The thing that bugs me about Shakespear is the way snobbish people claim that it is a higher artform that modern plays, novels and television.

What people seem to forget is that Shakespeares plays were at the time considered a very lowly form of entertainment entirely for the 'lower' classes. It really annoys me when we get it rammed down our throats that he is so great. He's ok and some of his ideas were good - but some of tehm sucked, just like any playright from any era

I do like Shakespeare. Some of the sonnets in particular are beautiful. He was a talented writer, which I'm sure is why so many of his plays have survived while so many other works of the time have been lost. However, I agree with Sydney that the status he's often awarded as 'greatest English writer' sometimes seems a bit much for someone who was his day's equivalent of a writer on Eastenders

It depends what you think he's overrated in comparison to. I certainly enjoy Shakespeare a lot more than any of the other Elizabethan drama I have read and I think it's right to consider him as one of the greatest dramatists of this age. But when it comes to comparison with works from different periods, Shakespeare is still among the greats, but in that situation I wouldn't agree that he was *the* best by a long way.

i like his stuff, but its hard to understand and a bit annoying coz its so old, but i think he changed a lot and inspired a lot of writers and without him we wouldn't have mr bump so i love him!!!

I think his writing,especially the plays get over-analyised. it could just be because i've just finished studying Romeo and Juliet and have analyised it to death, but i think its entirely possible he just wrote it as a play to entertain the masses,and royality,and people have came along and interuprated it in different ways.

Personally i love the Blackadder Back and Forth scene wher Lord Balckadder punches Shakespeare on behalf of every school child everywhere.

Shakespeare in Love was good."Romeo and ...Ethel the pirates daughter"

I used to really dislike Shakespeare but I'm now a GCSE drama student and I have started to enjoy it more. When I start to understand what the plays are about then I start to realise the excellence of them. But it is hard work from an actresses point of view. Thank god for play guides and teachers that can help us!

As a whole, I do think that Shakespeare is over-rated.

However, I'm a big fan of some of his plays based on their individual merits.

For example, I absolutely LOVE Hamlet, but I hate most of his other Tragedies...I think they're sometimes overlong & with mostly boring, pointless plotlines.

I don't think that Shakespeare is the start & end of English literature. He's just a good writer, like so many other good writers who haven't been dead for centuries.

He's a great writer, he uses subtlety and imagination BUT at the same time, some people act as if every line was scrutenised over for a decade, each with it's own meaning and greatness. RUBBISH!!!! He'd never have finished even one play, let alone all the others.

Also, parts of his plays are bad, when Juliets family find her dead, most people cut it out in productions, because it is badly written.

But he is, and everyone must agree, the most influencial writer ever! Hands down. Might not, in some eyes, be the greatest, but he is the most influencial.

Plus, adaptations such as 'Romeo and Juliet' (by good old Baz), Shakespear in Love and A Thousand Acres, must make Shakespear worth it



The only thing worse, is narrow minded idiots, who refuse to let students study 'Merchant of Vencie' (which is amazing and which I did for AS) because of anti-Jewish moments.

---

by Sydney

What people seem to forget is that Shakespeares plays were at the time considered a very lowly form of entertainment entirely for the 'lower' classes.

---

Not quite. They were considered a lowly form of entertainment of questionable morality but people from all levels of society went to the theatre. Companies put on special performances at Court and entry prices to the indoor stages such as the Blackfriars' could not be afforded by the lowest classes (unlike the outdoor theatres, where the minimum 1 penny entry price was the same as going to a bear-baiting).

I have never really taken an interest in his works - I never studied it at school, I've never read any of it and I've never been to any plays

Perhaps one day I'll make the effort

I find his work OK, thats all i can say.

Most of it is simplistic, probably due to the format it had to be performed in.

Some plays do go deeper, such as othello. it's a wonderful play with so many levels.

others like Much Ado are just nonsensicel and childish.

Romeo and J is also highly over rated. it's a good, if simple, story, i just never found anything in any character i could relate to. i spent the intire time we were studying it wishing the characters would get an ounce of common sense.

But thats just my opinion.

I certainly enjoy Shakespeare - I've studied a lot of it cos I'm an A Level English student (or at least I was until the exams finished on Friday !!! YAY!!! )

I've really enjoyed it, I'm not too sure what I think about the idea of it being overrated though. I know that my old english teacher would agree cos she seems to think that it wasn't Shakespeare that wrote the plays at all...she did give me a name but I can't remeber it for the life of me !!! I LOVE the Taming of the Shrew and Othello!

OK, so I'm a Shakespeare fan...I admit it

He is extreamly over rated and stole most of his work from other peeps but that doesn't make him bad!! some of his plays in particular I really love, Henry V in particular and A Midsummer Nights Dream too but maybe that's just cause I like Fairies!! hehe!!

May I just say though: Measure For Measure, Isabella, selfish or what?? That play makes no sense, it's stupid!!

---

by Cat
Most of it is simplistic, probably due to the format it had to be performed in.

---

Both parts of this sentence troubled me. How is it simplistic, and what are the problems of the format, as you see it?

I simply find the plot of some of his plays simplistic, thats my opinion. porbably because i have been spoilt by thriller novels etc.

The format is simplistic because it writen as a play. Books or film offer much more versatility for story telling.

Plays are bound, for example by set. you cant easily have 2 dozen different sets for a 2 hr play, it's just not realistic. expecially not in the day these works were written.

Budget is another factor. while film is affected by budget, and a play will be also, a book can take place anywhere, any time at no cost to the writer, reader or publisher.

Cat, so it's not Shakespeare per se, then? You regard plays in general as simplistic?

---

by Jango
Cat, so it's not Shakespeare per se, then? You regard plays in general as simplistic?

---

It depends on the play. As i said, Othello is a very good play and works on many levels.

Noel Coward also wrote some excelent plays too.

But, yes, in general it is harder to write an indepth play than it it a screenplay or a book. Not that it cant be done, it's just not done often.


(Edited by Cat 30/06/2002 16:02)

I think theatre is a difficult form for a lot of people to understand. Never having been involved in theatrical production I always found it very difficult to study a play as a text because I couldn't envisage the performance, which is after all the whole point. I still find that I prefer very 'wordy' plays - Wilde and Stoppard come to mind - where the dialogue often takes precedence over action.

I also think that the suspension of disbelief required by theatre is difficult for audiences used to film and TV to achieve. Why should an audience be content to 'think, when we speak of horses, that you see them' when it's so easy to film the work with real horses? Additionally, on film everyone can see the great actors (and I'm thinking big Shakespeare adaptations here, with the top stage actors reprising their roles on film, not just big stars), whereas if you go to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at your local rep the level of talent may well not be so good.

I would dispute that Shakespeare's plays are 'simplistic'. For what they are they are extremely complex, but I think that modern audiences have lost the art of theatre-going as we are so used to much more sophisticated entertainment.

On the technical level I appreciate Shakespeare because he wrote everything in iambic pentamiter (darn I can't spell!) and I've NEVER been able to do that!
I also think that the plots are very entertaining and I love to read it.
Overall I think that his work has become something that is regarded as upper-class even though it did not start that way, I believe thats because the rich are the few who can afford to go and see high quality Shakespeare productions (once he achieved fame).
Anyway, I've done waffling

I don't like Shakespeare, and I don't really have much respect for him either. I've only read a few plays, and only seen one in the theatre, so I know I don't really have enough knowledge of his work to make a proper judgement, but I know what I like!

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate everything he's done. I think the Romeo & Juliet film with Leonardo DiCaprio is fantastic. I'm still not sure if it would have worked better with updated dialogue though.

And some of the stuff he wrote just sounds cool. I have the opening speech from Henry V (I think) memorised. "O for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention ..." Now how cool does that sound? It just flows so well. It could almost be a Manic Street Preachers lyric!

Oh and I once won a competition by calling Shakespeare a very rude word indeed! Which was cool!