I'm a youngish person. I'm not so old that I remember Kate Beckinsale's Dad, but not so young that I think Donkey Kong is from a game that uses bongos. Therefore, I have absolutely zero reason to read Shakespeare. I don't have to go to school and read it, I don't have to pretend to like it to get into some dusty old Librarians dung hampers. And yet, I still have read it. I have had it forced down my throat like a priests cock. I have read enough Shakespeare to make me realise something: It's all fucking wank.
There are numerous reasons why Shakespeare is lauded as a genius, all of them spurious and made up purely for one thing: So people think they are intellectual titans. I'll tell you something from the other side of the coin, namely why it's all fucking shit.
Romeo And Juliet
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Arguably his most famous play, and maybe his most critically lauded, Romeo and Juliet is a pile of dung so bad that it just doesn't even deserve to be used on your garden. Firstly, the premise is fucking stupid. People today refer to the main characters as stupid shit like 'archetypal young lovers' or 'the greatest love story of all time'. When you take into account that it is between a 13 year old and a 15-21 year old, that takes a little sheen off it. Let's not forget that it took place between 4 and 6 days, depending on who you ask, and it sounds like a silly little crush to me.
I mean seriously, 6 days earlier Romeo was spluffing in his shorts about some tart named Rosaline, the next thing you know he is topping himself because his criminally young missus of 6 days is brown bread. Samuel Pepys agreed with me, he thought it was shit too. And this is a bloke who got caught by his wife with his hand up her top and the other one knuckle deep in the help. And when she got sacked, he carried on shagging her! So he knows what the fuck he is on about. If none of that is enough to convince you of how shocking it is, he ripped off the whole fucking story from someone else anyway!
Oh, and Mercutio is ridiculous, but I will cover him in more detail later.
I mean seriously, 6 days earlier Romeo was spluffing in his shorts about some tart named Rosaline, the next thing you know he is topping himself because his criminally young missus of 6 days is brown bread. Samuel Pepys agreed with me, he thought it was shit too. And this is a bloke who got caught by his wife with his hand up her top and the other one knuckle deep in the help. And when she got sacked, he carried on shagging her! So he knows what the fuck he is on about. If none of that is enough to convince you of how shocking it is, he ripped off the whole fucking story from someone else anyway!
Oh, and Mercutio is ridiculous, but I will cover him in more detail later.
It Was Made For Stupid People
Image Credit: walesonline.co.uk
Shakespeare was the 16th century equivalent of Adam Herz. If you're wondering who he is, he wrote the film American Pie. A lot of people enjoyed this film. It did quite well at the box office. Consider this, though: Most of the people who watched it don't wear bespoke tailored trousers though. You wouldn't find it being discussed at the interlude of the RSCs production of The Tempest, for example. Yet, the people who watch American Pie today are the people who would have watched Shakespeare in the 16th Century.
Does that mean in 400 years pseudo intellectuals and actual intellectuals alike are going to pretend to like American Pie? Does it mean that Patrick Stewart's relative is going to be playing Stiffler at The Globe some day? No, of course not. Those same ridiculous cunts are going to still be wasting their time watching badly thought out, badly acted and indecipherable plays from the 1500's. Writing, acting and general film/play making skills have improved immeasurably in just the last 40 years. So why do we still worship at the altar of 400 year old manuscripts, that got mixed reviews at the time?
And back to Mercutio as promised, weirdly enough, this is where the American Pie similarities really kick in. Mercutio and Stiffler are exactly the same person. The only difference is that Mercutio is black.
Does that mean in 400 years pseudo intellectuals and actual intellectuals alike are going to pretend to like American Pie? Does it mean that Patrick Stewart's relative is going to be playing Stiffler at The Globe some day? No, of course not. Those same ridiculous cunts are going to still be wasting their time watching badly thought out, badly acted and indecipherable plays from the 1500's. Writing, acting and general film/play making skills have improved immeasurably in just the last 40 years. So why do we still worship at the altar of 400 year old manuscripts, that got mixed reviews at the time?
And back to Mercutio as promised, weirdly enough, this is where the American Pie similarities really kick in. Mercutio and Stiffler are exactly the same person. The only difference is that Mercutio is black.
It Hasn't Aged Well
Image Credit: theguardian.com
This is a common complaint from schoolchildren. “Miss, it doesn't make sense”. It's true, not only does it not make sense now, it probably didn't back then either.
Shakespeare zealots are forever furiously wanking themselves like gibbons over how many words he made up. Right, so let me get this straight. He couldn't express himself using the language, so he just made up some fucking words. Does that mean that whoever invented 'YOLO' and 'swag' are destined to be elevated to the upper echelons of the literary world? Hell, even writers not 50 years after he died couldn't make head nor tail of the shit he was shovelling out. Take John Dryden for example, who said the English language “is so much refin'd since Shakespeare's time, that many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible”.
Even pre 1700 mother fuckers couldn't understand this shit, yet we are supposed to herald it as some sort of how to guide on the way to becoming erudite? Even when his plays get brought into modern settings and using modern language, we end up with piles of shit like 10 Things I Hate About You. You want to know why? Because his stories suck, his premises sucks and his characters fucking suck.
There is only one half decent thing to do with Shakespeare and that is when Neil Gaiman wrote it into a couple of arcs of The Sandman. Other than that, his work is a waste of paper.
Shakespeare zealots are forever furiously wanking themselves like gibbons over how many words he made up. Right, so let me get this straight. He couldn't express himself using the language, so he just made up some fucking words. Does that mean that whoever invented 'YOLO' and 'swag' are destined to be elevated to the upper echelons of the literary world? Hell, even writers not 50 years after he died couldn't make head nor tail of the shit he was shovelling out. Take John Dryden for example, who said the English language “is so much refin'd since Shakespeare's time, that many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible”.
Even pre 1700 mother fuckers couldn't understand this shit, yet we are supposed to herald it as some sort of how to guide on the way to becoming erudite? Even when his plays get brought into modern settings and using modern language, we end up with piles of shit like 10 Things I Hate About You. You want to know why? Because his stories suck, his premises sucks and his characters fucking suck.
There is only one half decent thing to do with Shakespeare and that is when Neil Gaiman wrote it into a couple of arcs of The Sandman. Other than that, his work is a waste of paper.
By The Cunt
Email The Cunt
A hidden face of the crew, The Cunt is main coder for Foul Entertainment games. He is currently documenting the progress of our game, Foul Fantasy, in his dev blogs.
Email The Cunt
A hidden face of the crew, The Cunt is main coder for Foul Entertainment games. He is currently documenting the progress of our game, Foul Fantasy, in his dev blogs.