When you finish, respond with a COMMENT to this question: "Based on this play (and the ideas in the lecture), do you think Shakespeare is a subversive author? Is he trying to actively change people's mind about the world they live in, and they people who rule them? Or is he just a great entertainer, using characters and plot devices that make for good drama? In other words, does he want to change the world...or just make money off it?
Friday, April 10, 2020
Short Lecture on Lear and the 'Gods'
NOTE: Be sure to read Chapters 8 from Poole and Wells for next week; the questions are in the post beneath this one. For now, here's a short lecture to round off King Lear and give you some food for thought.
When you finish, respond with a COMMENT to this question: "Based on this play (and the ideas in the lecture), do you think Shakespeare is a subversive author? Is he trying to actively change people's mind about the world they live in, and they people who rule them? Or is he just a great entertainer, using characters and plot devices that make for good drama? In other words, does he want to change the world...or just make money off it?
When you finish, respond with a COMMENT to this question: "Based on this play (and the ideas in the lecture), do you think Shakespeare is a subversive author? Is he trying to actively change people's mind about the world they live in, and they people who rule them? Or is he just a great entertainer, using characters and plot devices that make for good drama? In other words, does he want to change the world...or just make money off it?
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To the first question, I think he was a very subversive author, but to the question “Is he trying to actively change people's mind about the world they live in, and the people who rule them?” my answer would be no. I honestly don’t think he was trying to change people’s minds about the world they live in, but merely getting them to think about the way the world works. He just wanted to open the door, not lead the people through it. He wasn’t saying “Dude, think this way.” He was saying “Hey, I know this is the status quo, but what if . . .”
ReplyDeleteAs to the question of “Is Shakespeare just a great entertainer? My answer has to be “Yes, and no.” Yes, Shakespeare was an entertainer, but he wasn’t “just” an entertainer. He liked to play with the audience, teasing their brains so they would think about things. He uses characters and plot devices that make for good drama, but he also does it in a way that leads people to thinking “what if. . . “. There’s no “either/or” with this person. Shakespeare was both a subversive author and “just” an entertainer. He was using plot and characters to make for good drama but also so that they can make their own decisions about life and fairness. He wanted to change the world. . .and make money doing it.
I agree with your 'yes and no' feelings in this response. In some ways, he seems very much a creature of his time, which makes many of his plays (The Taming of the Shrew), so controversial. Sometimes, he seems to espouse the traditional values and risks seeming obsolete. And yet, so many of our modern, 'liberal' ideas all have their roots in him...you can stage any of his plays with a progressive agenda without trying too hard. It's all there. But he definitely was more than just an entertainer, since all of his plays survive the stage and can be enjoyed on the page. So few plays of his time make any sense without a performance--they're just a collage of dated jokes and obscure references. Shakespeare has that, to be sure, but so much else.
DeleteIn many ways, yes, Shakespeare is a subversive author. He repeatedly uses his plays to challenge established beliefs by giving a voice to persons who are not allowed a voice in his society. For example, making a Moor a king in Othello. This would have caused audiences to suddenly view a Moor as a person,not simply an 'other'. He is also an entertainer. Shakespeare seemed to enjoy shocking the audience. He used violence and crude humor often in his plays. I think Shakespeare was definitely motivated to make money, but also make people think.
ReplyDeleteYes, he definitely loved to shock his audience's sensibilities and values, though without entirely alienating them. He was both a man of his time and a man of OUR time. It's very, very hard to do that, and it's unclear why he was able to do that when none of his contemporaries really could (a few got close, but no one succeeded at his level). He was the odd author who learns how to make money doing things his way--but it makes it look like it's our way.
DeleteCarla Torres:
ReplyDeleteI do believe that Shakespeare is subversive author. I think he is trying to change peoples minds about the world that they live in. I think he uses his characters in his plays to do this. Like you mentioned, some characters never change in his plays but many do. I also believe that he is an entertainer. I think he uses his plays in a way to change the world. Some plays that he writes can be relatable to others and their lives. I think that his plays can be used as a reference in others lives - especially back when they came out.
Great response...I think he's very subversive, and sees himself as an outsider in this culture. He could have possibly been Catholic (there are clues to this) in an England where you could be burned alive if caught expressing pro-Catholic views. So this might help explain his sympathies to outsiders. And yet, he knows what pleases the crowd, and is never unwilling to cater to them--to a point, at least.
DeleteI think that Shakespeare figured out early on in his life that he marched to a different beat than the authorities and often the masses. But he wanted, or needed, a career. So he figured out ways to say what he wanted to say without getting executed, and it worked, and that's a big reason why we still love his plays! There's so many layers, and at the bottom is often a tough pill to swallow, but the type of truth that you can't really deny. With that said, though, I don't see him trying to convince the people of the day of anything in particular. Influence them subtly, perhaps, but I think he wanted to figure out how to make the type of art that HE wanted, and then how to package it in an appealing way for the people.
ReplyDeleteYes, he seems to want to satisfying himself artistically since he has several pet themes (none of which were crowd pleasers, necessarily), and he tries to present them a different way each time, as if challenging himself to new standards of creativity. What is most interesting about his technique is how he starts off really trying to please the masses, and about halfway through, starts deliberately skirting public taste. In a weird way, he reminds me of Kurt Cobain, who claimed to hate popularity and set out to write an anti-commercial record with Nirvana's second 'big' album, In Utero. It sold well, but a lot of casual fans were pissed...the music was uglier, stranger, and avoided all the popular hooks. Shakespeare does the same thing with plays like All's Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and Timon of Athens. They're 'ugly' plays, fun, fascinating, often dazzling, but they show people doing terrible things and getting away with it. It's like he's testing how much we can take, all while encasing his plays with some of the generic trademarks of comedy, tragedy, etc. I think that's why he stopped writing plays, actually--he had nothing left to accomplish, and he started despising the public's taste. So he wrote one more masterpiece, which looked back at his career (The Tempest), and said, "enough." While he collaborated on a few plays later, clearly his heart wasn't in it. He exited the stage rather than spending the rest of his life playing old hits for aging fans (i.e. The Rolling Stones, etc.).
DeleteIt seems that if Shakespeare was a catholic that he was having to "act" when he was off staff and could only be his true self on stage. Which may be why these social issues are so prominent in his works. I think that he had very strong opinions about what his society accepted as norms and I think he had an amazing talent to bring those things to light in a manner that was thought provoking yet subtle enough not to land him in prison... or worse. He was a master of words but he was also a master at being JUST controversial enough to be interesting but not so controversial to be punished. Man, had I had those powers when I was a teenager I could have saved myself a lot of grief.
ReplyDeleteAgain, post above belongs to Kari
DeleteYes, we all needed that gift--and almost no one gets it! I think he was good at figuring out what the public wanted early on, so his first plays gave them all of that--with a tiny bit extra tucked in. Then, once he was established, he realized that he only had to use a tiny little bit of convention to excuse a large dollop of crazy. His plays truly chart the trajectory of someone who was a tireless experimenter and was never, ever satisfied. I think he also felt the public had the worst taste of all, which is why he stopped taking any notice of them by the end.
DeleteKelci Pollock
ReplyDeleteTruly I think it is a little bit of both mixed in with a passion for entertaining. Clearly, Shakespeare made money off of his plays, but they were so progressive for his time and always so deep. I can't believe that he would write such deep works just for money and entertainment when he calls out topics like racism and feminism. Albeit, he calls these out subtly, but he does call them out. I think he was quite genius in the way that he wrote these plays that so many people enjoyed and watched -- but that had these underlying tones and humanized situations that people of his time and even people now go through.
Great points...if he was just writing for a buck (or a pound), he wouldn't need to do half of what he does. Many playwrights made good livings by writing exactly what was called for. Either he realized that people secretly wanted more than the typical themes served up the same old ways, or he thought he could slip in some universal truths disguised as the same old things. Either way, he succeeded, since he was both successful in his own lifetime and is the only playwright of his time to remain a household name.
DeleteI believe that Shakespeare is able to do both. I think by him shifting King Lear from a play heavily influenced by Christianity to a play that makes you question the presence of any gods or a God shows how much he was trying to make a point. But to successfully do this, Shakespeare clearly knew how to both create a carefully crafted commentary while also creating a very entertaining play with rich characters that are able to communicate his meaning. With his unique use of language, he knew how to create a form of entertainment that appealed to most, while also creating something that is meant to be timeless and universal.
ReplyDeleteYes, great points...I honestly feel that Shakespeare would have preferred to be a poet, like Chaucer, but he didn't live in an age where too many poets could make a living. The theater was the only safe place for a poet, and he was good at it anyway, so why not? But I think he got annoyed with the 5-Act format, and the conventions of the stage, and all the stuff he 'had to do,' whereas he just wanted to write great poetry. We see this in his many borrowed plots, his conventional characters, and his cliche conventions. Plays began to bore him somewhat, but characters and language never did. So when we read his plays,. we have to pay more attention to how he uses plays and characters to explore new possibilities in language (and in prose) rather than the plots and stories themselves.
DeleteLike several of the previous comments, I do believe that he is both a subversive author and a great entertainer. And money was probably a bit of a factor in the reason that he wrote his works, but I don't believe that that was his driving motivation. This is because he undoubtedly wove hidden messages into his works, and they weren't the same ones every time either. As is demonstrated in the progression between Titus Andronicus and Macbeth, he realized that he could hide a vast amount of varied messages within each new work that he put out. He definitely wasn't a one trick pony. And the fact that most of his hidden messages were a form of commentary on the, at the time, current world and society, it's clear that he wanted to change it in some way, and for the better. But he was able to merge these commentaries with characters and a story line in a way that was entertaining and that people loved. I mean, he didn't become a household name because people hated his work. It was quite the opposite actually.
ReplyDeleteYes, he clearly wanted to make money, since he took the most popular stories and hits and re-worked them shamelessly. I mean, there were plays of Hamlet and King Lear before him, and he just wrote them again! That would be almost like doing your own version of Star Wars or Hamilton! Yet I also think he was a little contemptuous of what was popular, since he often twists the original story to do what he wanted, such as the death of Cordelia in King Lear, or the role of the Witches in Macbeth. It's almost like he's saying, "yeah, you have terrible taste, so let me show you how this story SHOULD have gone...and make you'll have the sense to like this one better." To his amazement, they usually did.
DeleteLike most everyone else, I think that Shakespeare was both a subversive and entertaining author. For people to pay attention, I think that the work does need to be entertaining. I can appreciate shows that are purely made for entertainment, but the shows that are both entertaining and filled with layers of meaning are my favorite. I think Shakespeare does both of these because, well, he's brilliant, but also because the more interested the audience is, the more engaged they will be with its meaning. To change society, it is important to catch their attention and somehow relate to them. I think his plays are enjoyable on the surface level and beyond - which is impressive.
ReplyDeleteI really do think he wanted to wake his audience up, and show them what was wrong with their society, and many of their beliefs. I think it always bothered him what the people liked, things like bear-baiting and public executions, so he found ways to show them the depth of their depravity through various characters that spoke like them, but acted like devils. He never pushed it too far, and was always careful to give himself an out, but he never pulled back, either. In fact, as he got older, he got blunter and more obnoxious in what he fed his audiences. Titus is horrific but fun...a later play, like Measure for Measure, isn't fun at all--it's amazing, powerful, grotesque, and even funny, but not 'fun.' It shoves bad behavior in your face until you choke. Even Antony and Cleopatra does this: it gives us a historical spectacle without the spectacle. Just the bitter, disastrous humanity.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCody Baggerly
ReplyDeleteI personally believe that it’s fairly clear that Shakespeare was not just an entertainer. He of course was an entertainer, and a skilled one at that, but there is almost always a deeper level to his works than just entertainment. However, whether or not those deeper levels were intentionally subversive or not is debatable. After reading the ten or so plays of his that I have read, I believe it’s clear that Shakespeare constantly challenged the status quo of his time and culture. Whether it be in regards to race like Othello or The Merchant of Venice or the ways in which he wrote his female characters in almost every play he wrote, Shakespeare consistently challenges the norm for fictional characters. That being said, I can’t bring myself to build an argument that he was actually trying to convert public opinions or simply trying to address the world in which he lived in for the things he found fault in. Either way, he was still able to produce content that was not only relevant and controversial for his time but has remained so to this very day.