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Romeo and Juliet... romantic???

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  Quote pekau Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Romeo and Juliet... romantic???
    Posted: 17-Oct-2007 at 00:58
I don't know if I am just plain insensitive, but I literally laughed at the ending of the romantic play Romeo and Juliet. I found the ending amusing, seeing how stupid people can be. Just wondering if that's just me...
     
   
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  Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Oct-2007 at 17:07
I don't think I laughed, but yes, I see what you mean. The two lovers are literally described as being 14 or so. No offence to 14 year olds, but I do not really tgink that counts as eternal love... Puppy love is more like it... And that made the whole story a sort of typical teenage overreaction story... like kids killing themselves because Kurt Cobain died... sad, but not romantic. Just sad.

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  Quote xi_tujue Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Oct-2007 at 17:22
romantic: no

dramatic: yes

do I care: no
I rather be a nomadic barbarian than a sedentary savage
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  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Oct-2007 at 13:31
Heh, I found it romantic enough at least, the tragedy of the final scene certainly had an impact.
 
And I don't see why the love between to 14 year olds should be any less valid than love between two 40 year olds; we all love for different reasons and on different premises while the essential feeling remains the same.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Oct-2007 at 13:44
Shakespeare was a soap opera's writer.
 
Remember those pieces were though to be represented in from of the public in a theater. The mass of undeducated people, most of whom didn't know how to write, bough a ticket to have a moment of fun. For those times it was just like seeing TV or going to the movies.
 
The violence in Shakespeare was to shock the audience, and also to entertain the so many housewives that saw the show.
 
Today Shakespeare would made scripts for Televisa Wink
 
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  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Oct-2007 at 13:58
Be that as it may; the real attraction of Shakespeare is not his stories but his language, which one might say is unparalled in English literature. Even a simple story such as Romeo and Juliet gains artistic splendour when told with such beauty that every line is aesthetically pleasing to listen to.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Oct-2007 at 15:35
Shakespeare was a genious of the language. His selection of the ideas for its plays were superb as well.
 
I like many of his works for several reasons: the Merchant of Venice, because it shows discrimination, Macbeth because it show the archaetype of the traitor general and The Tempest, because it is an alegory of the Americas. In everything he wrote he hit the target right in the middle.
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  Quote pekau Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Nov-2007 at 06:22
Originally posted by Reginmund

Be that as it may; the real attraction of Shakespeare is not his stories but his language, which one might say is unparalled in English literature. Even a simple story such as Romeo and Juliet gains artistic splendour when told with such beauty that every line is aesthetically pleasing to listen to.
 
Oh, the play itself was beautifully made... there's no doubt about that. I just find myself amused that how some people find the ending of the Romeo/Juliet romantic tragedy...
 
 
     
   
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  Quote Brian J Checco Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Nov-2007 at 13:38
Originally posted by pinguin

Shakespeare was a soap opera's writer.
 
Remember those pieces were though to be represented in from of the public in a theater. The mass of undeducated people, most of whom didn't know how to write, bough a ticket to have a moment of fun. For those times it was just like seeing TV or going to the movies.
 
The violence in Shakespeare was to shock the audience, and also to entertain the so many housewives that saw the show.
 
Today Shakespeare would made scripts for Televisa Wink
 


You mean, the man generally attested by scholars as being the greatest writer of all time, right? Like, William Shakespeare, English Classicist playwright, active between the 1590's-1610's... the man whom the great Argentinean Borges credited as writing the most perfect and complete  total volumes in all of history, the fellow who redefined the concepts of realistic poetry (spurning Petrarch), created the first true psychological plays, etc... only a soap-writer? You might want to retake some of those English Literature classes, amigo, or maybe something just got lost in translation. Analytical readings of Shakespeare's Tragedies, particularly Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear (Romeo & Juliet to some extent as well), provide some of the most insightful exposition on the inner psyche, motivation, and self-definition issues of individuals, espouse the chief, cutting edge Renaissance Thought of the edge (Renaissance Skepticism pervades Hamlet thoroughly)...
Some soap-writer. If that's the kind of well-thought out and constructed literary criticism you espouse about one of the most-accomplished writers of all time, I'm sure your the type of person who prefers Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling... 


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  Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Nov-2007 at 20:44
Penguin is right. Shakespeare wrote amusement for the masses. Why do you think such scenes as the drunk gatekeeper in Macbeth and the woman in a scholars place in the Merchant of Venice are there? Mozart's operas were soaps too, and Chauser was really not only for the rich either. Much of what is considered 'high class' today used to be entertainment for the masses before television was invented. The fact that these artists were very good at what they did says more about the quality of our present day entertainment than of the original purpose of classic works.
And what is wrong with Rowling anyways. Soem of the best books I have read in the past few years. Just because many others like them as well does not make them less 'worthy'.
 
Originally posted by Reginmund

And I don't see why the love between to 14 year olds should be any less valid than love between two 40 year olds; we all love for different reasons and on different premises while the essential feeling remains the same.
 
Oh, please. At the beginning of the play, Romeo is madly in love with another, and cannot believe he can live without her. Ten minutes later, Juliet is the love of his life. He is your typical fickle tennager unable to control his hormons. And Juliet is locked in her home and only allowed out to go to church. She is naive enough to fall for the very first guy that comes along and talks smoothly of love.
 
Had they lived, they would probably have been trapped in a loveless marriage before they were 20.
 

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  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Nov-2007 at 10:46
While certainly 16th century English theater was enjoying a large audience (of rich and poor) a Shakespeare play has things to offer for people of various intellect capacity and possibility of understanding, thus Shakespeare is not a soap-opera writer (moreover that soap-operas are to show the day-by-day life in its very trivial aspects, whereas Shakespeare or Mozart certainly do not do that)  The greatest artists of this world succeeded to show something also to the masses. It is a fallacy to consider a masterpiece as something completely unintelligible by an uneducated man.
 
Soem of the best books I have read in the past few years.
I hope you do not take it personally but it's seems it's something wrong with your reading choices.
 
Had they lived, they would probably have been trapped in a loveless marriage before they were 20.
The world is full of prophets LOL
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  Quote Lotus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Nov-2007 at 13:30

Shakespeare was definitely writing for the masses, the plots are generally not too complicated ( and there is normally a summary at the end for anyone who did loose the plot ), the comedys seem to revolve around mistaken identity, but they are all great fun.

 

I particularly like the flowing rhythmical nature of the language, but I was caught out by this on one occasion, when playing Oberon in Mid Summer Nights Dream at our local theatre.

The chap playing Puck used to down a couple of cans of red bull before the performance making him completely erratic and unpredictable, often I only managed to find him seconds before we were due on stage. One night he emerged on stage from a completely

different direction, whereupon I forgot my lines and had a go at ad-libbing, which is fine for a contemporary play, but it sounded dreadful in Shakespeare, and I got a groan and much tut-tut ting from the audience ( rightly so).

 

Actually I rather like the JK Rowling books Aelfgifu ( read them all twice in fact ). Tongue

 


Edited by Lotus - 05-Nov-2007 at 13:33
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  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Nov-2007 at 14:19
Shakespeare was definitely writing for the masses, the plots are generally not too complicated ( and there is normally a summary at the end for anyone who did loose the plot ), the comedys seem to revolve around mistaken identity, but they are all great fun.
I think you lost somewhere the tragic dimension of many of the Shakespearean plays. Probably that's a very good hint of how his work is perceived differently by different categories of audience (readers).
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Nov-2007 at 15:08
Originally posted by Chilbudios

While certainly 16th century English theater was enjoying a large audience (of rich and poor) a Shakespeare play has things to offer for people of various intellect capacity and possibility of understanding, thus Shakespeare is not a soap-opera writer (moreover that soap-operas are to show the day-by-day life in its very trivial aspects, whereas Shakespeare or Mozart certainly do not do that)  The greatest artists of this world succeeded to show something also to the masses. It is a fallacy to consider a masterpiece as something completely unintelligible by an uneducated man.
... 
 
The fact is, most of the masterpieces of Greek theatre were also written for the masses. The Iliad and Odissey were song in the public market for some coins. The Quixote was also a book wrote for the entertainment of the general public, and it has been a best seller since first published...
And even today, some of the best movies of all times were also made for the masses!
 
The idea of art for intelectuals is something relatively recent. Shakespeare wrote for the general public, and everebody understood him. That he wrote amazingly well it doesn't change the fact he has to live of the theatre, like any soap opera writer today.
 
And, although most soap operas of today are crap, not all of them are. I am pretty certain that some will survive the test of time. Only the best production of a given time are preserved to posterity. The rest is forgotten.
 
 


Edited by pinguin - 17-Nov-2007 at 15:13
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  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Nov-2007 at 16:05
Widespread literacy is recent. In a case of a literacy rate less than 10% (just an example, could be the case of 5% or 20%, anyway a significantly inferior procent of the >95% which characterizes most of the European societies today but also US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc.) of the population could read it's practically impossible to claim authors wrote for the masses. Oral tradition or theatres are a bit different, because there's some vulgarization (I do not assign any depreciative meaning to this word in this context).
I don't know what justifies this view, that everything valuable on this Earth must be exteremely cheap and trivial.
 
Shakespeare's works are often misunderstood today (this thread offers examples, too), why do you believe the general audience from his era had a better grasp at them (leaving aside their better familiarity with Shakespeare's language)?
 
As for soap operas and their fame over years, the audience today barely knows the name of some personalities like Dante or Shakespeare, the most voluminous part of the modern vulgar culture is composed of Simpsons, De Niro, Coelho and the like. How many know (or had read) Roman de la Rose (a rather popular - having in mind what I've written in the first paragraph, too - writing at its time), except some passionate medievists and perhaps some other few?


Edited by Chilbudios - 17-Nov-2007 at 16:07
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  Quote Dolphin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Nov-2007 at 16:04
The majority of mankind is tasteless..!
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  Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Nov-2007 at 16:09
Originally posted by Chilbudios

I don't know what justifies this view, that everything valuable on this Earth must be exteremely cheap and trivial.
 
 
One could equally wonder what justifies the view that all masterpieces could not possibly have been enjoyed by more than just a cultural elite.
 
Or why something that is not on the eternal list of masterpieces could not possibly be enjoyable.
 


Edited by Aelfgifu - 19-Nov-2007 at 16:15

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  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Nov-2007 at 16:24
One could equally wonder what justifies the view that all masterpieces could not possibly have been enjoyed by more than just a cultural elite.
 
Or why something that is not on the eternal list of masterpieces could not possibly be enjoyable.
That's a straw man, I'm not claiming such things! Maybe the basic logic (how to construct a negative for a given claim) is somehow tricky, but when I said explicitely how I understand masterpieces (e.g. "It is a fallacy to consider a masterpiece as something completely unintelligible by an uneducated man."), this rhetoric simply shows ill-will.
 
 


Edited by Chilbudios - 19-Nov-2007 at 16:25
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  Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Nov-2007 at 19:16
Originally posted by Chilbudios

One could equally wonder what justifies the view that all masterpieces could not possibly have been enjoyed by more than just a cultural elite.
 
Or why something that is not on the eternal list of masterpieces could not possibly be enjoyable.
That's a straw man, I'm not claiming such things! Maybe the basic logic (how to construct a negative for a given claim) is somehow tricky, but when I said explicitely how I understand masterpieces (e.g. "It is a fallacy to consider a masterpiece as something completely unintelligible by an uneducated man."), this rhetoric simply shows ill-will.
 
 
 
Hardly.
 
Dantes Inferno might be great entertainment and Eco's Baudolino had me laughing out loud, but the thirthy-three cantos with allegories of Gods greatness in Heaven are not my idea of a good time, brilliant as they might be put into words, and Focaults Pendulum would have been better if it would have had half the lengh, in my opinion. And neither of the latter came even close to drawing me in the way Rowling did. I might add that I stated that Rowling was amongst the best I have read the past years, in which I neither claim that it was the best, not the only good thing. Your inability to see the offensiveness of your posts only shows the thruth of my opinion on them. Sad.

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  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Nov-2007 at 20:14
How many know the history of the 4th crusade, its sources, the medieval literature (Boccaccio, for instance) etc., etc. to understand Eco's Baudolino at its fullest (maybe you do, maybe you don't, I'm talking about "masses" not especially you - though summarizing Dante's Inferno just as allegories to God's greatness sounds worringly)? How many readers truly understand Eco? (who is not only a writer, but also a philosopher in his own way). Telling only of enjoyment and laughter is not actually making a point in this thread or constituting a reply to something I've said.
 
As for Rowlings,I specified quite clearly that in my view Rowlings couldn't climb in any top (not in top 1 position, to make it clear, so "neither the best, not the only" is just another straw man) of universal literature. I do not care if you find my posts offensive, I am trying not to discuss your person, but your views and arguments (when I come across them), therefore your over-sensitivity is not really my problem, nor the flawed logic which follows it. I suggest you get over it or send me a private message (if you really have something important to say to me) and let's not continue this fruitless animosity in this thread.


Edited by Chilbudios - 19-Nov-2007 at 20:18
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