Is there required reading before Shakespeare?

Theres very little of old Bill that isnt accessible on its own merits.

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>>9548686
>Greeklets think they can read anything outside of Dr. Seuss without first resuming with the Romans

>>9548700
>tfw school started us on The Very Hungry Caterpillar before we'd read Homer

Should i just kill myself? How can I read the Western canon in order now?

>>9548686
>Will I be able to read Othello without being confused if I haven't read the canon up until then?

Yes. You can read and reread Othello without reading anything before it and you'll enjoy it. Do it. Also know that you probably won't LOVE Shakespeare right off the bat, and you definitely won't appreciate him right away. Re-read him and re-read him, go back to the Greeks, fuck around with the Romans, and read him again and again.

>>9548686

Well, to humor the autism you're pretending at, I'd say before you get to old Bill Shakespeare, you'd have to read the Golding translation of the Metamorphosis. So not only would you read something the bard actually read himself (and thus, whose 'actual' language would be an influence on, but you'd be able to pick up on allusions as they were read

Reading Ovid will give you a greater understanding of Shakespearean thought since it's influence is blatant throughout.

...Not everyone read Shakespeare in school? I thought everyone was familiar with at least some Shakespeare because everyone had to study it in school.

>>9548730
Golding's translation is shit though

>>9548700
>Assigning an epistemological treatise like Horton Hears a Who to undergrads who haven't even read Plato's Republic
Never teach

>>9548764
My country removed Shakespeare from the curriculum for not being relevant to modern kids.

>>9548831
WHAT?

I work in a school, while it can be a hard sell at first you can have a class of 14 year old genuinely interested - or at the very least, better behaved than normal - within a few weeks of starting a Shakespeare unit, his stories are universal.

I wasn't even aware of Shakespeare as a kid.

>>9548686
Shakespeare was trying to appeal to all demographics, so you'll be fine.
You might miss the odd detail, like how Romeo and Juliet is a complete retelling of Pyramus and Thisbe, but nothing that will detract from your enjoyment.

>>9548850
>Twilight and The Hunger Games are flavour of the month, while Shakespeare is out in the cold. CHARLEY MANN looks at what is being read in New Zealand schools.

>Shakespeare will be expelled from NCEA exams at the end of the year and won't be back any time soon.

>Instead, pupils are critically examining Twilight and The Hunger Games series.

>Academics are becoming increasingly concerned that the high school curriculum has been dumbed down for a generation that demands instant gratification from books.

JUST

>>9548963
This is what kills me about modern pedagogy. You're locking kids in a building against their will all day; if you're just going to assign shit they'd do anyway, why are are they at school at all?

>>9548774
What translation would you have people read?

>>9548774
>>9549347

Golding's translation is certainly a little hard to get into. Written/framed around Christian morals (and Golding was upfront about this), and written in rhymes with words that hadn't yet arrived at their familiar spelling

>I would not wish the simple sort offended for to bee,
When in this booke the heathen names of feyned Godds they see.
The trewe and everliving God the Paynims did not knowe:
Which caused them the name of Godds on creatures to bestow.
For nature beeing once corrupt and knowledge blynded quyght
By Adams fall, those little seedes and sparkes of heavenly lyght

So please, if you want to get savor the Metamorphoses (to the extent you can not being fluent in Latin), then seek a newer translation.

BUT, counterpoint.

Sometimes we have to meme our way into harder work. Firstly, both Harold Bloom and Ezra Pound call the Golding their favorite. Not lit's favorite authors by any means, but enough to clue you in that there is magic to older translations that they saw that you might very well see too.

Too, and like I said in the previous post, if you're just like autistically obsessed with Shakespeare, then this is the translation you read. Period. By sheer virtue of it being the version he read and was influenced by.

"Pale hecates offerings.."? That's from the Golding. His Pyramus and Thisbe (and Romeo & Juliet to boot)? Golding.

These should be enough to entice at least a curious peruse if not a full commitment to the reading.

Again, though, and I'll agree with the original "Golding's translation is shit though" when I say this. If you want to not ruin Ovid just for the sake of being an ABSOLUTE Shakespeare completionist, then seek a newer translation.

But of course, Shakespeare's works tend to stand on their own and that whole shebang

>>9549418
Didn't Shakespeare learn Latin in school though?

>>9549111

Mandatory schooling should really work the students. The government literally mandates that you be there or have an equivalent education in some capacity. In the US our public education is totally misinformed about developmental psychology and systems of thought. That's just the northern US. In the Southeast they teach fucking creationism in schools.

>>9549429

Certainly some. But doubtfully (though who really knows) a fluent, conversant latin of the sort that your Ben Johnson would be able to command. I would at least hedge not enough to 'prefer' a Latin version of Ovid over an English translation. That is, he may have retained enough Latin to smatter into his plays the odd phrase, but not enough to hold poetic command over a latin reading. Of course, he was William Fucking Shakespeare, so for all I know he was Christopher Marlowe when it came to Latin, it just doesn't seem likely.

Our biggest evidence for this view is, again, Golding. The evidence comes in the form of influence and allusion, intentional and not. Shakespeare was, if anything, a hoover for all things he read, making mince meat out of his Holinshead's chronicles, yet this process was one that not only shaped/gave Shakespeare's plots, but too, crops up as phrases throughout his plays. That is, just like that smattering of Montaigne in the Tempest, you can see bits of Golding, almost direct quotations, throughout his works (especially the Greek fantastical plays).