Why do we still study Shakespear's work?

[eschatological]

I managed to read the first 3 pages of this topic before flying into a rage.

Shakespeare continues to be the single most important English author to ever live. He redefined structure, both poetic and prose. His works are intricate masterpieces, that, believe me, no monkeys banging on typewriters could ever create on their own.

Now, I'm a lawyer, so I like words, but I went to a Catholic university, and was "forced" to study philosophy and theology as part of our core curriculum. Often, my science major friends (of which I was one at the time, I was a B.S. in computer science) would complain that the ideas had no relevance to them or what they were studying. I find this position wholly without merit.

Even if you take the most technical of technical sciences, the study of literature/philosophy/theology has a place. Most of these are conceptual in basis - the ability to comprehend the incomprehensible, the ability to see the whole made up of many working parts, etc. To delve into the depths of the importance of the arts to the scientifically minded, it would take so long people would accuse me of sophistry and usual lawyer long-windedness. So I'll leave you with some quotes, not from a literary figure, but from one of the greatest scientific minds of all tme:

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed."
--"The World As I See It," originally published in FORUM AND CENTURY, 1931.


"I'm enough of an artist to draw freely on my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world."
--Quoted in interview by G.S. Viereck, October 26, 1929. Reprinted in "Glimpses of the Great" (1930).


"Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion...The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind"
--SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGION: A SYMPOSIUM, 1941.

"It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks."
--1921, on Thomas Edison's opinion that a college education is useless; quoted in Frank, Einstein: His Life and Times, p. 185.

"After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well."
--Remark made in 1923; recalled by Archibald Henderson, Durham Morning Herald, August 21, 1955; Einstein Archive 33-257.

"Music does not influence research work, but both are nourished by the same sort of longing, and they complement each other in the release they offer."
--letter to Paul Plaut, October 23, 1928; Einstein Archive 28-065; quoted in Dukas and Hoffmann, Albert Einstein, the Human Side, p. 78.

"A society's competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic table, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity."
--Einstein to Vivienne Anderson, May 12, 1953, AEA 60-716.

[eriseis]

<snip>

Yawn, quotes. I do find the wall of text intriguing coming from someone with a name like yours.

[Deleted]

no idea, half of his books don't even use proper words, its not even in English!

[Icpie]

Because he invented the first yo mama jokes.

[eriseis]

no idea, half of his books don't even use proper words, its not even in English!

It's hilarious that his neologisms are apparently brilliant when people criticize such actions when others do it. Hell, people will give you crap for using "they" as a singular third person pronoun.

[Rylon]

Because he invented the first yo mama jokes.

Fact. He was also the king of sexual innuendo.

[sxefluff]

Most of Shakespeare's work is timeless, and it's not because it's written in a way that makes it seem like it's own language, but because the actual stories are really, really, really good and most anyone can sympathize with it. Take Hamlet for example, "To Be or not to be" is possibly the greatest line ever written, it talks about a man's choice in suicide and the fear of what happens in the afterlife. be real with yourself, suicide and the afterlife are things people really wonder about. There's a lot of morality, tragedy, etc involved... if anything, in your english class you should learn how to write a good story, and at the very least Shakespeare is worth it for that sake alone.

[mjolnir1122]

In one of my classes we are reading Othello, and for our final we have to write a 2000w research paper on it. I don't understand why we are reading and studying such an old piece of work that is basically written in a foreign language. I get that they are very well written stories for his time,but shouldn't we be reading a more relevant re-write of the story or just a more relevant story in general. I.E. something that my generation can understand without looking of the definition of every other word because we don't normally use it in that context.

Edit: I'm putting this here because people are obviously just reading the title and responding to it (as I'm writing this I'm realizing how counter productive it is because the people it's for aren't going to read it). I am not saying that I want to read Twilight, Harry Potter, or Transformers book, There are hundreds of current and well written books from our generation that can teach the same lessons as Shakespeare.

I am also in no way complaining about reading Shakespeare, all I wanted was to get other peoples take on why we still study 400+ year old literature.

We study 400+ year old literature because that literature is essentially the foundation for literature today. How many types of Romeo and Juliet novels are out there today? How many stories are out there based on Macbeth? The show Sons of Anarchy is even a modern day Hamlet.

The problem is that younger generations (coming from a 21 year old) are more interested in pop culture and such. Facebook is about the only book they'll read willingly. Alot of the youth today also prefers seeing something visually rather than having to envision it themselves. The days of "imagination" that I experienced in my youth are long gone, and sadly, it was my generation in particular who started this issue.

IMO, literature such as Beowulf, as well as other early works of english literature, should have a more prominent role in school curriculums. Beowulf, in it's original state (old english) is extremely hard to decipher and read. But back in my senior year of high school, my teacher forbade us to use a translated copy, and instead had us adapt and learn to reading it in old english. This was no easy task, but we did it. And guess what? We essentially learned another language, as well as the rudimentary basics of our English language today.

It might just be the viking blood flowing through my veins, but reading a story about *spoiler alert* a great warrior battling a monstrous creature with nothing but his bare hands, going to the lair of the creature, impregnating the creature's mother who takes the form of a beautiful woman even though he was supposed to actually slay her, then 20 years later or thereabouts having an epic battle with a dragon, who happens to be his son, and end up dying in the process, sounds like a badass piece of literature to me.

In fact, many stories from the late-dark and middle ages are similar in their badassery. Ever heard of King Arthur? How about Robin Hood? All of these stories stem from legends from that time period.

Now why kids nowadays wouldn't want to fill their eyes and their brain with these epic stories, all the while subliminally learning more and more about the roots of the english language, as well as the roots of modern day literature, is beyond me. Me and my classmates back in high school, no matter what race, gender, religion, or "scene" you belonged to, felt the same way.

So why is it different now? Because the mindset today is laziness. Whats the quickest way to do something, with the most minimal amount of effort, and has the greatest possible outcome? Kids these days do not develop character. They do not develop personalities. A great deal of them are just carbon copies of each other, because they watch tv and think that that's how you live life.

So to answer your question, we read 400+ year old literature to learn what literature is. Regardless of when it was written, it is just as relevant today as it was then. Why is that? Because majority of what you read and see today comes from that time. Without revisiting the past, we are bound to forget it, and in 300 years from now, people will think that the best love story ever written was Twilight and live without ever knowing the name William Shakespeare.

[eriseis]

<snip>

If you're gonna bash a generation, you should avoid non-words like "alot" and grammatical mistakes, imo. :S

[mjolnir1122]

If you're gonna bash a generation, you should avoid non-words like "alot" and grammatical mistakes, imo. :S

Don't be a dick lol :P. And I'm not really bashing a generation, because number 1, it was my generation who was responsible for it in the first place, and 2, I'm pointing out behaviors and actions more than I criticize them. I have cousins and such who are part of that generation. They're not bad people, they just have some bad habits that are a product of a lazy society that wants everything handed to them.

And yes, I do have grammatical mistakes since I didn't have time to sit through and proofread before I posted. I'm cooking dinner right now :P lol

[Sengel]

From an English Teacher's point of view, Shakespeare wrote about the human experience in a way that really hasn't been told since. His works have distilled archetypes into modern ones. In addition, he wrote plays for the audience. He wrote in a way that gave vivid experiences to his (largely layman) audiences. These works survive the test of time because the stories are timeless. The themes are extremely clear, emotions vivid, and characters memorable. I'm a big fan of Shakespeare, but I do agree that his tales must be placed into some more modern contexts through discussion (akin to linking the conflicts in Romeo and Juliet related to young love to the lives that the students are living). Why we don't just translate them is because of the simple fact that something is ALWAYS lost in the translation. Shakespeare is a man who crafted his words very carefully, even using the new words that were being jammed into English at the time (through the thriving port of London). The reasons we study "the Bard" are innumerable, he is a defining moment of the creation of "modern English" as a language. He proved that our language was as worthy of being used in art as French (the art/literature language of the time). No single person has had as large of an impact on our language as Shakespeare.

Off topic: Essays in English class are less about "writing a book about the book" and more about synthesizing the purpose of the novel in the first place. Fiction is about being human, at least really Literary [note the capital] fiction, essays are about making a logical argument about the fraction of humanity that the novel approaches.

[eriseis]

Don't be a dick lol :P. And I'm not really bashing a generation, because number 1, it was my generation who was responsible for it in the first place, and 2, I'm pointing out behaviors and actions more than I criticize them. I have cousins and such who are part of that generation. They're not bad people, they just have some bad habits that are a product of a lazy society that wants everything handed to them.

And yes, I do have grammatical mistakes since I didn't have time to sit through and proofread before I posted. I'm cooking dinner right now :P lol

Lol, sorry, I guess I was a bit of a dick. <3

[Fojos]

They're not bad people, they just have some bad habits that are a product of a lazy society that wants everything handed to them.

You mean the same way youth has been for every generation? It's not new, and it will be the same every single generation. Teens are generally lazy.

[eschatological]

Yawn, quotes. I do find the wall of text intriguing coming from someone with a name like yours.

What exactly do you think my name means?

Oh wait, you're banned. I wrote exactly two and a half paragraphs with an introductory sentence, the rest were quotes from Albert Einstein on the importance of the arts.

[Lora]

Plus, bust out a sonnet on a date and panties will drop.

Sonnet 18 does the trick ;P

[Callace]

What exactly do you think my name means?

Oh wait, you're banned. I wrote exactly two and a half paragraphs with an introductory sentence, the rest were quotes from Albert Einstein on the importance of the arts.

Don't worry. Some people like myself actually put forth the presence of mind to read them. I thought it was a nice selection.

[Caiada]

Don't worry. Some people like myself actually put forth the presence of mind to read them. I thought it was a nice selection.

Indeed. The average forum-goer here makes me sad, but the few shining examples of intelligence and effort reaffirm why I actually bother with this board. It's always interesting to see somebody who loves words as much as I do, even if I could never, ever, ever be a lawyer myself.

[Soahar]

We study 400+ year old literature because that literature is essentially the foundation for literature today. How many types of Romeo and Juliet novels are out there today? How many stories are out there based on Macbeth? The show Sons of Anarchy is even a modern day Hamlet.

The problem is that younger generations (coming from a 21 year old) are more interested in pop culture and such. Facebook is about the only book they'll read willingly. Alot of the youth today also prefers seeing something visually rather than having to envision it themselves. The days of "imagination" that I experienced in my youth are long gone, and sadly, it was my generation in particular who started this issue.

IMO, literature such as Beowulf, as well as other early works of english literature, should have a more prominent role in school curriculums. Beowulf, in it's original state (old english) is extremely hard to decipher and read. But back in my senior year of high school, my teacher forbade us to use a translated copy, and instead had us adapt and learn to reading it in old english. This was no easy task, but we did it. And guess what? We essentially learned another language, as well as the rudimentary basics of our English language today.

It might just be the viking blood flowing through my veins, but reading a story about *spoiler alert* a great warrior battling a monstrous creature with nothing but his bare hands, going to the lair of the creature, impregnating the creature's mother who takes the form of a beautiful woman even though he was supposed to actually slay her, then 20 years later or thereabouts having an epic battle with a dragon, who happens to be his son, and end up dying in the process, sounds like a badass piece of literature to me.

Ummm...What version of Beowulf did you read? You just described the plot of the 2007 film as opposed to the original epic poem. Where Grendal's Mother is slain by the hero in an epic battle and whose appearance has been debated by literary scholars for years. And 50 years later he does slay a dragon, which is in no way related to him, and he has help slaying it.

[Deleted]

Because it's an in important piece of literature that holds a significant historical heritage and you should be aware of it's existence.

[Deleted]

Pay attention and dissect the text and you might actually learn something. Most of what your generation can understand and the authors of today are shit. Just wait until college when you have to write 30+ pages on a 7 page short story and then bitch.

And you do that in your college? In other countries that's standard for high schools.