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/lit/ - Literature

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929023 No.929023 [Reply] [Original]

Why is there no new Shakespeare?

Shakespare had been considered as the greatest english-speaking writer, but it was 400 years ago. Now we're in 2010 and there has never been so many intellectual, Nobel Prizes and universities/professors. Yet, no contemporary writer has ever replaced Shakespeare as the greatest English writer.

Why did people from 400 years ago have that our intellectuals don't?

>> No.929028

>>929023
I mean, 'what did, etc.'

>> No.929033

What they didn't have was limitless competition. It's more difficult now to be as famous as Shakespeare, or even the Beatles, because artists have to compete on such a wider scale, given the limitless and instant exchange of information granted by modern technology.

>> No.929036

Humanity is in a constant state of decline.
Our forebearers will always be superior.

>> No.929037

Because it takes a couple centuries for someone to be recognized as a genius of Shakespeare's caliber.

No writer of gigantic influence or magnitude has been immediately hailed as such, at least not within his century. The only exception I can think of James Joyce.

>> No.929043

Shakespeare is over rated. Everything he wrote is nothing but long drawn out crap.

>> No.929046

Creativity, artistic talent, understanding of the human condition.

>>929037
And what this guy said.

>> No.929047

>>929023
Look at the canon of great literature, most of writers in it are upper class, white males. A lot of them are also dead.

We were discussing this in my A-level class and you seem to regard them highly when they've died and really look at their work to see if it's any good.

Having said that, there's no modern day Shakespeare. Sad really. Oh well. Oscar Wilde was pretty fucking great.

>> No.929070

>>929023
obviously you have never read Twilight

>> No.929080

>>929047
Nabokov?

>> No.929084

1. Because all reasonable basic plot devices have already been used. There is no room into which writers can expand like Shakespeare did.
2. If a writer decides to make up half the fucking words he's using like Shakespeare, they wouldn't get a lot of attention.

There have been writers even better than The Bard, they just didn't create so much original stuff, and are thus less "important" historically.

>> No.929092

>>929080
Read his Lolita this morning, but I don't think he matches with Shakespeare. The language and ideas of Shakespeare's works, given the time, too, are just so rich and incredible.

Then again, Lolita is pretty fucking awesome.

>> No.929093

Shakespeare wrote in verse you fucking idiot.

>> No.929102

Ayn Rand

/thread

>> No.929106

Closest thing to a "modern Shakespeare" is probably Proust, except that while Shakespeare's work is known to everyone and appreciated by academics, Proust's work is known to academics and appreciated by people who study Remembrance of Times Past for three years.

>> No.929109

Thomas Prychton

>> No.929118

>>929084
>Because all reasonable basic plot devices have already been used. There is no room into which writers can expand like Shakespeare did

What about House of Leaves?

>> No.929120

It's not really completely relevant to this thread but Faust by Goethe is the better than every Shakespeare play I have ever read.

>> No.929123

Shakespeare isn't the best, he's just good and very approachable. 100 years of "hey this guy is pretty good" becomes 100 years of "wow what a gem" becomes 200 years of "this man is the greatest genius ever to have existed" via mass hysteria. Most people acquire their opinions from others - they don't have the time or inclination to develop a discerning taste of their own. When cultured aristocrats praised Shakespeare, the middle classes bobbed their heads in agreement, since agreeing with it seemed to be an aristocratic thing to do, and Shakespeare was easy enough to digest. However, since these busy philistines who use their taste as a status symbol control society nowadays, they talk about Shakespeare as if he were some sort of literary messiah when he's just the only dramatist they know well enough to wheel out and praise. They're showing off what little erudition they have, and exaggerating its significance so they don't have to try anything harder, like Milton or Spencer.

>> No.929125

>>929106
Proust was a homosexual faggot

>> No.929126

>>929093

HE WROTE IN BOTH YOU FUCKING MORON

GO SUCK A DICK BEFORE PRETENDING YOU KNOW MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE. AND CHOKE ON IT.

>> No.929129

>>929125
you wouldn't happen to be the same moron unsuccessfully trolling all across /lit/ would you? when are you gonna give up?

>> No.929131

>Why did people from 400 years ago have that our intellectuals don't?

Shakespeare

>> No.929137

>What did people from 400 years ago have that our intellectuals don't?

The chance to influence the last 400 years without much competition, thereby becoming ingrained into our language and society so much easier.

>> No.929143

>>929129
Who?

>> No.929144

>>929023
>Why did people from 400 years ago have that our intellectuals don't?

Nothing.

The individual Shakespeare was a combination of contingent circumstances that produced a genius of rare caliber.

Hitting the high mark of that bell-curve is a rare occurrence. In the large picture it could have happened then as easily as now.

And if had happened now, there would be someone asking the same question in 400 years. "What do we lack that they had?"

There are no universal 'conditions' for the production of high art. Human culture and society is far too complex for that. Men of equal talent to Shakespeare were probably born in the same century, but simply had the wrong temperament to result in producing the same material. In another time, they might have flourished.

>> No.929145

>>929129
It's not trolling since Proust actually was a homosexual faggot.

>> No.929150

>>929137

More importantly, before shakespeare, the trend was to honour the classics (See The Aeneid) Shakespeare did whatever the fuck he wanted.

>> No.929154

>>929144
This. The OP's question is like if someone rolled three six-sided dice for five minutes, got an 18 and the two minute mark but nothing higher than a 15 since and stops to wonder what about the two minute mark was special.

>> No.929157

>>929145
As opposed to a non-homosexual faggot?

>> No.929175

Mash together what all of these people said:
>>929033
>>929037
>>929084
>>929123
And you pretty much have your answer.
Also keep in mind that in Shakespeare's time the English language was making some pretty deep and large transitions into standardization. The prevalence of both formal language as well as vernacular/colloquialisms spread throughout the different styles of his works that Shakespeare had to use simply out of necessity to appeal to the wide range of audience that he did, created a foundation for the language. His writing became a remarkable influence upon the English world as a whole, which of course permeated works of literature as well.
He's touted as a genius not because of just what he did or how he did it, but also when it was and what it's effects were.

>> No.929186

>>929154
Fa/tg/uys? In my /lit/? It's more likely than I thought.

>> No.929184

>>929175
its*

>> No.929215

Albert Camus

>> No.929355

Shakespeare was the twilight of 400 years ago.

Also intellectuals don't write today. They debate the finer points of the merits of some predetermined systems of bullshit. Or they write jingles.

>> No.929363

>>929355

>Shakespeare was the twilight of 400 years ago.

Fuck you. In so many fucking fucking ways. Shakespeare wrote plays for one thing you fucking dick.

Fucking fucking fuck

>> No.929386

The English language was still very young and in constant flux back then too, part of his genius is in his wordplay, which was something new and experimental at the time but rather standard issue today. If you do a really in depth reading and know a lot about the language and the roots and histories behind words you'll see that he really experimented and played with language in a way that hadn't been done before

>> No.929393

>Shakespeare was Stephen King of 400 years ago.
Fixed, and improved too. :3

>> No.929405

>>929355
>shakespeare = twilight

I agree in some ways, but not in others. Yeah, he was extremely popular and many people loved his works. But at the same time... he didn't write trash.

>> No.929414

>>929046
How's it going /mu/?

>> No.929426

>>929405
>Yeah, he was extremely popular and many people loved his works.

...what?

No, he wasn't.

He had moderate fame in his lifetime: yes, he was recognized as a skilled playwright (and player), but he was by no means "extremely popular." As others have said, about 95% of Shakespearean critical acclaim came AFTER he died.

To better explain this, Charles Dickens and Stephanie Meyer were WAAAAAYYYY more popular in their time than Shakespeare was in his.

>> No.929595

>>929426

Well, as far as playwrights go he was quite popular.

>> No.929618

>>929426
the queen was liek "LOL OMG SHAKESPEAR HAEF MAH BABBY OMG <3"

>> No.929642

William Fucking Faulkner.

>> No.929652

>>929405
actually, he wasn't one of the most popular playwrites at the time.

>> No.929659

>>929037

lol@the idea of anyone giving a shit about Joyce in 200 years

>> No.929667

Shakespeare was bangin' because he helped invent modern english.

No, really.

>> No.929701

Shakespeare was a large group of individuals publishing works under the same name. So who knows.

>> No.929732

The gift of rhyme

>> No.929772

>>Why is there no new Shakespeare?

Because the majority of intellectuals / university professors / etc wouldn't know someone of Shakespeare's abilities even if he bit them on the ass.

Look at James Joyce's life for the 40 years before he published Ulysses for dispiriting proof of how little the literary establishment in any generation doesn't recognize a genius when they see one.

Perhaps that's why Joyce titled his novel after the one character in Shakespeare who has the longest single speech.

>>Why did people from 400 years ago have that our intellectuals don't?

The only other thing worth mentioning is that Shakespeare wrote at a particularly interesting linguistic / historical / cultural moment. The English Church broke with Rome. Suddenly Latin is no longer an ecclesiastical language. Suddenly a Latin-grammar-based education has no particular religious connotation. Yet all these educated people know Latin. Consequently, Shakespeare adds a tremendous number of words to the English vocabulary just by using the recently-deconsecrated Latin language to coin words like "exposure," "addiction," "incarnadine", and "honorificabilitudinitatibus".

All of which are words Shakespeare coined. Of course people can coin words all the time, just by verbing nouns, or suffixizing existing words, and so on, but Shakespeare came along at a particular moment when written English hadn't cannibalized Latin yet, so he was able to do so.

Kind of like the way Chaucer comes along at the moment when Norman French and Anglo-Saxon have finally combined to create Middle English, so he has access to two sets of vocabularies, and delights in drawing from both.

>> No.929791

Truly, anyone who can write lines like "I had as lief be thrust into a quickset hedge / As to cry plosh! to the callow throstle" is a remarkable writer whom nobody can approach in quality.

>> No.929795

>>929023

This shirt makes no sense. Shakespeare didn't write in prose.

>> No.929829

Art works like this, broadly: there are always two major groups of artists making art (whatever it is) in a time period.

Group 1 basically says "listen to us! we have things to say! we dont care about money or popularity, we have been thinking very hard about life and there's shit we would love to share, okay? so listen, please!" They are ignored until roughly 40-60 years later when their genius is finally recognized. They were 40-60 years ahead of their time, but it's their fate to be unrecognized.

Group 2 is largely made up of the popular artists of the time, mostly "in it for the money" or lately "in it just to get famous". They're rich and admired and imitated for a decade or two, but are then forgotten when the next wave of pop artists comes along.

>> No.929846

>929829

Precisely. Stendhal at least knew he would have readers 50 years later.

Whereas Stephenie Meyer probably doesn't know that in 50 years, she'll be as highly regarded as (say) Marie Corelli or Felicia Hemans, the massive bestsellers of their own generations.

>> No.929856
File: 34 KB, 408x594, 1275868244512.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
929856

>>929795

>> No.929867

>>929795
sigh

in Hamlet when said protagonist would speak 'before' Ophelia, he would speak in prose because she was a 'ho'

thus "prose before hos"

>> No.929882

>>929036
We're all thin-bloods and our ancestors weep when they look at us.

>> No.930239

>>929084

>If a writer decides to make up half the fucking words he's using like Shakespeare, they wouldn't get a lot of attention

A Clockwork Orange

>> No.930254

The environment is less conducive to such a writer. English was still being codified in Shakespeare's time, so he could make significant contributions to the development of the language no longer possible.

>> No.930265

1. Talent
2. Originality
3. An audience and/or peers who gave a damn.
4. An absence of brain eroding accessories.
5. 4chan didn't exist.

>> No.930270

Because theater is not as significant a source of entertainment as it was in his time. Seriously what's with all the comparisons to novelists? Shakespeare is meant to be seen more than read, you know.

>> No.930273

>>930265

Back when anon would nail theses to doors and troll institutions...

>> No.930274

>>930239
You've never heard of Russian?

>> No.930282

>>930270
that's a good point
come to think of it, maybe a better place to look for his equivalent today is in cinema
Kubrick?

>> No.930291
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930291

>> No.930301

>>930282
Seriously? Fucking Kubrick? Can we stick to /lit/?

>> No.930303

>>930239

It's mostly old British rhyming slang mixed with Russian, IIRC. Inventive but not "new".

>> No.930313

200 years in the future, Stephen King will be proclaimed the proclaimed the greatest writer of all time, and they will over analyze his books so much that people will remember him as the man who looked at the dark side of then current technology and social interaction

>> No.930321

>>930313
No. The writers who experiment with language and style are the ones who are remembered. King will go down in history as a genre fiction writer like Heinlein. Or maybe he'll be seen like Burroughs, who was huge in his time.

>> No.930325

Death and age are met with higher esteem. That's why.

>> No.930326
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930326

>> No.930341

> Why did people from 400 years ago have that our intellectuals don't?

They were OP. Everyone's still writing as footnotes to Shakespeare, even the poststructure darlings are reacting to the framework of before.

Joyce, Borges, Pynchon, Foster Wallace may go on their own little eccentric footpaths but they can't build critical mass to supplant the base canon. There is no sustained effort of people saying "We are going to write along the framework of Joyce."

Best bet at originality is write in a non-Indo-Euro language.

>> No.930894

>>929426
Fucking hate Dickens, the bastard. Tries too hard.

>> No.932607

bump

>> No.932620

>>929023
There's several theories that Shakespeare was not one man and was in fact a pen name used by several writers secretly writing together.

>> No.932641

As far as English goes I doubt anyone will ever get as much cred as Shakespeare, deserved or not, because he did it first. Well, not first, but he was the founding writer of the language in the same way Pushkin is to Russian or Dante to Italian.

>> No.932642

>>3284201
http://www.lawl.us/Ki
http://www.lawl.us/Ki
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http://www.lawl.us/Ki
http://www.lawl.us/Ki

>> No.932673

>no contemporary writer has ever replaced Shakespeare as the greatest English writer.
I feel like Oscar Wilde's masterful use of language goes unappreciated compared to Shakespeare's since Wilde's language doesn't sound as exotic in contemporary times.

>> No.932679

Shakespeare was shit. All he ever did was rip off older stories and add shitty worldplay fucking everywhere. No one understood his plays, which was kind of the point. They just liked hearing the funny sounding words.

>> No.932680

Shakespeare was famous because he produced lots of plays that became famous because of entertainment and not literary value. So, we've had plenty of Shakespeares, people simply producing works of literature en mass to the acceptance of pop-culture. J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer are two of the more recent Shakespeares of our time.

>> No.932681

>>3292691
http://www.lawl.us/Ki
http://www.lawl.us/Ki
http://www.lawl.us/Ki
http://www.lawl.us/Ki
http://www.lawl.us/Ki