This BBC News story reports that the damage, including the loss of its title page, to a copy of the first published collection of most of Shakespeare's plays may explain why it had gone unrecognised for 200 years in the rare books section of a library in a small French town, where it was recently discovered by a librarian ("Shakespeare Folio", 2014).
As Carl Sagan has said, if we could have kept only the work of Newton, or Darwin or Shakespeare, we should choose the Shakespeare. Had Newton and Darwin never lived to do their amazing work, those scientific and mathematical discoveries would still have been made. But only Shakespeare could have given us Shakespeare, just as Homer, however many people he might have been, could have given us Homer.
When I first read Shakespeare, it was like learning another language. My first exposure as an innocent child was to Macbeth. And Shakespeare's language, although already modern English, is very different to the English of today: words have different meanings, he uses words not common today, and his spelling is all over the place - I don't think he ever worried about little details like spelling the same word the same way. He sometimes spells travel as "trauaill" and sometimes as "trauel", the former probably for the good reason of suggesting the original word from which comes the word travail. And sometimes we just can't be absolutely sure what word he meant.
But since Macbeth is full of murder, starting with the murder of a king, and ghosts and witches, and fights and plotting and an evil wife who goes insane after a blood thirsty start, Mabeth's queen after he has killed the king who just rewarded him for success in battle, the play does grip despite the language difficulties: the violence, the sex, the wickedness are, as always, powerful attractions, even for innocent children. When I first read Romeo and Juliet, I didn't realise how full of sex the writing is, and the silly English teacher at my Catholic boys school didn't clarify that, which left the play seeming a bit odd - the powerful sexual attraction, the lust, that drives Romeo and his beloved 13 year old (could that be legal today?) to defy their families and then commit suicide is hard to understand when the sex content isn't clear. However, Macbeth has enough without the love between Macbeth and his bloody minded wife to hold the interest and encourage even 13 year old boys to work at the language.
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| First Folio edition title page for Anthony and Cleopatra |
Have you seen or read any of Shakespeare's plays or poetry?
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It was getting long this morning, so I didn't include that inspired by the BBC News article I decided to watch again a film version of Macbeth - the 2006 one starring Sam Worthington.
ReplyDeleteAs I remembered before, it's OK, but a bit disappointing in some ways, and the intrusive music is annoying. I thought that the insistent music is too loud and gets in the way of letting viewers see and hears what's going on.
I do like the recasting in a modern, night club - drug scene setting. That seems to work well. What annoyed me a bit were the large omissions of Shakespeare's words; a few changes in plot and characters were not so annoying.
I think it's good to redo classic works, but they need to be done well, and this Australian version of Shakespeare's Macbeth is so-so. I guess it was a good experiment to try, but it doesn't quite succeed, although at least some critics disagree with me.
One of the best adaptations I've seen is BBC TV's brilliant series version of Jane Austen's perfect novel Pride and Prejudice, which I think is the best novel ever written in English.
DeleteThe BBC made some changes, but it follows Austen's novel fairly closely, and almost all of the best dialogue is there. I've watched it a few times and enjoy it more each time, just as the book gets better every time I read it and see more details, more depth, more connections and a greater unity in Austen's themes.
I also like Jane Austen's writings, but I dont' know the novel Pride and Prejudice is perfect. So, if I can know the reason through our expected additional readings, I will be happy.
DeleteHad I been thinking more cautiously, rather than "perfect," I would have written something more like "the most nearly perfect," which is a slightly weaker claim, but still not a weak claim.
DeleteWhy do I think this?
There is no short answer, and each time I read it again, I find more reasons to put it at the number one spot.
The plot, although it sounds unexciting, holds our interest and has elements of drama from the first page, indeed from the famous opening lines, which also introduce the characters, whose concise portrayal enable the plot.
Every word in Austen's brilliantly formed sentences serves at least one purpose: moving the story forward, illuminating characters, developing the themes, and so on: Austen has all the words needed, and no more thrown in as useless weight.
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ReplyDeleteWhart I firstly met a Shakespeare's book was The winter's tale which was my father read to me when I was arouond six years olds. It was not a paly form like an original writing. I think I chose the story because it is a story about a princess like children's sotry.
DeleteActually, I don't like a play script because I have some difficulties to understand the story thorugh charaters' dialogues. Event though I read some Shakespeare's writings in English as written in old English, I still don't understand why his writings are precious. Maybe If I were a native English speaker, I could know the reason.