The DU Lounge

Agree with all except 1 and 6

1. The history plays are Tudor propaganda. Unbalanced and inaccurate by design.
Many other plays are reworks of earlier publications of Italian (All’s Well That Ends Well, Cymbeline and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, heavy influence of Boccaccio) , French (Love’s Labour’s Lost) and Danish (Hamlet is based on 'Amleth' by Saxo Grammaticus, ~1200CE) stories. Shakespeare adapts 'Hamlet' from the French translation from Danish done by Belleforest. We know this because Shakespeare makes more than fifty allusions to characters, events or words and phrases in Belleforest’s Les Histoires Tragiques.

Locations and cultures are transposed. Interesting. Entertaining but not accurate history. Until very recently history was strictly a branch of literature, eg of fiction. The kind of history that says Rome is started by Romulus and Remus who were nursed by a wolf. History is more forensic and fact based now. Thomas Jefferson's miracle-free Bible was emblematic of the turning point from fictional history to fact-seeking.

6. Marlowe and Jonson were easily as good as the best Shakespeare stuff. There is a lot of grammatical error in Shakespeare that remains uncorrected. I looked into the original wording and punctuation of "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, (sic) and our little life (sic) is rounded with a sleep." It was worse in the 1623 portfolio but even now there are two obvious grammar errors (or typos). That IMHO is the problem with using only superlatives and pretending it is all perfect.

To be more clear, I love that line but I think the lack of correction shows the confusion this stuff can bring to less confident readers and, to my original point, students. I also think convolutions are part of the appeal. It's like Yoda. It sounds smarter because it is convoluted or errant yet enshrined like gospel.