Thursday, October 4, 2007
SENIORS: Macbeth & Shakespeare
Our next work of literature is Macbeth, by the immortal bard, Shakespeare. He has a very poor reputation, in that it is commonly thought to be very difficult for most people to work through and understand Shakespeare. But if that was the case, why do they keep doing Shakespeare in plays, in schools, and in movies? My question is what have your experiences with Shakespeare been like? Do you like his work, or try to avoid it whenever possible? Hard to understand or do you know what to do?
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6 comments:
I'm not a huge fan of Shakespeare, but there are a few things that I do like about him. My main annoyance with Shakespeare is the language that he uses. Some of it is very dated or use analogies that are very dated-thus making it harder to communicate with modern people. I've never really bought myself to actually read an entire shakespeare play even when I had to for drama. I start reading it but after a while I just lose general interest and get lost in the vocabulary. I do like how he was inventive with words under his iambic pentameter. When he cut part of words off or just shorten them to fit. I like that mostly because when we think of shakesphere, we think of him in an almost godly manner and a person that is excellent in every way. The fact that he has to edit words to make them fit make him seem more human and that's what I like about it.
I tend to enjoy his stories when I'm not reading them. Watching a play, listening to a reading or even watching a TV adaptation- I find myself to be more interested in the story.
In my personal opinion, I kind of agree with amourfonce, this is because Shakespeare writing is kinda hard to understand nowadays (since we used the modern version of the english language). During my freshman, sophomore, and junior in hight school, we have read the following Shakespeare literature: Romeo and Juliet, Caesar, and a mid summer night dream; during those readings, I notice that Shakespeare usually put his writings in an iambic pentameter and also put some of his writing into a type of poetry (rhyming, syallables, etc.) To me Shakespeare work of literature is good or ok in a meaning of "learning" the past language of english. When reading from his plays, it is hard to understand what he is trying to get too (noted above), however when seeing the play in action at either a theater or a outside stage, it is alot easier to comprehend.
I read Romeo and Juliet in summer school, and I just started reading Julius Caesar and Macbeth. For me, it is really hard to understand what is going on the stories because of the language that Shakespears uses. So I don't like reading his works, but they are interesting.
I think shakespeare is pretty amazing. I like the way he tells his story, using all those hard words is really a smart way to make your readers think. But i dont like it at the same time because the words that he uses kills my brain. I haven't study shakespeare since i was in freshmen. This is my first time reading one of his works so im kind of excited and worried at the same time. I think i'll understand Macbeth better if im watching it in a movie or in a play.
I just simply don't like reading his work. It's too complecated. The language Shakepeare uses are like riddles and it is hard to understand(especially for shelter people like me). It's even hard for native people to understand completely and I really hate reading those looong sentence. It takes time and confusing. I mean he sometime uses nearly a whole page to describe something that we can describe in a sentence.
Also his literature is hard when it is written in our own languages (and sometimes it's even more complicated than reading them in English). I did read his other literature of his when I was in elementary school in Japan (King Lear and All's Well That Ends Well)but omg no i did't get what was going on and it was way too complecated for me. However some of his other literatures are interesting and when I have a chance I'd like to re-read some of his literature.
I have a question, Mr. Jameson regarding the creative writing homework in class, (creating a dystopia,) does it have to be a story? If so how many pages or are we just to write a problem and state what our fantasy utopia is and also state our "negative" solution about it. I hope you get this message quickly. (Also, when is it due?)
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