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I downvoted you (and although previous guidelines were not to post about the reason, it seems as if dang would like us to share more about our thoughts on comme
by DanielStraight 12y ago
I downvoted you (and although previous guidelines were not to post about the reason, it seems as if dang would like us to share more about our thoughts on comments) not because you don't like Shakespeare, but because you seem unwilling to understand the context or significance of his work.
Obviously, you are entitled to your own opinion about whether Shakespeare's plays are good, but that they are English and show skilled use of meter and other poetic structures is really not up for debate.
Languages are constantly changing, less so with the invention of print and the internet, but they still change. For a trivial example, "selfie" was not a word 10 years ago. As words are added, words are also dropped. Even whole grammatical structures are added and dropped. This is all a normal part of language. So yes, Shakespeare's plays are not modern English, but they have a much closer resemblance to modern English than they do to Old English (a sample "Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in ġeār-dagum, þēod-cyninga, þrym ġefrūnon, hū ðā æþelingas ellen fremedon.").
Similarly, tastes in literary structure change. At one point in English's past, extensive alliteration was valued even though it sounds very silly to modern ears. But again, Shakespeare's writing in this regard is still much closer to modern writing than it is to ancient writing.
Finally, it's worth noting that Shakespeare's works were written to be performed and watched, not read. Watching a live performance of Shakespeare is an entirely different experience.
- collyw 12y ago"Languages are constantly changing" I agree, so why do we need to study a version that is no longer in use and incomprehensible by the average person? Do you suggest that people go to study the first version of Java to make them a better programmer?
- DanielStraight 12y agoStudying Shakespeare is not like studying the first version of Java. It's like studying an extremely well-written program that happens to be written in the first version of Java. We wouldn't ignore a monumentally important program just because it wasn't in a modern dialect of Java (or in a more modern programming language). We don't study Shakespeare to study that period's English; we study Shakespeare to study literature. And we shouldn't ignore the monumental literary importance just because his work happens to be written in an older version of the language. There will likely come a day when modern English has diverged far enough from Shakespeare's English to make Shakespeare genuinely incomprehensible to modern English speakers, but we are not there yet. Shakespeare is difficult (much less so when seen performed, I should emphasize again), but not incomprehensible like Beowulf or even The Canterbury Tales. And when we can genuinely no longer understand Shakespeare that will be a sad day because there is always something lost when translating, especially when translating poetry or very poetic prose, and especially when the translator is not as skilled a writer as the person they are translating (which is almost an inevitability with translating Shakespeare).
- collyw 12y agoI am sure Shakespeare is genuinely incomprehensible to many teenagers around the world.
- dang 12y agoYour comment's fine, but I should probably respond to: > it seems as if dang would like us to share more about our thoughts on comments I wouldn't say that, no. We should share our thoughts about the topic at hand. Commenting about comments is mostly off-topic. (I've been doing it a lot, of course, as a way of providing transparency and feedback to the community. I fear this has the side effect of stimulating off-topic meta-comments in general. Hopefully this will straighten out over time.)
- DanielStraight 12y agoI could have sworn I saw a comment from you where you said that others could and should do as your are doing and telling people why their comments were not appropriate, but now I can't find it, so it must have been someone else. Oh well, no matter. Anyway, while I know I have your attention, I really appreciate how active you've been in working on HN and making yourself available to the community.
- dang 12y agoOh, I see what you mean. Yes, when users see a bad comment (i.e., either not substantive or not civil), it's ok to give feedback about why. Sama described that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605973. Thanks!