Posted by Alferd Packer at ip-20-117-185.charlotte-t.navipath.net on November 30, 2000 at 23:16:51:
In Reply to: Just a small thought: Shakespeare + Mr.Smith? posted by dreed on November 29, 2000 at 16:30:33:
He was a mediocre writer of the time. He scratched out a play every week for cash. If he was writing today, for movies, EVERYONE on this board would say he's a sellout motherfucker with no talent.
Why don't we try and relate him to today?
Shakespeare's tragedies were full of violence. Sex. Naughty language. Shit that was pretty shocking for the time. This makes him one of two people. Quintin Tarantino. Or a random action movie writer.
Okay. His comedies. All were based on relationships. All had pretty shallow characters (fuck you, they WERE shallow). Underdevelopment. A situation which is resolved happily by the end. This would be a sitcom writer. He wrote situation comedies.
His histories are just there. They were written for the King and have absolutely nothing special about them.
People praise Shakespeare because of his masterful use of dialogue. That's all he had, for one, and for two, if you examine works by other authors of the time (Marlowe, Johnson) you'll find that ALL plays were written like that (with the archaic English language) and in the iambic pantameter form.
For the record, Marlowe had talent in his fucking pinky finger than Shakespeare had all over.
Shakespeare wrote for money. And people of today would write him off as a sellout. Don't be hypocritical.