clevermanka (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clevermanka) wrote2024-01-10 12:33 pm
clevermanka) wrote2024-01-10 12:33 pm
Shakespeare and the science of language
I haven't had the brain resources to read this (very old) article about Shakespeare's use of language but I finally manged it today and it's so good. Ignore the clickbaity title that has nothing to do with the content.
This sentence amused me greatly: it makes sense to imagine engagement with art as involving lots of active, self-aware deliberation, with correspondingly high levels of neural activity…doesn’t it? Because no? Not at all? Anyone with even the most superficial experience with general media consumption probably understands on some level that our gut-level, unexamined response to art (of any time) drives a lot of our desire to remain engaged.
But this articulated why I'm often bored with arty, pretentious adaptations of Shakespeare: In addition to its concordance with the 16th-century concept of sprezzatura —lightness, ease, the ability to make even the most difficult things look effortless—a play crafted to maximize delight helped Shakespeare fill theatres in a way that a lot of visible sweating over the lines might not have.
Productions like the 2015 production of Macbeth that don't engage with the absurd, ridiculousness of the source material leave me cold. But I'm still enthralled by the 2009 Hamlet (the one with David Tennant), despite it being conceptually more ~arty~ with its groundbreaking camera technology and plot that is (imo) genuinely more tragic.
Anyway, Shakespeare, yay!
And now I am checking out of anything resembling cohesive thought for the rest of the day.
This sentence amused me greatly: it makes sense to imagine engagement with art as involving lots of active, self-aware deliberation, with correspondingly high levels of neural activity…doesn’t it? Because no? Not at all? Anyone with even the most superficial experience with general media consumption probably understands on some level that our gut-level, unexamined response to art (of any time) drives a lot of our desire to remain engaged.
But this articulated why I'm often bored with arty, pretentious adaptations of Shakespeare: In addition to its concordance with the 16th-century concept of sprezzatura —lightness, ease, the ability to make even the most difficult things look effortless—a play crafted to maximize delight helped Shakespeare fill theatres in a way that a lot of visible sweating over the lines might not have.
Productions like the 2015 production of Macbeth that don't engage with the absurd, ridiculousness of the source material leave me cold. But I'm still enthralled by the 2009 Hamlet (the one with David Tennant), despite it being conceptually more ~arty~ with its groundbreaking camera technology and plot that is (imo) genuinely more tragic.
Anyway, Shakespeare, yay!
And now I am checking out of anything resembling cohesive thought for the rest of the day.