They are comedy's?
It has been a struggle to stay interested in the Shakespeare comedies. This is sad to say but I just don’t get them. I am catching on to political concepts he is suggesting to the reader though so I’m not complete idiot. I ordered the movie “The taming of the shrew” on my Netflix account and it should get to my house soon. My hope is that I will understand “the comedies” if I watch it because I haven’t seen a sparknotes play for it online. Shakespeare's Character?
My depth this week has been on trying to get to the core of Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s texts have been saturated with the large amount of writings on it and I have been trying to make sense of it. I have been searching for Shakespeare core by reading Shakespeare Biography’s.
As I read the biographies I have been asking myself a few questions, What was the core of Shakespeare? How did Shakespeare want his plays to be read? The Biography in the text book has not been very helpful. Wikipedia is normally very helpful at describing people but reading that has not been very helpful as well. I didn’t understand why all the ambiguous information in all the biography’s I have read. In ask an expert on twitter I asked them why did Shakespeare start writing his plays? The response was that sadly we don’t have a lot of information about this man’s life. Are we left to never know his character? The biography’s I have read in the text book and Wikipedia paint Shakespeare as a rich entertainer that wrote for the money and popularity. If you look at Shakespeare’s plays in that light I could definitely see that point of view. Shakespeare is so popular that I want his life to stand for something great like in all of the other Biographies I have read (most all the biographies I have read were on Apostles ha). Here are the important questions
Did Shakespeare write his play’s just to entertain and for the money?
What is Shakespeare’s core?
Was Shakespeare disobedient and a criminal like are text book suggests on page 1ix second column at the top?
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I noticed your tweet about Shakespeare's life and was glad to see you trying out Twitter. The biography question (plural: biographies -- watch that) has always been a fascinating one. Why do you suppose it matters? What kind of knowledge about the plays do you get if you figure out his intent -- if that's possible?
ReplyDeleteI notice you still do not have Intense Debate installed.
I was just reading David's blog post about the importance of biography and thought you would find it relevant.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments! I wish I was better at computer stuff because I only saw one response from twitter but I asked a few questions. I am not sure what they said back. Intense debate is not on my blog? I think I will have to come in to get it because I thought it worked this last time I tried putting it on my blog.
ReplyDeleteI saw that you asked on twitter what the best biography was to read but I couldn't see what they said back to you. So if you get time could you let me know?
I liked David's blog! I am going to stay up on what he learns on that issue because it was definitely relevant.
Thanks for the grammar corrections and keep them coming. Hopefully ill be able to perfect that.
I wrote a lot on Davids blog about why I think it matters but I have read and is reading biographies on the LDS Apostles. I found you get more out of their talks when you know about their life. When Elder Scott talks about repentance and missionary work it means more to me now because I know his son left the church. I stay interested because I know the heart break he deals with and his pleading is more than just another "talk". The more we know on an author the more we can get out of literature. If we had some good information on Shakespeare's character I believe we would have a better understanding of what Shakespeare wanted to be understood. We know his character we can see how he views the world. If you know that Shakespeare was more sympathetic to the culture of his youth. Then his text become the inner battle of the lower classes wanting to be patriotic but wanting more civil liberties instead of Shakespeare just writing a play for the wealthy is what I was thinking.
But as I said in David's blog I think we could go too far in looking at the text from the authors’ perspective. It’s all about the balance.
From what I have read so far I think Shakespeare might have been a shady character. By chance do you know of anything his family, specifically his wife has written about him? I know she was an author as well so you would think we could learn a lot about him from her, I haven’t been able to find anything. In everything I have read I haven't seen much where people talk about his personality.