Hmm. Surely forgetting history only condemns one to repeat it, and is the
surest way of binding yourself to that old wheel... I suppose a good example
of immersion in tradition spawning innovation is Rimbaud, who was very good
(he won prizes) at writing alexandrines in Latin. I seriously doubt that he
could have sustained his startling innovations without the prosodic
intelligence he gained through such exercises.
Roger, you have every right to loathe Shakespeare, but I do think it's a bit
mysterious, since your reason seems merely to be that he's basically an
"establishment" writer, which seems to me more a reaction to the cult of WS
than to the work itself. You might try reading Jonathan Dollimore's "Radical
Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His
Contemporaries", which I see has just been republished with a forward by
Terry Eagleton. - It might be interesting to know, more specifically, what
it is that you object to in his work.
Tolstoy loathed Shakespeare too (Tolstoy's critique of Lear is somewhat
hilarious, especially if you try to read Tolstoy's own appalling attempts at
drama), and WS was sternly upbraided by Dryden for being far too messy and
unclassical a writer; and didn't Green attack WS during his lifetime for
being an uneducated upstart, a crow with borrowed feathers or somesuch?
Best
A
On 13/12/05 11:47 PM, "Roger Day" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Wheels come in many shapes sizes and forms, some almost looking like
> tank tracks. Isn't it fun to discover how to make a *new wheel? At
> least it would be *your wheel. Far better I would have thought than
> chaining yourself to that old one...
>
> Byee
>
> R
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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