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busker · 01-27-2026, 05:03 PM

In physics, we don’t study the Principia. Sure, people know of it and study Newtonian mechanics, but not what Newton wrote. In cinema, Orson Welles is studied only by students of cinema and then promptly forgotten. Artists don’t labour over how Leonardo mixed his oils. All those are historical curiosities. Batsmen don’t try to emulate the three W’s. They’re just better these days.

But in literature, we actually read Shakespeare and Milton. Why do we read Shakespeare? His plots are contrived, and theatrical dialogue is the opposite of real life. If we are to read him for the poetry of his plays, as some have argued, then what are we to make of:

It pleased the King his master very late
To strike at me, upon his misconstruction;
When he, compact, and flattering his displeasure,
Tripped me behind; being down, insulted, railed,
And put upon him such a deal of man
That worthied him, got praises of the King
For him attempting who was self-subdued;
And in the fleshment of this ⟨dread⟩ exploit,
Drew on me here again.

It is torturous, long winded yackery. No doubt, being a stage man, this dialogue would’ve done well for the players of his day, but how are we to read it?
How do we read the ancients? Typically, as alien writers from a different planet.
Antigone is more interesting when read sitting in a theatre in Halikarnos than in the library.

How should we read Shakespeare today, then? I personally read Shakespeare for the poetry, and skip over the boring bits. But that brings to mind another question - how many Shakespeares have we not read?

You can listen to salieri and realise that Mozart wasn’t some unique hot house genius who created the only Melodies of their kind. He was a genius, but many of his Melodies were similar to other tunes of the day. Have we heard all of them? No, not even the ones that survive. Perhaps Shakespeare had many peers whose works were simply not collected and published neatly in a folio. I don’t mean Marlowe and Kyd, I mean writers who just weren’t preserved.

wasellajam · 01-27-2026, 06:26 PM

Yep, a world of artists living at any point. In "study" we limit ourselves to those who through cunning or fate have been endlessly reprinted or performed or hung in destination points. Are those artists "better" than the guy next door? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but it's all subjective and temporary anyway. We all know that just because a large group of people believe something that doesn't make it the end all truth.

The poems I love mostly were written more recently, they speak a language that I can easily absorb. But I went through a phase where I bought poetry blindly, thinking within the hundred pages there would be something I'd love. Didn't happen. So, plenty of art for everyone, if you don't limit yourself to other people's taste. I strolled past Mondrian for 50 years before I enjoyed one, had to be in a specific place and time to get swept away by Pollock, art is an opening up to another human's vision, take your pick, nobody can tell you what art to you.

**RiverNotch** · 01-27-2026, 07:04 PM

I finished reading Dante's Comedia last year, after a long pause. I started reading Inferno during the pandemic, finishing Purgatorio just as I ended a sort of quarantine, but then for a couple of years I took the time to learn the language. Instead of reading an English translation while listening to the original Italian, I sounded out the original Italian while reading a modern Italian paraphrase, once I reached Paradiso.

Betwen either part of the Comedia, however, the classics I engaged with were Shakespeare and some of his contemporaries, or at least the first third of his career. I assembled a mostly chronological reading list of the works of the author and his contemporaries, then I read each play. After reading each of Shakespeare's plays, I read some of his critics, with the critics I read being assembled largely from Harold Bloom's "school": besides Bloom himself, through his 1998 The Invention of the Human, there's Samuel Johnson's 1778 annotations, Hazlitt's 1817 Characters of Shakespear's Plays, Goddard's 1951 The Meaning of Shakespeare, Kermode's 2000 Shakespeare's Language, and Garber's 2004 Shakespeare After All.

At the moment, rather than continuing with Shakespeare, I've elected to read some 17th to 18th century translations of the Greco-Roman classics. But whenever I'm not doing anything else, I've also been giving Mozart's late operas a listen, and I suppose the connection is that it's best to consider these greats in context---read about them as much as one reads or hears them, also try to read or hear their contemporaries---and in even rough chronological order, watching carefully how they develop as voices. Early Shakespeare, for instance, is truly crap, more intolerable to read than Kyd or Marlowe (whom he was probably aping).

The list:

But more directly,

"Why do we read Shakespeare? His plots are contrived, and theatrical dialogue is the opposite of real life."

His plots were rarely his own. I believe only A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest weren't based on preexisting texts---Romeo and Juliet, for instance, was based on an Italian novella---so the blame for the plots being contrived probably doesn't rest on himself. But as for the note on "theatrical dialogue", it seems rather paradoxical. Is it so bad a thing that we go to the theatre to listen to an enhanced version of life, instead of sitting there watching someone scroll through Reddit while picking their nose for two hours? At the same time, my memory better serves me with Hamlet or Love's Labour's Lost, where there are instances that are very naturalistic (at least for metered text from four centuries ago):

Ber. Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

Ros. Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

Ber. I know you did.

Ros. How needless was it then
To ask the question!

Ber. You must not be so quick.

Ros. 'Tis 'long of you that spur me with such questions.

Ber. Your wit's too hot, it speeds too fast, 'twill tire.

Ros. Not till it leave the rider in the mire.

Or else there are instances where characters spout rather tired poetry, if they spout poetry at all, but it's perfectly in keeping with their character, and thus is very true to life:

Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

"I personally read Shakespeare for the poetry, and skip over the boring bits. But that brings to mind another question - how many Shakespeares have we not read?"

In this case, probably all of them, because the "poetry" cannot exist without the "boring bits" xP Not that I would recommend The Two Gentlemen of Verona to anyone....

And maybe that's my answer to the larger sense of the question, too. Few of us so barely read Shakespeare, we barely consider his works as an organic whole, or his works in the context of other works of the era, or his works as carefully read by others. We read his four hundred year old plays once or twice and think, "Well, I've read him", immediately moving on, if we even bother to read each play in its entirety, so that the question of other Shakespeares ends up reading like an excuse for idleness. Hand over the care for those lost Shakespeares to those who actually know Shakespeare, who in habitually trudging through the boring bits find his poetry all the more poetic: that we can't recognize even our one Shakespeare now means we're not at all equipped to recognize his potential peers. Not that my goal is not to be an idler.

busker · 01-27-2026, 08:33 PM

Thanks for the detailed answer
I envy your life, at least in this area.

I must clarify that I’ve been reading Shakespeare a long time, though I haven’t read the entire canon
I didn’t think that his early plays were crap. I found The Winter’s Tale awful, while I liked Love’s Labour’s Lost. I also enjoyed Two Gentlemen, particularly its famous Sylvia Passage, well before Gwyneth Paltrow made it film-popular. I didn’t care much for Hamlet and never understood the appeal of King Lear, with its over the top melodrama. Macbeth was brilliant, and Othello was the summit, followed by Troilus. I adored JC and Antony and C. And loved the great comedies, not including Midsummers Night in that. I found The Tempest underwhelming and Cymbeline unreadable. I was ambivalent on MfM and haven’t read All’s Well. Nor the Falstaff plays. Nor the histories. And so on.

But that’s just my preferences. Not saying I’m an expert on the matter

Do you feel that your education is automatically Eurocentric as a result of your choices? Or is there a plan to broaden your horizons at some point? Does your Filipino background make it any easier to understand the Egyptians, for instance?

milo · 01-27-2026, 09:02 PM

(01-27-2026, 05:03 PM)busker Wrote: In physics, we don’t study the Principia. Sure, people know of it and study Newtonian mechanics, but not what Newton wrote. In cinema, Orson Welles is studied only by students of cinema and then promptly forgotten. Artists don’t labour over how Leonardo mixed his oils. All those are historical curiosities. Batsmen don’t try to emulate the three W’s. They’re just better these days.

I have already read ahead so I know this is not a great argument - Newton's charm wasn't in his writing. People certainly watch Orson Welles films. Painters may not labor over da Vinci's oil mixing technique (though scholars do ) but I bet they study his use of space, etc . . .

Quote:But in literature, we actually read Shakespeare and Milton. Why do we read Shakespeare? His plots are contrived, and theatrical dialogue is the opposite of real life. If we are to read him for the poetry of his plays, as some have argued, then what are we to make of:

people still view art as well. You are comparing the creation of media to the consumption of media.

Quote: It pleased the King his master very late
To strike at me, upon his misconstruction;
When he, compact, and flattering his displeasure,
Tripped me behind; being down, insulted, railed,
And put upon him such a deal of man
That worthied him, got praises of the King
For him attempting who was self-subdued;
And in the fleshment of this ⟨dread⟩ exploit,
Drew on me here again.

It is torturous, long winded yackery. No doubt, being a stage man, this dialogue would’ve done well for the players of his day, but how are we to read it?
How do we read the ancients? Typically, as alien writers from a different planet.
Antigone is more interesting when read sitting in a theatre in Halikarnos than in the library.

How should we read Shakespeare today, then? I personally read Shakespeare for the poetry, and skip over the boring bits. But that brings to mind another question - how many Shakespeares have we not read?

You can listen to salieri and realise that Mozart wasn’t some unique hot house genius who created the only Melodies of their kind. He was a genius, but many of his Melodies were similar to other tunes of the day. Have we heard all of them? No, not even the ones that survive. Perhaps Shakespeare had many peers whose works were simply not collected and published neatly in a folio. I don’t mean Marlowe and Kyd, I mean writers who just weren’t preserved.

There has been a ton of work and theories dedicated to this kind of concept. He definitely wasn't the only one but he is pretty much accepted as one of the best writers of the Renaissance period.

A lot of it is no longer enjoyable to read to modern readers. I have read what Shakespeare I was required to read and then some highlighted passages. It's a chore. I can still recognize the genius behind it. I recently read an essay by Eliot trashing Hamlet from a time when that would have been considered edgy and cool. Trashing Shakespeare in writing is like trashing the Beatles - there is always somebody who thinks they are being contrary by having taste different from the masses.

Interestingly enough - I knew a writer who was really into Shakespeare's Sonnets which are pretty universally agreed to be mediocre so I have read a couple dozen of those and - honestly - they are better than I expected.

busker · 01-28-2026, 05:50 AM

The Newton example was to illustrate that the Cliffs notes of what a great person did is enough in the case of science. However, it can be very instructive to read how a particular proof was derived. The thought process followed can train our own hypothesis formation skills. It’s just that we don’t do that.

The consumption of art can be for its instructional “how to” value, for its simple enjoyment, for what it teaches us about a former time, or because it establishes a common cultural grammar, like history. There is no conversation without the past or past traditions informing it.

The first I argue has no merit when looking at something done hundreds of years ago.
The second I park.
The third is valid, though of interest only to a minority
The fourth is entirely valid, but for that we don’t need any more than the Cliffs notes

Let us return to the second. This is what I am not certain about. I enjoy reading Shakespeare, for the poetry of his plays. Drama as poetry. But he is a much diminished influence as a result

**RiverNotch** · 01-31-2026, 10:06 PM

"Do you feel that your education is automatically Eurocentric as a result of your choices? Or is there a plan to broaden your horizons at some point? Does your Filipino background make it any easier to understand the Egyptians, for instance?"

I think that much of Filipino literature is basically Western in character, as we were a Spanish colony from the 1500s to 1898, then an American territory from 1898 to 1946. In high school, we were made to read four major works, though we only directly read one of them. Ibong Adarna, in English The Adarna Bird, is a Tagalog long poem written in the 16th century that we read in heavily paraphrased form; all the characters' names are in Spanish, and the story could easily be understood as one of Perrault's or the Grimms'. Florante at Laura, in English Florante and Laura, is another Tagalog long poem, though it was written late enough that we read the actual poem directly; its very story is set in the Balkan and Italian peninsulas. Noli Me Tangere, Latin for Touch Me Not, and El Filibusterismo, Spanish for The Subversive, were the two great Hugo-esque novels of Jose Rizal; both were written in Spanish, and have been translated into a language most of us Filipinos could actually understand since Rizal first had them published. And then there's the Filipino works I've most enjoyed since, only they're almost always Filipino only in ethnicity, not in language, such that I've here already Showcased bits from those books without having to translate....

So my education, when it comes to literature, has never gone beyond the Eurocentric.

Do I plan on broadening my horizons? I already try and do so with other arts, especially food and music, but I'm content with being just the one kind of expert in literature. Food is very easy to get into, since one has to eat multiple times a day; music, one can listen to music intently while doing something else; but literature? It's a non-necessity that demands all of one's attention. I assume people who claim to be experts in both the Western and Eastern Canons either have a superficial understanding of both, or they have no other interests xD.

busker · 02-01-2026, 05:49 AM

(01-31-2026, 10:06 PM)RiverNotch Wrote: I assume people who claim to be experts in both the Western and Eastern Canons either have a superficial understanding of both, or they have no other interests xD.

There is always a trade off between depth and breadth when it comes to academic expertise, but I find the concept of a 'western canon' to be meaningless except for the purposes of historical analysis. The world since colonisation has been a connected one, and without reading Chinua Achebe's essay on the Heart of Darkness, one may continue to treat that piece of trash from Conrad as some marvel of profundity. It is similarly possible to write like Hopkins and believe that Jesus was the literal son of god, like him, thereby foregoing the entirety of contemporary biblical scholarship, but I wouldn't consider the reflections of such a person worthwhile.
The western canon ended in 1945.

rowens · 02-01-2026, 06:08 AM

Canons like that can exist as props. For instance, if I wanted to make my own personal canon, and had nothing to say (sound familiar?), I could use the concept of a canon and the contents of the canon to sense-make within that context, or to have a Big Other to war against. The very process of that has artistic affect-quality, even if the premises are arbitrary, as you said.
This can lead to what art is and what art is or isn't useful for. Which create categories like highbrow and lowbrow, which, in themselves, can also be used as contextual props in which to work. This may seem pointless and pretentious, but if you would rather paint game on cave walls in order to magically enhance the hunt, that's valid too. Or art even for topical protest purposes.

milo · 02-01-2026, 06:28 AM

(02-01-2026, 06:08 AM)rowens Wrote: Canons like that can exist as props. For instance, if I wanted to make my own personal canon, and had nothing to say (sound familiar?), I could use the concept of a canon and the contents of the canon to sense-make within that context, or to have a Big Other to war against. The very process of that has artistic affect-quality, even if the premises are arbitrary, as you said.
This can lead to what art is and what art is or isn't useful for. Which create categories like highbrow and lowbrow, which, in themselves, can also be used as contextual props in which to work. This may seem pointless and pretentious, but if you would rather paint game on cave walls in order to magically enhance the hunt, that's valid too. Or art even for topical protest purposes.

Without a doubt - a lot of Shakespeare (to bring it back around) was considered low brow in his day (there is some baudy humor in there)

The first time I ever heard of The Canon (might have been the English Canon at the time) it was in criticism of it and since then every single time I have heard it referenced (including this time) was in criticism of it. It has evolve to be actually a counterpoint to the argument for itself causing a kind of literary existentialism.

How far has it gone? In curiosity I googled the English Canon and got this:

. . . heavily featuring traditionally privileged authors like Shakespeare, Milton, and Dickens. It serves as a, frequently criticized, benchmark for "essential" reading, with ongoing efforts to diversify it beyond its historically white, male, and colonial focus.

Western Canon and by extension all canon only exists at this time as a criticism of Western Canon. It is the mobius strips of debate with every single living person on the same side.

rowens · 02-01-2026, 07:21 AM

I know, right. If I was living in Shakespeare's day, I could get an actress as easy as I could get a whore. Probably easier, as while you have to pay for a whore, any woman who claimed that she would be with me for free would have to be an actress.

I myself read so-called canonical work almost exclusively. A kind of necromancy.

milo · 02-01-2026, 07:44 AM

(02-01-2026, 07:21 AM)rowens Wrote: I know, right. If I was living in Shakespeare's day, I could get an actress as easy as I could get a whore. Probably easier, as while you have to pay for a whore, any woman who claimed that she would be with me for free would have to be an actress.

I myself read so-called canonical work almost exclusively. A kind of necromancy.

I always pictured you as more steam-punk. Have you ever researched the ballerinas of the time of Degas - most of them had to whore themselves out while not dancing as there was not much pay and they would need a patron or extra income. Degas painted many of them though he had a strange disgust of them which for the most part he could translate into beauty. Have you ever seen Little Dancer aged Fourteen? I feel you would like it.

As for me - my avoidance of the canon has become canonical of my own mythos to the point the canon has taken to avoiding me quite publicly I might add.

I've spent days in London Hotel bars smoking Dunhills and sipping absinthe while explaining to all that would listen how all Western canon is canonically not canon at all much to the delight of the masses who love to see statues torn down and heroes crawling in the mud and gods whoring it out with simple weavers' daughters.

rowens · 02-01-2026, 07:51 AM

Steampunk is what I considered bringing up when we were talking about utilizing analogue with my Dream Machine.

People usually connect Western Canon with Harold Bloom, whose Theory revolves around Misprision and Agon with the Canon. He said he liked Anne Carson's Work because she breaks all the rules, yet it somehow works. Which makes sense seeing that she was one of his young students. I think if Emily Browning or my neighbors' daughter wrote poetry, I'd find a way to misprision it into something worthwhile.

milo · 02-01-2026, 08:00 AM

(02-01-2026, 07:51 AM)rowens Wrote: Steampunk is what I considered bringing up when we were talking about utilizing analogue with my Dream Machine.

People usually connect Western Canon with Harold Bloom, whose Theory revolves around Misprision and Agon with the Canon. He said he liked Anne Carson's Work because she breaks all the rules, yet it somehow works. Which makes sense seeing that she was one of his young students. I think if Emily Browning or my neighbors' daughter wrote poetry, I'd find a way to misprision it into something worthwhile.

yah - I forgot about Bloom and his attempts to de-politicize the canon. As revenge, the canon politicized him turning him into a caricature of himself. I had to google Carson which is unfortunate as it turns out she is quite famous though probably either too new or too old to be of much interest to me.

It would interest you to know that Emily is the spiritual reincarnation of Elizabeth Barret Browning in the same way that you are the spiritual reincarnation of Robert Browning which makes me think you might want to consider writing some poems and sending them to her.

I am less familiar with your next door neighbor but there is a good chance she is Maizie Shelley - the spiritual reincarnation to Mary Shelley in the same way that you are the spiritual reincarnation of Percy Bysshe Shelley

rowens · 02-01-2026, 08:01 AM

Emily Browning's mother's name is Shelley.

I wrote poems to her in my 20s. Don't worry, she was 17 and the country was Australia.
But one time she came to America after midnight while I was eating, and I turned into a gremlin.

milo · 02-01-2026, 08:10 AM

(02-01-2026, 08:01 AM)rowens Wrote: Emily Browning's mother's name is Shelley.

At some point the coincidence of coincidences is overpowering enough to become itself a coincidence adding credence to Simulation theory (and not the cheap knock off like in the Matrix where everyone suddenly knows kung fu but in the Elon Musk/Red Pill bros pod cast variety).

Quote:
I wrote poems to her in my 20s. Don't worry, she was 17 and the country was Australia.
But one time she came to America after midnight while I was eating, and I turned into a gremlin.

Writing poems to Ms Browning, I suppose, is much like being baptized in that once you have done it you can never really do it again. The Gremlins reference is pretty good but I wish I could remember if there was a way they could turn back - like maybe drinking whisky before noon or something. It kind of paints you into a corner at this point as a still and enduring gremlin unless you can recall what sigil it is that removes the spell

rowens · 02-01-2026, 08:21 AM

Here's your boy, Seamus:

“There is in Hill something of Stephen Dedalus’s hyperconsciousness of words as physical sensations, as sounds to be plumbed . . . "

I feel the same way, and I, like Hill, lived most of my life with 'severe OCD'.

Emily Jane Browning. Emilia Jones. Sounds to be plumbed, indeed.

At least I don't hang out on the wing of the plane when the now married Ms. Browning travels home to see her folks.

Not that marriage means anything more to me than it meant to Shakespeare

milo · 02-01-2026, 08:47 AM

(02-01-2026, 08:21 AM)rowens Wrote: Here's your boy, Seamus:

“There is in Hill something of Stephen Dedalus’s hyperconsciousness of words as physical sensations, as sounds to be plumbed . . . "

I feel the same way, and I, like Hill, lived most of my life with 'severe OCD'.

Emily Jane Browning. Emilia Jones. Sounds to be plumbed, indeed.

At least I don't hang out on the wing of the plane when the now married Ms. Browning travels home to see her folks.

Not that marriage means anything more to me than it meant to Shakespeare

Which could very well mean that it means a lot to you as it must have to Master Will - he dedicated no small portion of his art to the topic as well as no small portion of his life. Now you could fairly say that he wrote about marriage because the caste at the time leant it prevalent import enough that it was not a vassal to be broken and you may very well continue to spread the rumors of personal infidelity like some 17th century hen despite all evidence to the contrary but -

either way - whether to the paradigm that fed him or the woman that bedded him he undeniably paid it more than enough truance.

I sometimes block out all the essayism of my old friend - famous seamus. He becomes like an unwanted dinner guest who you invited over to share a fine irish whisky and a cigar but he keep nattering on about how he doesn't like trump as a person but at least he's good for the economy.

Poetry, Mr Heaney poetry is what we crave or, to paraphrase " . . . But oh, good Lord, the exposition,

it puts us all in this position . The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well, the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To argue points that killed the cow."

rowens · 02-01-2026, 08:49 AM

The thing about severe OCD, on one hand (usually the right), it makes me a very attentive lover. On the other, once I sense climax coming on, I have to pull out an odd number of times.
Which leaves the girl's future up in the air.

But, unlike with Ms. Browning, I'm not her wingman on that flight.

Marriage does, like most religious institutions, allow for the special pleasures of things like adultery.

milo · 02-01-2026, 09:02 AM

(02-01-2026, 08:49 AM)rowens Wrote: The thing about severe OCD, on one hand (usually the right), it makes me a very attentive lover. On the other, once I sense climax coming on, I have to pull out an odd number of times.
Which leaves the girl's future up in the air.

But, unlike with Ms. Browning, I'm not her wingman on that flight.

Marriage does, like most religious institutions, allow for the special pleasures of things like adultery.

I was thinking earlier that it seems ages since Ms Browning has done anything and with all the recent attention I wondered if she wasn't up to something recently. Turns out she was in American Gods - which of course I have a soft spot for being that all of my religious beliefs were formed around the codices of Neil Gaiman (though I heard in recent years he turned out to be a bit of an old leche) but even that ended in 2021 and was filmed (turns out) in Toronto so while you could technically pounce on the wing of her plane and leer at her like a over-hormoned homunculous as she passed the Atlantic, you would need a time machine to do so and who knows when she will grace us with her on screen charms again.

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