/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14398874]

>Englishmen believe in ghosts no more than the Romans did yet they take pleasure in the tragedy of Hamlet, in which the ghost of a king appears on the stage.... Far be it from me to justify everything in that tragedy; it is a vulgar and barbarous drama, which would not be tolerated by the vilest populace of France, or Italy. Hamlet becomes crazy in the second act, and his mistress becomes crazy in the third; the prince slays the father of his mistress under the pretence of killing a rat, and the heroine throws herself into the river, a grave is dug on the stage, and the grave-diggers talk quodlibets worthy of themselves, while holding skulls in their hands; Hamlet responds to their nasty vulgarities in silliness no less disgusting. In the meanwhile another of the actors conquers Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his father-in-law, carouse on the stage; songs are sung at table; there is quarrelling, fighting, killing - one would imagine this piece to be the work of a drunken savage. But amidst all these vulgar irregularities, which to this day make the English drama so absurd and so barbarous, there are to be found in Hamlet, by a bizarrerie still greater, some sublime passages, worthy of the greatest genius. It seems as though nature had mingled in the brain of Shakespeare the greatest conceivable strength and grandeur with whatsoever witless vulgarity can devise that is lowest and most detestable.

[Anonymous No.14398916]

>>14398874
based

[Anonymous No.14398955]

What a hypocrite lmao

[Anonymous No.14398979]

>>14398874
That’s what makes Shakespeare based.

[Anonymous No.14399037]

>>14398874
The Romans were superstitious and religious and very much believed in spirits. This is just Voltaire projecting his schoolboy materialism on the Rome he so admired. Why go to the trouble? Why revere an ancient culture so much if they don't suit your worldview rather than lie about them? If he was too uneducated to know, that's worse but not surprising.

[Anonymous No.14399042]

>>14398874
>>14398916
>>14398955
>>14398979
>>14399037
*ahem*
Fuck Voltaire

[Anonymous No.14399464]

>>14399037
Materialism was getting a lot of ground in the late antiquity actually, if it wasn't for Christianity that brought religion back in fashion it would decline even further. I am more surprised that he thinks badly of the English tragedy, particularly since it's relatively mild compared with some of the stuff the Greeks or the Romans had written

[Anonymous No.14399676]

>>14398874
Voltaire was responsible for popularising Shakespeare in France and only got butthurt later when people started liking him “too much”