>the majority of Shakespeare's audience were a bunch of illiterate and semiliterate lower class people who could follow the plot of Hamlet, King Lear, Julius Caesar and Henry IV for 4 hours without breaking a sweat
>today's audience can barely follow Marvel capeshit "plotlines"
What went wrong?
Other urls found in this thread:
youtube.com
youtube.com
twitter.com
capeshit doesn't have plots. just CGI loosely connected to each other
Shakespeare is performed today completely different to how it was performed when he was alive
It was performed at pubs and inns, in the open, it was completely farcical, full of humerous quips and asides to the audience making fun of what was going on, things like "prick us do we not bleed" was not some poetic lament but a bawdy joke
I don't think play audiences actually watched the performance. Same went for some operas. They were total madhouses of drinking and yelling.
nobody can follow a capeshit plot because it doesnt exist
Capeshit is simple but confusing because it's so badly made.
This. Back in the day Shakespeare was less Malick and more Apatow, complete with dick jokes
Why would Shakespeare, Ben Johnson and Marlowe write complex plays for a dumb audience? Look at "Hamlet", this shit is a gigantic play, you need some 5 or 6 hours to stage it completely. It's a play full of subtleties and layers. And it mage a huge success. "Faust" is another example, "The White Devil" too. The dramatists could just go full "lel jokes everywhere, just some burlesque bullshit for this poor dumb people".
Eh...No, not really. He wasn't high-class by any means, but he wasn't as low-brow as you're trying to make him sound.
>Some have greatness thrust upon them
survival of the fittest no longer applies to us
that's why
It was a circlejerk between writers and critics. The common man has always just wanted bread and circus.
>go to theater
>15 silver coins for a large mutton and a pint of ale
>take my seat
>it breaks
>blacksmith is fixing it up and bangs it on his anvil
>my falcon is startled and attacks everyones falcons
>get drunk
>wipe hands on the hair of the viking in front of me
>look at the stage
>bunch of guys dressed as girls start saying shit that isnt even words because shakespeare thinks he can just make his own language
>characters start talking about how the king of a great man so shakespeare can get good reviews and an audiance with the king
>leave theater
Thanks england
>vikings in the theater
where are you at? Dublin?
And we cannot forget the porverty, disease violence, low life expectancy, chaos, filth that afflicted the commom people in London. And the motherfuckers would pay to see a play for hours standing. Nowadays life is way easier, movie theaters are confortable. Man, we really got it easy.
Nottingham
Shakespeare's commoner audience, called groundlings because they stood in front of the stage, shouted and yelled at the actors. They talked amongst themselves freely, threw things on stage and even jumped up there themselves. They also frequently shit, pissed, and puked while just standing there, like animals. They watched for the violence and the humor, that was it. The actors yucked it up and made up their own lines the more laughs they got. They just did whatever they wanted. The groundlings could barely hear the dialogue let alone follow the plot. They just wanted a free bathroom to stand in and to see sword fights and dick jokes.
Marvel and DC audiences are exactly the same, mind you, but Shakespeare was not some complex academic back in the day. Theatre was dismissed as stupid and foolish by most people.
desegregation
It's not a 6 hour play, in truth they would have been urged to go super fast and get it done in 3 hours max. There are no pauses in Shakespeare's lines, bad actors and directors today add breaths and beats where there are none. Even Shakespeare's longest speeches were meant to be done with no pauses
That sounds fun as fuck for everyone involved.
Probably not for Shakespeare desu, that's why the speech Hamlet gives to the acting troupe is like "Say exactly what I write and nothing else" and stuff, it's him talking to his own actors. Also it's the whole point of the play within Midsummer, that's how these shows went usually.
yeah, I'd want to be in that mosh pit
You also think they had designated shooters? But instead of a gun they shot up the place with a cannon.
Great question op. It also makes me wonder how Beijing opera really worked in the past.
I guess there were many types of dramas and performances. Rich people and royals watched what we have today, common people watched others.
Or were Chinese people more literate and had better living standard than Londoners back then?
>the majority of Shakespeare's audience were a bunch of illiterate and semiliterate lower class people who could follow the plot of Hamlet, King Lear, Julius Caesar and Henry IV for 4 hours without breaking a sweat
This is factually inaccurate. The people you are referring to, the 'groundlings', were loud and obnoxious and barely paid attention to the plays themselves. If they cared about anything at all it was the rampant dick jokes peppered throughout every Shakespeare play. Elizabethan theatre was more of a social event more akin to a modern sporting event than an afternoon at the cinema. And the only reason modern audiences have trouble following Hamlet or Macbeth is because of the language. The Early Modern English of Shakespeare is borderline incomprehensible to you're average burgerland mouthbreather, but that isn't because it is 'smarter'. It's a completely different dialect, and our system of speaking has naturally evolved over centuries to become something completely different. If you were to show a Marvel movie to the people of Shakespeare's England, they would have an equally difficult time parsing out the language. And not for nothing, but literally every one of Shakespeare's plays were based on popular stories that just about everyone in Elizabethan England would have been familiar with, not at all unlike the umpteenth reboot of Spider-Man and Batman, specifically because he knew most people wouldn't be paying enough attention to grasp and appreciate an original story.
D-did they have bed scenes and nudity back then?
every character was played by a dude
There are scenes in bedrooms but definitely no sex or nudity. In fact I doubt there was even kissing because only males were allowed onstage but I'm not 100% sure on that one
>Oh i'm slain
Truly a visionary
There were no Beijing opera in Shakespeare's time.
And what Chinese people had back then were as gaudy and low as what we are talking about this thread
There were guns back then.
Actually, if you knew what you were talking about, you would know that aside from a few recorded facts like no womyn and the size/layout of theater most historians are in disagreement over or can only speculate on what original Shakespearean performances actually looked like.
Better quip than anything Iron Man said.
It's not early modern English, it's literally today's language but many of the words and phrases are archaic. Also it's believed by many scholars that the dialect most plays, Shakespeare especially, would have been performed in would be closer to American than any British accent. Also he does have a few plays with no real source material, such as The Tempest and Love's Labor's Lost. (Midsummer as well to an extent, character names and ideas are taken from myth but not the story)
>they stood in front of the stage, shouted and yelled at the actors. They talked amongst themselves freely, threw things on stage and even jumped up there themselves. They also frequently shit, pissed, and puked while just standing there, like animals. They watched for the violence and the humor, that was it. The actors yucked it up and made up their own lines the more laughs they got. They just did whatever they wanted. The groundlings could barely hear the dialogue let alone follow the plot. They just wanted a free bathroom to stand in and to see sword fights and dick jokes.
Sounds like going to the cinema with black people
Go back to op's question.
Op seems to suggest that today's people are stupid and can't follow the plot of Marvel movies.
But this is in itself a unproven premise
True but look into Japanese Noh theatre and their puppet plays, very ornate and ritualistic stuff. Very complex and really neat
Nope. In fact, they didn't have a just about anything we take for granted in modern theatre/cinema. Things like costumes, stage directions, directors, sets, and shutting the fuck up during the show were an invention of the Victorian age, and didn't come about until long after Shakespeare's death. Elizabethan theatre consisted of the actors on a stage with a raised platform in the middle, literally reciting the lines like poetry. The all wore the same uniform which looked like standard clothing for the time, and used wigs and stuff to differentiate between characters. The famous balcony scene from Romeo and Juliette would have consisted of a grown man yelling at a 13 year old boy in a cheap wig standing on a three foot platform and use your damn imagination because that's the best they got.
Lines like that are to inform people what's happening.
There was no CG blood splatter back then.
>yfw you realise shakespeare was a hack wrongly lauded by plebs who couldn't follow simple stories or instructions
>yfw the actual literary geniuses of the time faded into irrelevance almost immediately with none of their work preserved because there was barely anyone around to appreciate it
It'd be like if Nolan was the only director known from the 20th/21st century in 500 years time, and was praised as some sort of revolutionary with people genuinely having to dissect the plane scene in schools and colleges
It's the same principal as modern blockbusters honestly. Even his history plays, including his early work like Henry 6 part 2 and 3, etc. are the equivalent of modern day action movies and shit. People just wanted to see blood and guts. Shakespeare started writing for money, same as anybody else. He gave the people what they wanted. But he also found a way to work in a lot of great, lasting artistic themes and memorable characters, and that's why he's remembered. Though I think Marlowe would have been bigger if he hadn't died so young (he was probably a spy and got assassinated btw, look that up it's neat stuff)
>What went wrong?
The birth of invisible-style writing weakened reading comprehension skills.
>It's not early modern English, it's literally today's language but many of the words and phrases are archaic.
Correct. What I meant by 'Early Modern English' was simply modern English from a long time ago. I didn't mean to suggest that it was a separate language, but a distinct dialect, much like 'ebonics' is the same language, but it's used so outrageously differently as to be nearly incomprehensible if you aren't familiar with it's particular quirks.
Japanese performances are well studied and translated to English.
Noh is for literally patricians. For plebs there were Kabuki
Kabuki is what modern Japanese cinema and tv are made of actually
Spoken like a true luddite.
Shakespeare in particular kind of "directed" the actors with hints in the lines about what they should physically be doing.
Also directing came about officially in the early 1800s and the first really big proponent of it was Wagner along with other opera guy. Early opera sets and special effects are fucking intense by the way, check out some videos of reproductions cause they are beautiful.
Ooh and lighting has been around in primitive forms for a long time, not long after shakespeare they would use colored water in jars with candles behind them and mirrors to direct the light. I think the Italians invented that, not sure though
>13 year old boy
I can still produce something lewd with that
What I don't get is how Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet was perfectly comprehensible, yet Kurzel's MacBeth was painful to get through
They both used the original script for the most part, as far as I'm aware
(before people call me a pleb for calling macbeth incomprehensible; I studied the play and know the story well - even saw Patrick Stewart perform it in London. The film didn't portray that story well. Cinematography was nice though)
What do you mean? It's the truth. I only know so much about it because I study theatre and I've taken a bunch of history and Shakespeare classes, plus worked with the big classical acting company in my town
they had to expose that shit you dumb fucking retard
Try Indians, f a m
youtube.com
Wait. So I got questions.
Op said "ancient people are patricians because they understood plays"
And you said "No they are plebs because they watched for the actions and jokes"
But then you said "ancient plays had no stages, effects, costumes, and audience relied on the lines to understand what's going on. "
Then doesn't that mean they are patricians? Because they can enjoy a show without CGI nudity actions and with only lines?
>just CGI loosely connected to each other
For proof of that, here's 5 minutes of literally just CGI hitting CGI
americlaps got nothin on indiashouts.
>ywn go to a designated screaming cinema
kek
I mean, the audience who actually appreciated the art were patricians. But most of the commoners just wanted to vaguely watch people do funny stuff, they didn't even pay attention. Like I said earlier, most audiences would have thought plays were low class trash. In fact, theater was so hated in England at the time that you had to have an official document granting you royal permission to perform or open a theater. That said, Shakespeare's Kingsmen were the official troupe of several monarchs so even the government sort of liked it. He often tailored his plays to whoever was in charge of the country (Macbeth implies that it was King James' birthright to rule Scotland and England, also James liked witches, etc.)
True patricians prefer oral story telling like the Iliad or the Odyssey. Plebs rely on """"actors""""
They had nothing better to do and knew no better
this might be one of the most offensive videos i've ever seen
I've thought about this a lot, too. In my freshman year of high school we watched Baz Luhrman's Romeo +Juliet after reading the play for the first time, and it was extremely accessible. Years later after being cast in the play, I watched the Zeffirelli version, and even as an adult with a degree in theatre and years of studying classical drama, I found it a lot harder to follow. I think what it comes down to is Luhrman, like him or hate him, is an extremely visual storyteller. I feel like everything a character was saying was expressed somehow in the way the scenes themselves were staged. I honestly think if you were to show that movie to someone who doesn't speak english they would, even without subtitles, have a pretty general idea of what was happening most of the time.
It's always been the same, we're just more exposed to idiots now with the Internet
>Or were Chinese people more literate and had better living standard than Londoners back then?
People in big cities did probably.
London wasn't first class city back then
Hamlet is a huge play but its plot is a rather simple story and mostly it's huge because of enormous monologues in fancy English.
With that said, the contrarians who argue that Shakespeare was just a low-brow pleb writing for plebs are retarded and probably buttmad because they tried reading Romeo & Juliet but didn't have the patience
Shakespearean audience don't read. Modern people do. Period.
What's the funny stuff they do on stage?
Would those funny stuff look archaic and deep to modern Marvel fans?
This. The soundtrack, the over-the-top visual style, even the locations all served as a fairly on the nose way to reinforce the lines. It's almost like watching a visual adaptation of 'No Fear Shakespeare'. The lines are all there, presented as they are in the text, but everything else sort of helps you to make sense of them. A lot of people shit on Luhrman, and I honestly don't really care for him myself, but I always thought R + J was kind of neat. Leguizamo is still my favorite Tybalt.
I agree with this.
Movie goers and play goers are simply watching different things.
Play goers then and now are simply different.
Perhaps 19thC is a good watershed.
19C people are more comparable to 21C people
By comparable I mean it's reasonable to put the two together can call one pleb
Calling 16C people pleb or patricians means nothing really.
There are fart and dick jokes all through shakespeare, also the actors would ham it up and do a lot of physical things to make it "funnier" as well as make up their own shit. They also probably talked directly to the audience and did drunken standup basically.
>the majority of Shakespeare's audience were a bunch of illiterate and semiliterate lower class people
Period.
They can't read. Today's people can. Period.
Stop calling today's people stupid.
>Today's people can
Mainly because Shakespeare's plots were well constructed and his characters had identifiable personalities, so their decisions made logical sense in the context of the drama.
Capeshit characters just do whatever the plot requires to get us to the next action setpiece.
Beijing opera are opera. They had good vocals and acrobats to watch if people didn't understand the literature.
Besides staged drama that they had storytellers, stand up comedy, street singers, joggling, and puppet shows.
In ancient China, like ancient anywhere, entertainment wasn't based on reading comprehension or historical and geographical knowledge.
How about you try to prove today's people can't read?
I have literacy reports and book sales to back me up.
The very fact that we can complain about kids today can't comprehend Shakespeare BY READING BOOKS is a feat people in 16th century cannot imagine