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It felt even worse when reading Shakespeare, which is nominally the same language you and I speak, but just barely. Add the fact that it's a play, where the per

It felt even worse when reading Shakespeare, which is nominally the same language you and I speak, but just barely. Add the fact that it's a play, where the performance carries a lot of the meaning. The end result was that I - and as far as I could tell, 99% of my classmates - got basically negative value out of sitting in class and reading lines we didn't understand out loud, without even time to try and parse it out because we were too busy just scanning the lines to see when it was our turn to speak.

dehrmann 2mo ago
> where the performance carries a lot of the meaning The big one for me is you don't necessarily know Elizabethan slang, but when you see the play performed, the dirty lines get delivered dirty.
- gowld 2mo ago
  That's why The Taming of The Shrew is recommended for children. The bawdiness s straightforward.
PsylentKnight 2mo ago
I have heard that Shakespeare is much easier and more enjoyable for non-English speakers, because they get modern translations and we do not Linguist John McWhorter says that Shakespeare is often an "the Emperor has no clothes" situation. No one wants to admit to themselves or others that they don't understand it, and the people who think they understand it are often misunderstanding a lot of it
- LPisGood 2mo ago
  Now, maybe I was convincing myself that I understood in high school when I’ve in fact it not, but I found that reading it aloud and trying to say the words, as if you were the character (acting, if you will), made it much more understandable.
  - PsylentKnight 2mo ago
    I mean, even the most famous line in all of Shakespeare, "wherefore art thou Romeo" is frequently misunderstood because many people reasonably assume "wherefore" means something like "where". Yes, you can figure it out from context, but the context is in the same archaic language. Very possible to untangle all that while you're reading it and perhaps it's a good mental exercise. But it can be really tough to keep up when you're watching in the form it was meant to be enjoyed in, a play
    - schoen 2mo ago
      That speech is expressing an awesome idea: Juliet is saying that she loves Romeo-the-person, but she is terrified of her bad luck in that he happens to have a certain surname ("Montague") which will automatically cause her family to hate him. Which, indeed, they do. It's basically something like "why did I fall in love with such an inconvenient person?", together with "why does my family care so much about this thing that I'm not sure needs to matter?".
      - PsylentKnight 2mo ago
        Sure, but the archaic language can obscure the awesome idea. "Why are you Romeo?" may sound less poetic to modern ears, but isn't that how people back then would have parsed it - just as easily as everyday language, because it was their everyday language? I feel like in a way we're losing Shakespeare's intended effect, because we insist on using a "language" that isn't used anymore. Yes, I understand that it's considered the same language, but a language isn't really one thing, it's more of a spectrum without sharp edges. Shakespeare is much closer in time to Middle English (which is considered a different language) than he is to our time
        TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago
        True, but a big part of Shakespeare is the rhythm, and if you replace the words with newer words that disappears. Not to say it will be a complete failure, but it does lose some of its poetry and power. And smut. There's a lot of smut and double entendre in Shakespeare. An innocent modern word like "nothing" has multiple layers of meaning in Elizabethan English. Modern audiences don't get it unless someone explains it to them.
- krige 2mo ago
  Well yeah. Look no further than the "brevity is the soul of wit" quote. It's taken at literal value when, in context, you know it's a joke, a potshot at the expense of the character saying it, who's anything but brief in speech.
  - fluoridation 2mo ago
    It sounds like it's still meant in earnest, then. That it's a self-deprecating joke doesn't detract from the sentiment.
    - bluGill 2mo ago
      I know a fair number long winded people who like that quote and have no clue it should apply to them despite repeating it often.
    - eszed 2mo ago
      It's totally in earnest, and it's funny because Polonius isn't being self-deprecating: he wholeheartedly believes in brevity, when he isn't being it. At all. But, Shakespeare being Shakespeare, he's not being entirely poked fun at. He's saying goodbye to his son, who's headed off into adulthood, and his over-long list of life-advice is like his last chance to to be a loving father. It's a "yeah, dad" moment, but Polonius is ever so slightly desperate to impart all the lessons that maybe he never quite got around to teaching quite as well as he wishes he had, and he's just ever so slightly desperate, and totally not ready to say goodbye, and it's... Really, really relatable. Though maybe not to high school students, I guess. I think it's still worthwhile for them to try.
- hylaride 2mo ago
  It's a tragedy that most English classes don't have field trips. Going to an actual Shakespeare play would probably change many people's minds than having to direct it in book form. What clicked for me was after being forced to read The Merchant of Venice in grade 9, I suddenly saw all the cultural references ("I want my pound of flesh" or "All that glisters is not gold") in movies, music, etc. I remember watching Strange Brew and somebody mentioned that it's basically Hamlet and you can't unsee it once you realize which movie character is matched to which Shakespeare character. Over the years I've been to several adaptations of A Midsummer Night's Dream and it was a ton of fun every single time.
- dd8601fn 2mo ago
  We often didn’t just get sent home with a copy of Romeo and Juliet and then get asked to write an essay. We went through it, a bit at a time, in class. With a very good teacher. Not just helping with word and phrases, but digging in a little bit. And at the end we watched a performance of it. I think that made it so much easier to appreciate, and it made it a ton easier to read and appreciate Julius Caesar or whichever ones we did next. And like… that was 30+ years ago for me, but I feel like I see echoes of that stuff all the time.
- thadt 2mo ago
  This is a really good point. My wife and I produce a history podcast where, right now, a lot of it draws on primary sources such as letters, diaries, etc. from the late 1800's to early 1900's. The ones in German she translates into English, but it feels "wrong" to change someone's words that are already in English. The net result is that it's easier (for me) to understand a letter written by someone in a translated foreign language than one written by someone in English from the same period.
  - sebg 2mo ago
    What’s been your favorite episode to put together?
    - thadt 2mo ago
      It's hard to pick a favorite - everyone brings their own perspective to their time. One of my early favorites was 'A Jew Who Stood Guard for Hitler'[1], the account of a kid who joined the Nazis for a while - till they found out he was Jewish and kicked him out. Ah, the naivety of youth. [1] https://www.messyhistory.net/a-jew-who-stood-guard-for-hitler https://www.messyhistory.net/a-jew-who-stood-guard-for-hitle...
- folkrav 2mo ago
  I was preparing to heavily disagree with you before that "because". I'm French speaking, one of my highschool English teachers made us read Romeo and Juliet, and it's different enough from modern English that my brain just couldn't understand anything at all. Thank god Sparknotes already existed in the early/mid 00s cause I would have fluked that class so hard. Funnily enough I never read the translations, so can't speak as to how accurate your affirmation is, but I can see it happening for sure. I'd say it depends on the style of the translation. I've seen some try too hard to preserve the tone of the original.
- inglor_cz 2mo ago
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NobodyNada 2mo ago
I had the same experience reading A Midsummer Night's Dream in high school -- I could follow the story, but it was a slog to get through and I didn't understand what was supposed to be so great about it. Then I saw an actual performance of the play recently, and it all clicked. It was just as understandable as any contemporary film, and easily one of the most fun and entertaining stories I've seen.
- NoboruWataya 2mo ago
  I gave up trying to read plays shortly after school. There's no point to me, they are supposed to be performed. I still think it's worth studying some of the more famous ones in school, but any study should absolutely involve actually going to see the play at some point.
  - conductr 2mo ago
    I commented elsewhere but my schooling had a pattern of: read > analyze/discuss > watch movie > analyze/discuss. Most of the material has film adaptations and this was fairly sufficient in closing the loop during the course. Even in history class, when we studied key documents the teacher would often at some point show us an oral presentation of the document- like a clip of (actor portrayed) Abraham Lincoln reading the Gettysburg Address. It’s such a well written speech that’s it’s exceedingly simple to comprehend when read. However, when you hear it orated it becomes evident how powerful it was and monumental moment in American history to justify learning about as it was unifying and motivating for all even in the midst of civil war. (Sorry may not be relatable reference for non Americans was just the first that came to mind)
  - nickff 2mo ago
    You'd probably be in a better place to understand the scripts now, having seen more performances, for whatever that might be worth. That said, I personally don't read scripts, and have not done so since I was last required to in high school.
- dredmorbius 2mo ago
  I've had a similar experience, with the same play, but in an absolutely minimalist setting. No sets, the only props were a few chairs, and costumes were the same white slacks and smock worn by all the players. And it absolutely worked. This wasn't long after my secondary education --- I'd just started uni. But enough had happened that I got it. As I've commented recently, even as an excellent reader, there's something that hits quite differently from hearing fiction (or even nonfiction) not just read but acted. Selected Shorts is an excellent source for this. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49163756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49163756>.
magneticnorth 2mo ago
Yes, I agree completely with the Shakespeare point. I was lucky enough to have a close friend (also a teenager!) who really got Shakespeare. She would explain to me what was actually going on, and read it with the correct emphasis so you could mostly actually follow it. She is 100% of the reason that I was ever able to appreciate Shakespeare. You would hope that most teachers could do this, but in my experience it was only my one friend who had the literary and dramatic talent to explain Shakespeare well to teenagers.
- bluGill 2mo ago
  There is no correct way to read Shakespeare. There are many wrong ways, but don't let your friend's interpretation cloud you from the others. It is really magic when you see some other interpretation and understand both are right despite not being compatible.
  - gowld 2mo ago
    Obligatory "To Be or Not to Be" https://youtu.be/iQULEW2JwHE https://youtu.be/iQULEW2JwHE
    - bluGill 2mo ago
      It's okay, but it would be a whole lot better without the constant laughter over things that aren't even funny. Makes it really hard to follow what's actually going on. I mean, I understand a laughter when someone says/does something funny and there are funny parts in there, but there's just constant laughing at places where there's nothing funny happening. That is just rude to people trying to follow the story. I hate to be that curmudgeon but sometimes i have to be
  - stackghost 2mo ago
    Oh, I hate this sentiment so very much. Example: The song "We Are Young" by fun features the following lyrics. My seat's been taken by some sunglasses / asking 'bout a scar, and / I know I gave it to you months ago / I know you're trying to forget / But between the drinks and subtle things / The holes in my apologies, you know / I'm trying hard to take it back The aspiring song analyst might think it's about the singer being asked by a cop (wearing sunglasses) asking about him abusing his girlfriend, or whatever, but Nate Ruess is on record saying it's just about being hung over, and no more deep than that. Projecting meaning where there is none, or where the meaning is clear, is simply not valid even for Shakespeare.
iwontberude 2mo ago
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SilasX 2mo ago
Rant: I missed lot of Shakespeare appreciation when they somehow failed to teach that (other) people actually like how iambic pentameter sounds, and this is critical to enjoying it. Nothing about how Shakespeare is voiced has ever registered as sounding particularly pleasant to me. The word choice, sure, but not the meter or stressing. They taught that Shakespeare used iambic pentameter, and how you're "supposed" to stress it, but it came off to me as "technical curiosity you're supposed to memorize" not "universal experience of enjoyment" that I apparently don't share. My lighting talk about this: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZUcvP8CWhB/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DZUcvP8CWhB/ Non-social media link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G58CMUDf-M4loe3MeEus-9gNA5TH7y2D/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G58CMUDf-M4loe3MeEus-9gNA5T...
- gowld 2mo ago
  Meter is a very basic part of English poetry that is usually taught. Almost all popular music and poetry has meter.
  - SilasX 2mo ago
    Again, it was taught[1]. The fact that (speaking it with) one meter sounds particularly pleasant (to some people), and that this is a big part of its appeal (to those who like it) was not taught. IOW, it's the difference between "these words in this poem rhyme" vs "this poem sounds nice because these words rhyme". Which, incidentally, is an analogy I make in the lightning talk to explain why this part would be glossed over: people assume that appreciation of rhyming/iambic pentameter is universal. [1] "They taught that Shakespeare used iambic pentameter..." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49378069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49378069
- Telaneo 2mo ago
  Yeah, Shakespeare is not going to land if iambic pentameter doesn't sound like anything special to you. It's a big part of why many Shakespearean quotes stick so hard in people's brains, like 'To be or not to be', 'But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?' and 'If music be the food of love, play on'. If all of these have to carry their weight with only their literal words on the page, and not how they're actually said and stressed, they're going to be a lot less memorable.
ninalanyon 2mo ago
Reading these comments about Shakespeare makes me think that most of you had terrible teachers of Eng. Lit. Plays, all of them not just Shakespeare, are written to be performed. If your teachers didn't have you perform plays and also watch professional and amateur performances they were derelict in their duties as teachers. Performance isn't just rote recitation.
- pavel_lishin 2mo ago
  I guess I can't lump every English teacher into the same bucket, but in my experience, they aren't particularly skilled at explaining the context behind a lot of the stuff being taught.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2mo ago
    I would agree wrt my High School teachers. They were basically competent, but not particularly good. In college however, my Humanities professors were better than I appreciated at the time. They forced us to think about the material and challenged us to defend our interpretations. As an Engineering student who just wanted the class to be over, I really missed out on a lot of good stuff.
- ydat 2mo ago
  Frankly, Shakespeare is one of the few things I enjoyed reading in school. It was classic American novels I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t tell you why, but getting through something even as simple as Tom Sawyer was such a chore for me.
  - smelendez 2mo ago
    Twain can be tedious because he’s a humorist and we’ve heard those jokes a million times by now. Also he writes speech in dialect which now means nothing to us and makes him harder to read. I find him easier to read as an adult but he can still be a slog. I think a lot of classic American lit is hard as an American kid because it’s removed enough from today that you don’t get the nuances and also so influential that the storytelling feels trite, even if it was revolutionary at the time.
crooked-v 2mo ago
If not for Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, I'd probably had just completely bounced off Shakespeare's works in high school.
- CocaKoala 2mo ago
  Another really good and interesting film adaptation of Shakespeare is "Scotland, PA" - Macbeth, set against the backdrop of a 1970s fast food restaurant featuring a soundtrack that consists entirely of Bad Company songs (apparently the library was shockingly inexpensive?) and Christopher Walken as an inspired Detective Macduff. I think there's a lot of value in going back to examine the original text in school, but adaptations can do a lot to help students connect the idea that this story has characters and motivations that are human and resonate even outside the context of whatever the setting of the original play is.
HeyLaughingBoy 2mo ago
A couple years after I graduated college, I came across the 1972 movie of Macbeth. The experience was so drastically different from reading it in high school that it seemed like a completely different play. Suddenly, it all made sense now that I had a visual context. I remember one of the characters (Macduff?) covered in blood after a battle and grinning about how he had opened up his opponent "from the knave to the chop" with appropriate gestures. I remembered that specific phrase from high school and now, instead of being an abstract comment, it had actual meaning that I could relate to. I'm of the opinion that most plays simply shouldn't be taught in high school English class. There just isn't enough context to really understand them.
- abighamb 2mo ago
  They really need to be produced to be appreciated. I came to love Shakespeare in High School because I happened to perform it in a Theatre Class. Acting it is totally different from reading it.
Night_Thastus 2mo ago
I felt the same way. I think we were on Hamlet, and reading it alone just felt so confusing and lifeless. I couldn't tell when characters were upset, sarcastic, ecstatic, etc. It drained it of all character. But then later on I saw a play version of it and suddenly it all made sense! Even if the words were identical, the context made it much easier to follow the story. I could piece together what it meant even if it wasn't modern English. You could hear the emotion in the voices and better follow what they're reacting to. I really appreciated it! It's not like it would have cost the school anything...it was freely available online!

dehrmann 2mo ago

> where the performance carries a lot of the meaning The big one for me is you don't necessarily know Elizabethan slang, but when you see the play performed, the dirty lines get delivered dirty.

gowld 2mo ago
That's why The Taming of The Shrew is recommended for children. The bawdiness s straightforward.

PsylentKnight 2mo ago

I have heard that Shakespeare is much easier and more enjoyable for non-English speakers, because they get modern translations and we do not Linguist John McWhorter says that Shakespeare is often an "the Emperor has no clothes" situation. No one wants to admit to themselves or others that they don't understand it, and the people who think they understand it are often misunderstanding a lot of it

LPisGood 2mo ago
Now, maybe I was convincing myself that I understood in high school when I’ve in fact it not, but I found that reading it aloud and trying to say the words, as if you were the character (acting, if you will), made it much more understandable.
- PsylentKnight 2mo ago
  I mean, even the most famous line in all of Shakespeare, "wherefore art thou Romeo" is frequently misunderstood because many people reasonably assume "wherefore" means something like "where". Yes, you can figure it out from context, but the context is in the same archaic language. Very possible to untangle all that while you're reading it and perhaps it's a good mental exercise. But it can be really tough to keep up when you're watching in the form it was meant to be enjoyed in, a play
  - schoen 2mo ago
    That speech is expressing an awesome idea: Juliet is saying that she loves Romeo-the-person, but she is terrified of her bad luck in that he happens to have a certain surname ("Montague") which will automatically cause her family to hate him. Which, indeed, they do. It's basically something like "why did I fall in love with such an inconvenient person?", together with "why does my family care so much about this thing that I'm not sure needs to matter?".
    - PsylentKnight 2mo ago
      Sure, but the archaic language can obscure the awesome idea. "Why are you Romeo?" may sound less poetic to modern ears, but isn't that how people back then would have parsed it - just as easily as everyday language, because it was their everyday language? I feel like in a way we're losing Shakespeare's intended effect, because we insist on using a "language" that isn't used anymore. Yes, I understand that it's considered the same language, but a language isn't really one thing, it's more of a spectrum without sharp edges. Shakespeare is much closer in time to Middle English (which is considered a different language) than he is to our time
      - TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago
        True, but a big part of Shakespeare is the rhythm, and if you replace the words with newer words that disappears. Not to say it will be a complete failure, but it does lose some of its poetry and power. And smut. There's a lot of smut and double entendre in Shakespeare. An innocent modern word like "nothing" has multiple layers of meaning in Elizabethan English. Modern audiences don't get it unless someone explains it to them.
krige 2mo ago
Well yeah. Look no further than the "brevity is the soul of wit" quote. It's taken at literal value when, in context, you know it's a joke, a potshot at the expense of the character saying it, who's anything but brief in speech.
- fluoridation 2mo ago
  It sounds like it's still meant in earnest, then. That it's a self-deprecating joke doesn't detract from the sentiment.
  - bluGill 2mo ago
    I know a fair number long winded people who like that quote and have no clue it should apply to them despite repeating it often.
  - eszed 2mo ago
    It's totally in earnest, and it's funny because Polonius isn't being self-deprecating: he wholeheartedly believes in brevity, when he isn't being it. At all. But, Shakespeare being Shakespeare, he's not being entirely poked fun at. He's saying goodbye to his son, who's headed off into adulthood, and his over-long list of life-advice is like his last chance to to be a loving father. It's a "yeah, dad" moment, but Polonius is ever so slightly desperate to impart all the lessons that maybe he never quite got around to teaching quite as well as he wishes he had, and he's just ever so slightly desperate, and totally not ready to say goodbye, and it's... Really, really relatable. Though maybe not to high school students, I guess. I think it's still worthwhile for them to try.
hylaride 2mo ago
It's a tragedy that most English classes don't have field trips. Going to an actual Shakespeare play would probably change many people's minds than having to direct it in book form. What clicked for me was after being forced to read The Merchant of Venice in grade 9, I suddenly saw all the cultural references ("I want my pound of flesh" or "All that glisters is not gold") in movies, music, etc. I remember watching Strange Brew and somebody mentioned that it's basically Hamlet and you can't unsee it once you realize which movie character is matched to which Shakespeare character. Over the years I've been to several adaptations of A Midsummer Night's Dream and it was a ton of fun every single time.
dd8601fn 2mo ago
We often didn’t just get sent home with a copy of Romeo and Juliet and then get asked to write an essay. We went through it, a bit at a time, in class. With a very good teacher. Not just helping with word and phrases, but digging in a little bit. And at the end we watched a performance of it. I think that made it so much easier to appreciate, and it made it a ton easier to read and appreciate Julius Caesar or whichever ones we did next. And like… that was 30+ years ago for me, but I feel like I see echoes of that stuff all the time.
thadt 2mo ago
This is a really good point. My wife and I produce a history podcast where, right now, a lot of it draws on primary sources such as letters, diaries, etc. from the late 1800's to early 1900's. The ones in German she translates into English, but it feels "wrong" to change someone's words that are already in English. The net result is that it's easier (for me) to understand a letter written by someone in a translated foreign language than one written by someone in English from the same period.
- sebg 2mo ago
  What’s been your favorite episode to put together?
  - thadt 2mo ago
    It's hard to pick a favorite - everyone brings their own perspective to their time. One of my early favorites was 'A Jew Who Stood Guard for Hitler'[1], the account of a kid who joined the Nazis for a while - till they found out he was Jewish and kicked him out. Ah, the naivety of youth. [1] https://www.messyhistory.net/a-jew-who-stood-guard-for-hitler https://www.messyhistory.net/a-jew-who-stood-guard-for-hitle...
folkrav 2mo ago
I was preparing to heavily disagree with you before that "because". I'm French speaking, one of my highschool English teachers made us read Romeo and Juliet, and it's different enough from modern English that my brain just couldn't understand anything at all. Thank god Sparknotes already existed in the early/mid 00s cause I would have fluked that class so hard. Funnily enough I never read the translations, so can't speak as to how accurate your affirmation is, but I can see it happening for sure. I'd say it depends on the style of the translation. I've seen some try too hard to preserve the tone of the original.
inglor_cz 2mo ago
[dead]

NobodyNada 2mo ago

I had the same experience reading A Midsummer Night's Dream in high school -- I could follow the story, but it was a slog to get through and I didn't understand what was supposed to be so great about it. Then I saw an actual performance of the play recently, and it all clicked. It was just as understandable as any contemporary film, and easily one of the most fun and entertaining stories I've seen.

NoboruWataya 2mo ago
I gave up trying to read plays shortly after school. There's no point to me, they are supposed to be performed. I still think it's worth studying some of the more famous ones in school, but any study should absolutely involve actually going to see the play at some point.
- conductr 2mo ago
  I commented elsewhere but my schooling had a pattern of: read > analyze/discuss > watch movie > analyze/discuss. Most of the material has film adaptations and this was fairly sufficient in closing the loop during the course. Even in history class, when we studied key documents the teacher would often at some point show us an oral presentation of the document- like a clip of (actor portrayed) Abraham Lincoln reading the Gettysburg Address. It’s such a well written speech that’s it’s exceedingly simple to comprehend when read. However, when you hear it orated it becomes evident how powerful it was and monumental moment in American history to justify learning about as it was unifying and motivating for all even in the midst of civil war. (Sorry may not be relatable reference for non Americans was just the first that came to mind)
- nickff 2mo ago
  You'd probably be in a better place to understand the scripts now, having seen more performances, for whatever that might be worth. That said, I personally don't read scripts, and have not done so since I was last required to in high school.
dredmorbius 2mo ago
I've had a similar experience, with the same play, but in an absolutely minimalist setting. No sets, the only props were a few chairs, and costumes were the same white slacks and smock worn by all the players. And it absolutely worked. This wasn't long after my secondary education --- I'd just started uni. But enough had happened that I got it. As I've commented recently, even as an excellent reader, there's something that hits quite differently from hearing fiction (or even nonfiction) not just read but acted. Selected Shorts is an excellent source for this. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49163756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49163756>.

magneticnorth 2mo ago

Yes, I agree completely with the Shakespeare point. I was lucky enough to have a close friend (also a teenager!) who really got Shakespeare. She would explain to me what was actually going on, and read it with the correct emphasis so you could mostly actually follow it. She is 100% of the reason that I was ever able to appreciate Shakespeare. You would hope that most teachers could do this, but in my experience it was only my one friend who had the literary and dramatic talent to explain Shakespeare well to teenagers.

bluGill 2mo ago
There is no correct way to read Shakespeare. There are many wrong ways, but don't let your friend's interpretation cloud you from the others. It is really magic when you see some other interpretation and understand both are right despite not being compatible.
- gowld 2mo ago
  Obligatory "To Be or Not to Be" https://youtu.be/iQULEW2JwHE https://youtu.be/iQULEW2JwHE
  - bluGill 2mo ago
    It's okay, but it would be a whole lot better without the constant laughter over things that aren't even funny. Makes it really hard to follow what's actually going on. I mean, I understand a laughter when someone says/does something funny and there are funny parts in there, but there's just constant laughing at places where there's nothing funny happening. That is just rude to people trying to follow the story. I hate to be that curmudgeon but sometimes i have to be
- stackghost 2mo ago
  Oh, I hate this sentiment so very much. Example: The song "We Are Young" by fun features the following lyrics. My seat's been taken by some sunglasses / asking 'bout a scar, and / I know I gave it to you months ago / I know you're trying to forget / But between the drinks and subtle things / The holes in my apologies, you know / I'm trying hard to take it back The aspiring song analyst might think it's about the singer being asked by a cop (wearing sunglasses) asking about him abusing his girlfriend, or whatever, but Nate Ruess is on record saying it's just about being hung over, and no more deep than that. Projecting meaning where there is none, or where the meaning is clear, is simply not valid even for Shakespeare.

iwontberude 2mo ago

[dead]

SilasX 2mo ago

Rant: I missed lot of Shakespeare appreciation when they somehow failed to teach that (other) people actually like how iambic pentameter sounds, and this is critical to enjoying it. Nothing about how Shakespeare is voiced has ever registered as sounding particularly pleasant to me. The word choice, sure, but not the meter or stressing. They taught that Shakespeare used iambic pentameter, and how you're "supposed" to stress it, but it came off to me as "technical curiosity you're supposed to memorize" not "universal experience of enjoyment" that I apparently don't share. My lighting talk about this: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZUcvP8CWhB/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DZUcvP8CWhB/ Non-social media link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G58CMUDf-M4loe3MeEus-9gNA5TH7y2D/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G58CMUDf-M4loe3MeEus-9gNA5T...

gowld 2mo ago
Meter is a very basic part of English poetry that is usually taught. Almost all popular music and poetry has meter.
- SilasX 2mo ago
  Again, it was taught[1]. The fact that (speaking it with) one meter sounds particularly pleasant (to some people), and that this is a big part of its appeal (to those who like it) was not taught. IOW, it's the difference between "these words in this poem rhyme" vs "this poem sounds nice because these words rhyme". Which, incidentally, is an analogy I make in the lightning talk to explain why this part would be glossed over: people assume that appreciation of rhyming/iambic pentameter is universal. [1] "They taught that Shakespeare used iambic pentameter..." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49378069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49378069
Telaneo 2mo ago
Yeah, Shakespeare is not going to land if iambic pentameter doesn't sound like anything special to you. It's a big part of why many Shakespearean quotes stick so hard in people's brains, like 'To be or not to be', 'But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?' and 'If music be the food of love, play on'. If all of these have to carry their weight with only their literal words on the page, and not how they're actually said and stressed, they're going to be a lot less memorable.

ninalanyon 2mo ago

Reading these comments about Shakespeare makes me think that most of you had terrible teachers of Eng. Lit. Plays, all of them not just Shakespeare, are written to be performed. If your teachers didn't have you perform plays and also watch professional and amateur performances they were derelict in their duties as teachers. Performance isn't just rote recitation.

pavel_lishin 2mo ago
I guess I can't lump every English teacher into the same bucket, but in my experience, they aren't particularly skilled at explaining the context behind a lot of the stuff being taught.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2mo ago
  I would agree wrt my High School teachers. They were basically competent, but not particularly good. In college however, my Humanities professors were better than I appreciated at the time. They forced us to think about the material and challenged us to defend our interpretations. As an Engineering student who just wanted the class to be over, I really missed out on a lot of good stuff.
ydat 2mo ago
Frankly, Shakespeare is one of the few things I enjoyed reading in school. It was classic American novels I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t tell you why, but getting through something even as simple as Tom Sawyer was such a chore for me.
- smelendez 2mo ago
  Twain can be tedious because he’s a humorist and we’ve heard those jokes a million times by now. Also he writes speech in dialect which now means nothing to us and makes him harder to read. I find him easier to read as an adult but he can still be a slog. I think a lot of classic American lit is hard as an American kid because it’s removed enough from today that you don’t get the nuances and also so influential that the storytelling feels trite, even if it was revolutionary at the time.

crooked-v 2mo ago

If not for Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, I'd probably had just completely bounced off Shakespeare's works in high school.

CocaKoala 2mo ago
Another really good and interesting film adaptation of Shakespeare is "Scotland, PA" - Macbeth, set against the backdrop of a 1970s fast food restaurant featuring a soundtrack that consists entirely of Bad Company songs (apparently the library was shockingly inexpensive?) and Christopher Walken as an inspired Detective Macduff. I think there's a lot of value in going back to examine the original text in school, but adaptations can do a lot to help students connect the idea that this story has characters and motivations that are human and resonate even outside the context of whatever the setting of the original play is.

HeyLaughingBoy 2mo ago

A couple years after I graduated college, I came across the 1972 movie of Macbeth. The experience was so drastically different from reading it in high school that it seemed like a completely different play. Suddenly, it all made sense now that I had a visual context. I remember one of the characters (Macduff?) covered in blood after a battle and grinning about how he had opened up his opponent "from the knave to the chop" with appropriate gestures. I remembered that specific phrase from high school and now, instead of being an abstract comment, it had actual meaning that I could relate to. I'm of the opinion that most plays simply shouldn't be taught in high school English class. There just isn't enough context to really understand them.

abighamb 2mo ago
They really need to be produced to be appreciated. I came to love Shakespeare in High School because I happened to perform it in a Theatre Class. Acting it is totally different from reading it.

Night_Thastus 2mo ago

I felt the same way. I think we were on Hamlet, and reading it alone just felt so confusing and lifeless. I couldn't tell when characters were upset, sarcastic, ecstatic, etc. It drained it of all character. But then later on I saw a play version of it and suddenly it all made sense! Even if the words were identical, the context made it much easier to follow the story. I could piece together what it meant even if it wasn't modern English. You could hear the emotion in the voices and better follow what they're reacting to. I really appreciated it! It's not like it would have cost the school anything...it was freely available online!