Why is he so good /lit/bros? Finished Julius Caesar and then

Go to sleep Bloom

His range as an artist is insane. How can he go from this deep, tragic political drama to a wonderful, brilliant romantic comedy and be just as poetically outstanding at both? In the same year?

>There is a tide in the affairs of men,
>Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
>Omitted, all the voyage of their life
>Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
>On such a full sea are we now afloat,
>And we must take the current when it serves
>Or lose our ventures.

And

> He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me: at which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles, for every passion something and for no passion truly anything, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to forswear the full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely monastic.


How is this humanly possible?

>>9778601
He played to the lowest common denominator audience of his time. It's only fitting that today's rabble come to find him and appreciate him.

>>9778792
That's the thing though. How could he manage to play to the lowest common denominator and yet at the same time be one of the most profound writers who ever lived?

>>9778792

This is only half true. Shakespeare's genius -- or, I should say, part of his genius, because it was so expansive -- lay in creating drama that appealed to all types of viewers. The audience at the Globe wasn't only groundlings: it was actually a pretty representative cross-section of society. Meaning there is, in his drama, something for everyone, the educated and the uneducated alike. Hence there is everything from crass humour to transcendental musings. The fact that he could do all of that, and make everything work without any of it jarring unpleasantly, is testament to his brilliance.

>>9778797
>profound
He isn't profound. He's clever. He can turn a phrase in an interesting way, lace dialogue with truisms and witticisms that make the hoi polloi nod their heads and think themselves smart for understanding it, but in the end he's just pulling the same strings the Greeks did hundreds of years before Willy drew his first breath.

>>9778807
>He isn't profound.

profound
prəˈfaʊnd/Submit
adjective
1.
(of a state, quality, or emotion) very great or intense.
"profound feelings of disquiet"
2.
(of a person or statement) having or showing great knowledge or insight.
"a profound philosopher"

Both apply to Shakespeare.

>>9778807
>the hoi polloi

Am I the only one here who gets a giggle out of this phrasing?

>>9778875
>The The People
>Chairman Mao Chairman

>>9778882

also (and more like)
>plebian

Julius Caesar is an unjust defamation of Julius Caesar, and it suggests that the profligate and traitorous Brutus' actions were noble.

>>9778946
Brutus was a true son of Rome deposing a tyrant and blackguard. It is a shame there were not more daggers to find their way into the gullet of he who would trespass against the Republic.

>>9778807
edgy mcedgestoy

>>9778946
Except if you had read the play you would know Shakespeare meant the opposite.

>>9778961
Julius Caesar made Rome accept its true glorious imperial form. Why should Rome be limited to an inefficient Republic when there were great men alive that could rule much more effectively than a disjointed congress?

>>9778986
I have read the play. It goes out of its way to depict the glorious, genius Julius Gaius Caesar as a weak, imprudent fool. There was no excuse for Brutus' actions.

>>9778995
Caesar being weak and Brutus being unjustified are not in contradiction with each other.

The first thing Brutus has the plotters do after killing Caesar is bathe their swords in his blood and go around shouting about liberty as Rome descends into chaos...

>>9778998
Yes, but even that scene sympathizes too much with Brutus. It depicts him as someone who works for the ideals of the republic.

>>9778601
Anyone else think that he was clearly really fucking smart, but that his plays have none of the "super deep profound truths" that people (hi Bloom) always say they do? I mean I can appreciate his poetic and linguistic brilliance, but the stuff that Shakespeare shows about humanity is pretty typical, not especially deep fare

>inb4 le it was deep for his time meme

not an excuse. the point is that people say that he is one of the profoundest writers EVER, including recent times, when like >>9778807 said, he was mostly just high IQ, clever.

>>9779011
I honestly feel this way about most works of literature. I think academe likes to read more in to works than there actually exists, rather than appreciating the art of it.