reading a Shakespeare work and all the sidebars required to really understand it, you could read two or three other great works by other writers that are much more approachable. I never felt that great after completing a work of Shakespeare. I made this case years ago in college, claiming that I would rather read three books and write three papers than wade through another Shakespeare. The instructor called my bluff and I wrote my three papers. Interestingly enough, I remember those books in a fair amount of detail and I can’t really recall the half dozen Shakespeare works I read with any great clarity. It’s tough to read Shakespeare with any continuity. You are always backtracking, thinking about trivial characters, and referring to references to understand period jokes. That said, Shakespeare doesn’t aid me in my atheistic cause.
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“Wherefore art thou Romeo” doesn’t mean “where are you” but “Why are YOU Romeo” since she fell in love after a brief encounter, not knowing who she was. Right?
I gotta say one thing though, I do really like Anthony Hopkins’ Titus…
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If Neil will permit me, it is “why are you Romeo?” but not as in not knowing who he is, as in “why are you Romeo, and not someone whose family isn’t a bitter rival to mine?”. Pointless obfuscation, even when you do know that “wherefore” means “why”.
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the Song of Solomon is not worthless dross…
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Well OK then, that clears that up. Thanks.
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I have heard that the Bible is actually written as a series of poems or songs, and the original Hebrew version is quite beautiful if you have a good understanding of the language.
I’ve always wondered, if the Song of Solomon is so beautiful after a translation or two, what does the original sound like, and what subtle meanings are we missing?
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I have heard that “thou shalt not kill” was originally in hebrew closer to “thou shalt not murder” as in killing without cause than absolutely never kill.
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Glad to be of help.
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Pointless obfuscation, even when you do know that “wherefore†means “whyâ€.
How is this obfuscation? The whole speech is clear and makes sense even at first reading; OK, the man was writing a bit of a way back and some of the language has changed enough to make it obscure to a modern reader, but that speech is not a good example of this! (It’s not Hemingway sure enough, but so what?)
As to the jokes, many require explanation now because of language and cultural changes but that’s not a reflection on Shakespeare. Nothing dates like comedy… Still, many of the jokes remain intelligible and a good director can help the audience to understand them. Especially the dirty bits, which (lets face it) is core to most of the humour.
I can’t believe Eel is seriously suggesting that the language of Shakespeare be modernized. Uncouth philistine.
(Though I’ve no objecion to judicious editing for the sake of shortening the plays for performance… despite Shakespeare’s own claims, for example, R&J untrimmed runs a deal longer than two hours…)
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And to Doug: Theologians have been arguing about ‘Thou shalt not kill’, like, forever, largely in the service of the state (not unseparated from the Church). Not so much because they want to arrive at a true understanding of what was meant but because they needed to find a way that, say, torturing blasphemers to death and massacring saracens was not breaking the Lord’s commandments.
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Wahahaha! Eh, shieeet. Well yeah, I get what you’re saying, but wouldya call people who read Dostoevsky in English uncouth philistines?
Consider this: the King James Version of the Bible was almost as great an example of the English language as Shakespeare’s works, and it has been updated (of course eejuts who thinks “Thine” sounds more Biblical like it, but that’s just ignorance). And for a good reason — it is archaic and hard to understand. (It also had a number of errors, but that’s comparing apples and oranges of course.)
If Shakespeare’s stuff was truly timeless and great, it will still be great in a modernized language. Otherwise, learning Shakespeare is more of a linguistic effort, than a matter of great literature.
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The comparison with the KJ is apt (disregarding the translation issues, since we’re talking sytle). And unsurprisingly I disagree with you there, since I see it as far more beautiful than the modern translations (the GN, etc) I’ve seen… which were put together by someone with a tin ear.
One problem with ‘translating’ S into modern English is that its rhythms exploit the language of his times; to transfer the sentiment while retaining the iambic pentameter, for instance, would likely require much torturing of the text.
There was talk of the jokes earlier. Say you wanted to modernize ‘poperin pear’ (a fruit which no longer exists); how could you do that? You could look for a fruit with similarly genital qualities, maybe – banana, perhaps. But You lose the pun, of course (‘pop ‘er in’). You lose the wonderful popping alliteration of those plosive Ps… But hell, it’d be more modern. I can see it now:
Oh, Romeo, if only she was an open arse and you were a banana!
Ah, poetry!
Yes, I’m being facetious. But I really think that what would be lost through a ‘modernization’ would be far greater than what would be gained. Your snark about ‘truly timeless and great’ rather misses the point; of course the stories would still have their power (his basic themes are the stuff that has driven hundreds of years of literature and a century of film) but there is more to S than the stories, and it well repays the little immersion it takes to grasp the fundamentals of the language. (You disagree: I have a recommentation for you!)
To close: of course I don’t think someone reading Dostojevskij in English is a philistine, and I actually imagine that as prose that translates fairly well. Nor would I claim that someone who reads (say) Dante in translation is a philistine (and as poetry that is maybe a better comparison). I would cheerfully dismiss someone who claimed that an English translation of Dante was equal or superior to the original, though… Literature is not the immutable work of God: it’s the voice of a human writer, and something of that voice always gets lost in translation. Translation has a place when the obscurity of the original text exceeds the losses from translation (as is the case with work in a foreign language or in a truly moribund form of English, as with Chaucer). Shakey ain’t there yet. (Neither’s the KJ: however, since that is itself a translation in this case that is only an argument against modernization odf that text, not an argument against retranslation from the Hebrew, Greek, or whatever.)
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‘Whole speech’ being operative, but yes, I was being harsh.
As for the jokes, “it’s called pop-her-in and it looks like a cock” is not exactly high art, is it? “Hur hur, thoust said ‘weiner’”. “Pullest my finger”. I, unfortunately, hear the same thing every day riding the bus with the dregs – people who I doubt have the capacity to tie their shoes by themselves.
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Not exactly high art? No – though in the context it’s a lot funnier than ‘pullest my finger’ is ever likely to be (plenty of great comedy has coarseness in it). Plus (as you doubtless know) the context does make that speech ‘high art’: Mercutio’s bawdy mockery of Romeo’s hastily-forgotten obsession with Rosaline following immediately after R&J’s meeting, highlighting Romeo’s shallowness of heart and his fickleness, etc etc… Not to mention providing light relief from the juvenile lovey-doveyness of R&J themselves and a counterweight to Mercutio’s less lighthearted joking in his death speech.
But all that’s beside the point: I was providing a facetious example of how unrewarding an exercise ‘modernising’ the language would be. And since someone had been bitching about the jokes, and someone else had referred to R&J, that line came to mind.
Try a few lines yourself: Take the opening lines of the Balcony Speech, since that what where you directed your sneers, and suggest how they might be ‘modernized’ without a loss of the poetry. Keeping to the iambic pentameter, of course! Or if thou wilt not…
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I seem to be having trouble locating the part where I said I could do better. Damn, there goes my status as a revered playwright. Maybe I’m subconciously sabotaging my efforts because I understand that the ability to critique something is not restricted by a lack of ability to do it.
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