Shippy and I are having an arguement.
"Shakespeare was a plagiarist" states Shippy.
"Bullshit!" cries I. "Evidence! Solid facts!"
"Fine," says The Shipster, and sends me this:
"Shakespeare the Plagiarist
Shakespeare was a man of many accomplishments. Many were in his writings; others were in his great director and playwright skills. The play Hamlet is one of the most re-created and re-written books to date. Hamlet is still being performed in theaters around the world. Even though many people perceive Shakespeare as a literary genius, we can not give him sole credit for his plays and sonnets.
With a few exceptions, Shakespeare did not invent the plots of his plays. Sometimes he used old stories (Hamlet, Pericles). Sometimes he worked from the stories of comparatively recent Italian writers, such as Boccaccio - using both well-known stories (Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing) and little known ones (Othello). Shakespeare has been proven, by many authors, to have borrowed from the Arts, the Histories and the Sciences. (Britannica Online, http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5005/75/12.html)
"The first collection of information about sources of Elizabethan plays was published in the 17th century. Gerard Langbaines account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691) briefly indicated where Shakespeare found materials for some plays."(Britannica Online)
It has been shown in this book that Shakespeare quoted his contemporary Christopher Marlowe in As You Like It. He casually refers to the Aethiopica ("Ethiopian history") of Heliodorus (which has been translated by Thomas Undertown in 1569) in Twelfth Night. Chapman's vigorous translation of Homer.
[to view the full essay now, purchase below]
http://www.123helpme.com/preview.asp?id=37713
Fine and Dandy.
To counter that, you could posit that there are, in fact, no new stories. I remember learning in honours that there are around seven unique story structures which can be applied to any complete narrative (whether fact or fiction) published or told ever since language and writing has existed.
I can't bloody remember them all now, but they're things like
The love story (two separate entities come together)
The war story (one entity vanquishes another)
The tragedy (righteous entities experience entropy)
etc
etc
These structures can be applied to almost all stories from Sumerian fart jokes onwards through history to Shakespeare and beyond. If not literally, then metaphorically.
There are no new stories. Just better versions. If Shakespeare ripped off a few ideas from his contemporaries then why aren't we amazed at his talent for reference and pop-cultural appreciation. The Simpsons do it all the time and everybody loves them for it!
I think the greater contribution Shakespeare made to literature was that of the language he used. The beautiful, twisting, perfect words themselves, the phrases and stanzas in which they lived. Plays and plays and plays of the stuff.
I've also heard that he didn't write his own words either, but to that I say: bullshit!
***
GTH - Picture stays the same, points still count for sprightly comments in previous post, but double points to anyone who can supply me with that complete (and short) list of The Seven Story Structures.
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An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test
Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.
No idea, me enlishg no good.
ReplyDeleteCharacter
Crucible
Catalyst
Cause and effect
Complications
Crisis
Climax
Change
No idea, me enlishg no good.
ReplyDeleteCharacter
Crucible
Catalyst
Cause and effect
Complications
Crisis
Climax
Change
No idea, me enlishg no good.
ReplyDeleteCharacter
Crucible
Catalyst
Cause and effect
Complications
Crisis
Climax
Change
or
a character
in a context
has a problem
s/he tries to solve the problem
and fails — tries and fails twice more, stakes escalating
victory or death
validation (denouement)
No idea, me enlishg no good.
ReplyDeleteCharacter
Crucible
Catalyst
Cause and effect
Complications
Crisis
Climax
Change
or
a character
in a context
has a problem
s/he tries to solve the problem
and fails — tries and fails twice more, stakes escalating
victory or death
validation (denouement)
I always hated the elitism some shakespeare fans reek of. The i-like-this-because-you-can't-understand-it attitude. It's the same stench that comes from classical music fans that deride popular music.
ReplyDeleteThe reverence of it is bullshit. The plots are bullshit too, perhaps shakespeare should have written his own rather than rip them off. Romeo and juliet meet once for half an hour and then they are confessing their undying love for one another in soppy soliloquies. Instead of feeling the tragedy of it, I am relieved at the end of their whinging.
I'm not saying shakespeare is crap, just that it's overrated.
Gotta agree with the 327th Male on this one, and, of people, Prince Charles. He confessed a few years ago that Shakespeare left him "largely unmoved." Me too - I'm all for the recycling of the classic storylines (no idea what the remaining four are though) but to have to wade through some Monarch Notes in order to work out that Macbeth was a tad henpecked wasn't my idea of fun. And I majored in English!
ReplyDeletepeople who deride popular music have stench - but I hate elitism ??? Now there's a confused male
ReplyDeleteKing Lear inspired by an earlier version of King Leir.
ReplyDeleteHis Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet based on a poem by Arthur Brooke The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet (1562) and in turn prior to that by Italian Matteo Bandello.
As You Like It - Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge.
However, Love's Labour's Lost, Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest were original.
He also took and modified passages from Marlowe.
Shippy - You got it. But one point only - repetitions don't count.
ReplyDeleteActually, I was thinking of a more developed list, but I like this better because it's even further condensed.
327 - What elitist Shakespeare fans have you been hanging around? Seriously, I'd love to meet one.
Kath - I loved Shakespeare when I studied it in high school. I had never heard anything so densely packed with meaning and wit. I don't if it's unfashionable, elitist, plagiarised, overly-complex or brainlessly simple. I always feel like I've had a good bit of brain food when I watch some Shakespeare.
When we went to see the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet at the cinema in year twelve, I was the only one complaining that we were watching the edited two hour version, rather than the complete, four hours.
Neil - Indeed. 327?
Shippy - Hydrocarbons not stimulating enough, eh?
Okay, everyone. Shakespeare did borrow a few things (if indeed it WAS Shakespeare that wrote any of it, or the next-likely candidate, Christopher Marlowe)but he's nowhere near as much as a plagiarist as Terry Brooks, who proved that rewriting the lord of the rings can make you one of the world's best selling authors.There is just NO WAY that the Sword of Shannara is NOT LOTR. Hell, even Peter Jackson's screenplay of LOTR has more deviations from the original LOTR books than Shannara does...ok, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but check out Shannara's wikipedia plot summary and its comparisons to LOTR. Now THAT's plagiarism.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHere's your plot summary.
And here's your similarities between SoS and LOTR.
You're welcome, darling.
There is very strong evidence, presented by some of the finest students of Shakespeare, for the fact that all those plays were not written by him, but by another guy of the same name.
ReplyDeleteThere still exists no painting of William, young or old, none that can be confidently confirmed to be him.
ReplyDeleteOn the topic, wasn't The Da-Vinci Code by Dan Brown adopted from another book written by some other dudes.
Franzy - never stimulating enough.
Indeed I am confused neil. Are you suggesting that my disdain for elitism is in itself, elitism?
ReplyDeleteFranzy love, if you're going to correct Squib on a previous comments section for writing 'would of' instead of 'would have' (which I noticed too by the way but was too polite/scared to point out due to my own littered footpath of typos and ignorance), then you might want to amend the word 'arguement' to 'argument'. :)
ReplyDeleteNeil - I think you'll find that it wasn't that guy, but a different guy all together. With the same name.
ReplyDeleteShippy - Hey, there's no painting of me either, but I'm still around.
Or AM I???
On The Da Vinci Code and all the ensuing lawsuits, I think Mele said it best when she pointed out that bored Christians have been putting about the "Jesus had a kid" rumour since Jesus was old enough to pick up chicks.
327 - Perhaps he's taking issue with your derision of Shakespeare fans. After all, they are only elite if they are, in fact, higher up than the rest of us. Which, no matter how snobby they get over El Bardo, we know they aren't. These Shakespeare snobs (I'm still not sure who you mean) are just like any other fan.
And while I'm on the topic - Classical over Popular Music?
What would you prefer to listen to?
Beethoven or Pink?
Kath, love - I was just slipping that in so she wouldn't feel intimidated by my constently perfect grammar and spelling.
The Bard is The Man!
ReplyDeleteIt was common for writers to collaborate on things back then and so nothing really surprising there
http://poetsquib.com/2008/04/01/all-im-saying-shakey/#more-605
"I definitely smell a pork product of some kind" Heh, me too. The people in the unit behind us are barbecuing bacon.
ReplyDeleteshakespeare was a plagiarist? Meh. Who cares. Presumably he enjoyed his work, since then, hundreds of people have enjoyed portraying his characters on stage and screen, thousands, nay, millions of people have enjoyed watching such portrayals and English students the world over have enjoyed or made fun of the dissection of his works. The man employed a lot of people. That's not to be sneezed at.
Those elitist people put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us........
The seven story structures?
ReplyDeleteSomeone dies at the end
Someone doesn't die at the end
Someone dies at the end but they had it coming
Someone has sex at the end but it's implied
Someone neither has sex nor dies at the end, but bugger off
Everything works out
Everything doesn't work out, but you have to make your own mind up as to the ending because it's a bit arty and they write about a vase instead of literally telling you
That's my English class covered
Bashful
ReplyDeleteDoc
Dopey
Grumpy
Happy
Sleepy
Sneezy
the 327th male. Well if it looks like elitism, and it walks like elitism, and it quacks like elitism, then maybe its elitism.
ReplyDelete