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- The idea here is that Shakespeare's works are "standing on the shoulders of giants". So in the same way that Eminem's reputation benefited from the innovations in style that were actually first introduced by others (e.g. Rakim, Nas), Shakespeare's reputation among some people may be benefiting from people associating all of the emotional power of his stories with Shakespeare himself rather than associating some of that emotional power with the earlier Greek stories / playwrights.
- One possible interpretation of the saying "good artists copy; great artists steal" is that "copying" is when the general public knows that you are not the first artist to introduce an idea, whereas "stealing" is when the general public thinks you are the first to come up with an idea. Thus you become "great" in the minds of the public because you seem able to come up with lots of never-seen-before ideas.
- Related: Shakespeare's Hamlet was apparently based on earlier works that covered the same basic plot.
- Penguin Popular Classics (1994 edition) - Hamlet - Introduction
- The story of Hamlet in some form is found very early in European literature. It occurs in the Historia Danica of Saxo Grammaticus, who flourished about A.D. 1250, but the immediate source of the play is in the Histoires Tragiques of Francois de Belleforest, published in Paris in 1570. Belleforest's story is crude and bloody. [Description of the plot follows.] This story was the basis of a play which was produced some time before 1589. [Description of literary references to a Hamlet play from before Shakespeare's version came out.] There was therefore a Hamlet play in existence and popular between 1589 and 1596. (...) This earlier Hamlet has disappeared, but there is a crude German version known as Bestrafte Brudermord, or Fratricide Punished.
- The fact that the earlier Hamlet play did not survive through the ages is a good example of how an artist's reputation can grow as his influences are forgotten about.
- The story of Hamlet in some form is found very early in European literature. It occurs in the Historia Danica of Saxo Grammaticus, who flourished about A.D. 1250, but the immediate source of the play is in the Histoires Tragiques of Francois de Belleforest, published in Paris in 1570. Belleforest's story is crude and bloody. [Description of the plot follows.] This story was the basis of a play which was produced some time before 1589. [Description of literary references to a Hamlet play from before Shakespeare's version came out.] There was therefore a Hamlet play in existence and popular between 1589 and 1596. (...) This earlier Hamlet has disappeared, but there is a crude German version known as Bestrafte Brudermord, or Fratricide Punished.
- Penguin Popular Classics (1994 edition) - Hamlet - Introduction
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- Related links
- Wikipedia - Shakespeare's writing style
- Shakespeare's characters were complex and human in nature.
- He made the protagonist's character development central to the plot
- He changed what could be accomplished with drama (by making character development central to the plot).
- Wikipedia - Shakespeare's writing style
- Dramatic techniques
- http://penandthepad.com/dramatic-techniques-shakespeare-8540495.html
- Monologues and Soliloquies
- Recurring Imagery
- Unexpected Asides
- Dramatic Irony
- http://penandthepad.com/dramatic-techniques-shakespeare-8540495.html
- He writes lyrics that are open to more than one interpretation / ambiguous / have more than one meaning.
- The Beatles wrote lyrics that were open to interpretation, but I think in some cases they were just writing nonsense that their listeners would interpret as containing secret meaning.
- Shakespeare also wrote things that had full double-meanings, like double-entendres.
Misc
- 2017.02.24 - YouTube - NativLang - What Shakespeare's English Sounded Like - and how we know
- Towards the end he gives an example of Shakespeare playing around with the ordering of words, where he combines two sentences into one, so that the audience has to untangle them:
- I with death and with
Reward did threaten and encourage him,
Not doing ’t and being done - Translation:
I threatened to kill him if he didn’t and to reward him if he did.
- I with death and with
- Towards the end he gives an example of Shakespeare playing around with the ordering of words, where he combines two sentences into one, so that the audience has to untangle them:
- StackExchange - Literature - Why did Shakespeare write in iambic pentameter?
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