Lifetime Plans Horror Series Based on Shakespeare's Plays

Dominic Monaghan joins Shakespeare horror anthology series ‘A Midsummer’s Nightmare’

By Emily Rome  @EmilyNRome | Friday, Oct 7, 2016 6:09 PM

1 comments

“It will have blood. They say, blood will have blood.”
Things are about to get even bloodier than Shakespeare’s bloodiest revenge stories, and Dominic Monaghan is on board. The Lost and Lord of the Rings alum has signed on for a role in Lifetime’s horror anthology take on the Bard’s plays.

There’s certainly plenty in Shakespeare that lends itself to horror — Macbeth and Titus Andronicus come to mind — but Lifetime is turning to a comedy play for its first season: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The anthology series itself is titled A Midsummer’s Nightmare.

Monaghan is playing the show’s version of Puck. The Brit best known for playing a mischievous hobbit seems like a solid fit for Robin Goodfellow. In this interpretation, Puck is “Mike Puck,” according to Deadline, “the laid-back and well-spoken proprietor of the Dreamland Retreat, a rustic group of rental cabins in the woods. Although initially suspicious of his young guests, Puck becomes a formidable ally when things start to go awry.”

Anthony Jaswinski, who wrote this summer’s The Shallows, is adapting Shakespeare’s Midsummer for the series. Along with the addition of Monaghan to the project, Jaswinski is joined today by Gary Fleder (Zoo, Kingdom), who will direct the pilot and executive produce the series.
Here’s how Lifetime described the series earlier this year:

An anthological concept where each season takes a classic Shakespearean tale and twists it into a modern-day horror-mystery. A Midsummer Night’s Dream inspires the first season as two young lovers escape their lives on a romantic getaway into the woods until their journey takes an unexpected twist when their friends arrive trying to lure them back home. Something hiding in the forest has other plans, however, and they are targeted one by one while a thrilling and desperate tale of survival unravels. 

Variety reported that the plays are turned into “contemporary horror mysteries,” so I’m assuming Lifetime will set the series in modern day with language not in verse. (Maybe they’ll find that earlier eras lend themselves to horror interpretations of some plays, though, just as American Horror Story has set each of its cycles in a different time and place.) So Monaghan won’t need any advice from his LotR buddy Billy Boyd about taking on the Bard’s verse, but perhaps he and Boyd will still find themselves comparing notes on Shakespeare sometime (Boyd played Banquo in a 2013 production of Macbeth at the Globe).

I’d like to see the inherent horror elements of The Scottish Play and Titus ramped up for this series. Caliban in The Tempest too could give us a striking horror fantasy. Hamlet is psychological thriller-ready. But I’m also intrigued by the possibilities of adding horror elements to other plays. Perhaps a Comedy of Errors where all the misunderstandings and mistaken identity make for gory tragedy instead of humorous reunions. Or an alternate take on The Merchant of Venice where Portia never makes it to court and we do see a pound of flesh cut from Antonio.

Interesting question here: Can a Midsummer’s Nightmare finale give us a happy ending? Will a comedy-based play still end in a wedding? Or will a final girl be the only one who makes it out of Dreamland Retreat? So long as the project gets a series order, I suppose we’ll find out once Midsummer’s Nightmare makes its debut on Lifetime.

Emily Rome

An enthusiast of time travel stories, film scores, avocados and Charades, Emily Rome is an alumna of Loyola Marymount University and a native of beautiful Washington State. Emily’s writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly and The Hollywood Reporter. Follow her on Twitter @EmilyNRome.

Canada's Top Novelist's Latest Book Retells "The Tempest" Through Prison Inmates' Stage Production

Margaret Atwood’s clever retelling a Shakespeare production put on by inmates

on October 2, 2016 - 12:01 AM

Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold
By Margaret Atwood
Hogarth
295 pages, $25

By Karen Brady

Margaret Atwood unleashes her wicked wit in the wonderfully named “Hag-Seed,” a cunning new novel bound to charm thespians everywhere – particularly those with ties to Ontario’s Stratford Festival.

For the Toronto-based Atwood – surely Canada’s best-known author – places this present-day retelling of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” in what we can only assume are the environs of Stratford and London, Ont., using as her protagonist one Felix Phillips, artistic director of the fictional repertory theater, the Makeshiweg Festival.

Like Stratford, the Makeshiweg has “fluttering pennants,” an “outdoor patio and landscaped floral surroundings and festive ice cream-licking playgoers,” the main street of the town replete “with its pricey restaurants and its pubs ornamented with the heads of archaic poets and pigs and Renaissance queens … and its Celtic woollen-goods outlets and Inuit carving shops and English china boutiques, and then its handsome yellow brick houses with their occasional bed and breakfast signs…”

Alas. Felix will soon be banished from his beloved Makeshiweg – much as Shakespeare’s Prospero was ousted, centuries ago, from his position as the Duke of Milan, both removals the result of power grabs sending Prospero and Felix into exile.

Felix’s takes place at the hands of Tony, the festival’s glad-handing “factotum” (think Antonio, brother of Prospero), along with Canada’s grudge-holding heritage minister Sal O’Nally (counterpoint: Shakespeare’s Alonso, King of Naples).

Betrayal begets reprisal, of course, and Atwood is at her cleverest as her Felix plots his, first from his rural Ontario hideaway, then from the Fletcher County Correctional Institute where – using the nom de plume “Mr. Duke” – he takes a position teaching in the prison’s Literacy Through Literature program: His focus will be the plays of Shakespeare, and his students will not only read but will perform Shakespeare, something they do for several years while Felix bides his time.

He is a man transfixed on revenge: “He longed for it. He day-dreamed about it. Tony and Sal must suffer. His present woeful situation was their doing … What was Felix waiting for? He hardly knew … suppressed rage sustained him. That and his thirst for justice.”

It is a delicious conundrum – and Atwood’s contribution to the Hogarth Shakespeare series commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Other authors taking part in the international publishing effort include such notables as Anne Tyler, Edward St. Aubyn, Jeanette Winterson, Howard Jacobson, Gillian Flynn, Tracey Chevalier and Jo Nesbo, each creating a fresh novel from a Shakespeare play. (Ian McEwan’s brilliant new “Nutshell,” an unrelated Doubleday title, is based on the work of the bard as well, taking its inspiration from “Hamlet.”)

“The Tempest” – known for island storms, the magic of Ariel and the moods of Caliban, son of the malevolent Sycorax – is the perfect vehicle for Atwood’s “Hag-Seed.” Exile is not an isle here but a hideout, a subterfuge, a prison – and Miranda, Felix’s cherished daughter, exists only onstage although her presence is sensed by Felix whenever it is dusk.

A triply tragic figure, he lost his wife – to complications following childbirth – three years before his dismissal from the Makeshiweg. And, mere months before that life-altering expulsion, he lost little Miranda as well, to meningitis. But the child stays with him, a spirit-presence who grows older, as the years go by.

“Miranda’s fifteen now, a lovely girl,” Felix muses. “All grown up from the cherub on the swing who’s still enclosed in her silver frame beside his bedside … If she’d lived, she would have been at the awkward teenager stage: making dismissive comments, rolling her eyes at him, dying her hair, tattooing her arms. Hanging out in bars, or worse. He’s heard the stories. But none of that has happened. She remains simple, she remains innocent. She’s such a comfort.”

With this exception, Atwood stays close to Shakespeare’s plot – and she does so in a double way when she has Felix prepare his inmate-students for the production of his life, the very version of “The Tempest” he was planning for the Makeshiweg when he was so unceremoniously stripped of his directorship.

Thus it is that Atwood creates not only a play-within-a-play but the same play within itself, centuries apart.

It is an exceptional move, marred only by Atwood’s tendency to treat the prison production as only a professor or director would – with long, agonizing analyses of the play, and equally long, agonizing indecision over which inmate would be best for the parts not only of Ariel and Caliban but also such lesser folk as Stephano or Gonzalo.

Ferdinand one can understand for he, the prince of Naples, will be Miranda’s love interest – and Felix is fiercely protective not only of his own Miranda but also of Anne-Marie Greenland, the actress who was to play Miranda in the aborted Makeshiweg production 12 years before and who has graciously agreed to come to the prison to fulfill that dream.

Consenting to do this, she shakes Felix’s hand: “She had a grip like a jar-opener,” he notes. “Chastity won’t be the only reason his Prospero will be warning the Ferdinand lad to keep away from this girl: Ferdinand wouldn’t want to be a pre-mangled bridegroom.”

There is much hilarity here – especially within the prison walls where “Mr. Duke” has become a fixture, and inmates vie for spots in his classes. They all have monikers of their own -- Leggs, PPod, Bent Pencil, Wonderboy, 8Handz et al. – and personalities to match. For the duration, they have pledged to use only swear words from the production – “hag-seed” and “whoreson,” both referring to Caliban, and other words of the same ilk.

“Power struggles, treacheries, crimes,” Felix reflects, “these subjects were immediately grasped by his students since in their own ways they were experts in them.”

Felix himself will play Prospero and, crème de la crème, two Canadian ministers will pay a visit to the prison, to view the latest product of the Literacy Through Literature program – those dignitaries being Sal and, of course, Tony, now a minister too. Felix plans to subject them to a tempest of his own – one as makeshift as the prison costumes and sets but, with the aid of electronics, a very frightening tempest indeed.

“If his magic holds and his play is successful, he’ll get his heart’s desire,” he considers. “But if he fails…”

“Trust the play,” he decides. “But is the play trustworthy?”

Atwood plies her witchcraft in several directions here – and one can only guess at how many names and situations are in-jokes (a longtime practice of hers), adding more levels to an already-layered book. Local readers will pick up on her reference to “the Timmys doughnut chain” being responsible for one inmate’s sobriquet, “TimEEz.”

Fletcher, the prison, is fictional – but Atwood makes mention of a justice course once being taught there by the University of Western Ontario – which is in London, fewer than 40 miles from Stratford. As for the hallowed Stratford Festival being the inspiration for Felix – Atwood includes, among her acknowledgments, the fact that “Felix Phillips borrowed his last name from the late Robin Phillips, longtime theatre director at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada.”

In sum and in almost every way, Atwood’s latest offering is – in the words of Fletcher inmate Leggs – “whoreson fantastic!”

Statisticians Track Shakespeare's Popularity Around the World

What Is Shakespeare’s Most Popular Play?

By Dan Kopf · 5,205 views · More stats

Share

Tweet

William Shakespeare died 400 years ago, but his work is more popular than ever. Every year, hundreds of professional productions of his plays are put on in the United States alone, and there are over seventy Shakespeare festivals around the world. 

No other playwright comes close.

One of the most astonishing aspects of Shakespeare’s legacy is that no single play dominates his reputation. While most great artists have a seminal work—Leonardo and the Mona Lisa, Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice, Beethoven and Symphony No. 5—this is not true for Shakespeare. Ask people about the play the Bard is best known for, and you will get a variety of answers. 

When we asked San Francisco park goers about the first Shakespeare play that came to their mind, the most common answer was Romeo and Juliet. But nearly as many mentioned Macbeth and Hamlet. And a few mentioned A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing. (One little boy boldly answered Star Wars.)

So which is Shakespeare’s seminal play?

There are a range of approaches to answering this question. You could look at the many onlinepolls and reviews, or the vast scholarly literature. But they all disagree.

We suggest a different approach: Just look at which play gets performed the most. 

***

Erik Minton is a Shakespeare obsessive. He has seen each of the over 40 plays in the Shakespeare canon and over 400 total Shakespeare productions. His courtship with his wife even involved cooking Shakespeare-themed meals. To quote Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Minton does not believe there could be “Too much of a good thing.”

Beginning in 2011, Minton started keeping his list of upcoming Shakespeare productions on his website. The list of nearly 2,000 productions—75% of which were in the United States—includes the vast majority of notable professional performances in North America, England, and Australia, and a smattering of performances elsewhere. According to our research, his list of productions is the most comprehensive available. Minton gave us access to his website's archives for our analysis.

The following chart shows which Shakespeare plays have been produced most by major theatre companies since 2011. It is our revealed preference—a combination of what companies can and want to perform and what people want to see. 

Data: Shakespeareances

Minton was not surprised to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream was Shakespeare’s most performed play—accounting for over 7% of all productions. It is also the play he has seen most. “It appeals to people who aren’t familiar with Shakespeare.” Minton says,“You are gonna get the comedy even if you’re not proficient at speaking in verse.”

Dr. Cynthia Lewis, an English Professor and Shakespeare specialist at Davidson College, agrees that A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s number one ranking makes sense. She explains that while plays like Merchant of Venice can be puzzling because of its multiple interweaving plots, A Midsummer Night’s Dream has a simple structure. “[The play] is really just a story of four lovers who go out to the woods and get confused.” She added, “It’s also hilariously funny.”

Lewis expected that Romeo and Juliet would be among the most popular plays to stage (more on this later), but she was pleasantly surprised that Twelfth Night ranked third. She figures modern audiences are drawn to its female protagonist, Viola, and the appealing plot elements (like the “dressing down” of the arrogant Malvolio). “All this sort of gender bending [and] flirtation with homoeroticism,” says Lewis. “I think for a modern audience this is pretty much fun because our culture is very well attuned now to issues of gender and issues of sexual identity.”

She was disappointed to to see that Love’s Labours Lost, All’s Well That Ends Well, and Antony and Cleopatra are so infrequently performed. She points out that all have powerful female protagonists. She supposes that Love’s Labour Lost is not staged as often because it is “bound up in topical references” that puzzle modern audiences.

The data that Minton collected also includes the location of each production. The chart below compares the plays staged most often in America to the most popular plays abroad.

Data: Shakespeareances

Apparently, Romeo and Juliet has a specific appeal to Americans. It is second most popular production in the U.S., but is not even among the ten most performed plays abroad (it is tied for 11th). Maybe Romeo and Juliet’s theme of forbidden love is particularly relatable in multiethnic, American society. Or maybe it’s because Leonardo DiCaprio played Romeo on the big screen, creating a generation of unlikely fans.

Erik Minton hypothesizes that the popularity of Romeo and Juliet in the United States is partly a result of playing to the Valentine’s Day crowd. We checked the data, and Minton is on to something.

The likelihood of performing Romeo and Juliet in February is double that of other months.

Mya Gosling, the author of the popular Shakespeare webcomic Good Tickle Brain, is struck by the difference between the top plays in the U.S. and other countries. “Does the popularity of King Lear over Romeo and Juliet mean that the rest of the world is brooding over parental relationships and family dynamics,” she asks, “while Americans are just running around thinking about sex all the time?”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Shakespeare’s most popular play both in the United States and abroad. Does that mean it is Shakespeare’s Mona Lisa? 

No. Few Shakespeare experts consider it one of his greatest plays and it is not significantly more popular than others. But it does suggest that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is now his most influential play—the one that introduces more people to the English world’s most important writer than any other.

So should you go see A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Or one of Shakespeare’s other plays? Mya Gosling made a flowchart to help us all decide.

Flowchart courtesy of Good Tickle Brain

In order to get to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Gosling’s chart, you must answer that you like to laugh, don’t have a taste for violence, enjoy twins, and are a fan of fairy magic. Apparently, that describes a lot of theater goers.

BBC Successfully Presents Shakespeare for Toddlers

Don't underestimate toddlers, they like Shakespeare too, says CBeebies controller

Adults must not underestimate young children by thinking they need their television dumbed down, the controller of CBeebies has said, as she shares her plans to bring Shakespeare and classical music to toddlers.

Kay Benbow, who is responsible for the BBC’s youngest audiences, said pre-school children can easily fall in love with the highbrow arts, having longer attention spans and greater interest than grown-ups may think.

The channel, which caters to children under six, has recently staged the CBeebies Prom, along with productions of Shakespeare and an adaptation of The Nutcracker due later this year.

Benbow told The Telegraph she firmly believes “the very young deserve the very best”, making it a personal mission to inspire a love of classical music and literature from babyhood.

“There are so many things that people assume young children won't be interested in, and I think that's very much an adult perspective,” she said. “If you give children the opportunity to listen, to look, to participate, they will seize it.

“Of course not everyone's going to love classical music, but it's about putting the opportunity out there and giving them a chance to experience things.”

She said previous broadcasting wisdom had laid down that young children can concentrate for between three and 15 minutes before becoming distracted.

“I've never really subscribed to that,” she said. “If you engage a child, they will sit for a huge amount of time.

You mustn't prejudge what children will and won't like: give them the opportunity to experience and make their own choices.”

Fans of CBeebies will have noticed a significant expansion its drama and arts output, to contain regular ballets and a Christmas play.

This year, it added a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, staged in Shakespeare’s original language but cut to a toddler-testing 45 minutes.

Benbow said she was “incredibly proud” of the addition of Shakespeare, saying programme-makers did not dumb it down but made it “work for” their young viewers.

“What we have to remember is that children get something different out of it each time,” she said. “It's not familiar, it's not passé. Children see different things; that's how they learn and that's how you broaden their horizons.

“I think some people maybe underestimate them. I'm very fortunate to work with brilliant people who really understand our very young audience.”

She added of her approach: “It should be a joyful thing. Not saying you should go to this because it's good for you. 

“I don't think we do dumb it down, I think we make it work for them.

“Not many three-year-olds would be able to sit through a concert, but if you make it work for them and engage them, that's how you get the appreciation and the joy.

“And if they pick it up at that age, they're likely continue.

This year’s CBeebies Prom, which featured an interactive sing-a-long, the channel’s star presenters, and a dinosaur rap, was the first of the Royal Albert Hall BBC season to sell out. Around two thirds of the evening was taken up with classical music played by an orchestra.

It will be followed in December by a production of The Nutcracker, the classical ballet featuring music from Tchaikovsky.

While the one-off productions are “financially challenging”, Benbow admitted, they had proved popular with parents who are already asking for more.

“It's about being bold and taking risks and doing things other people won't do,” she said. “And if we don't do it, as a BBC public service, then no one’s going to do it.”

The CBeebies Prom is available on BBC iPlayer now.

Shakespeare Enduring World-Wide Popularity

Why is Shakespeare more popular than ever? 

Will Gompertz Arts editor 23 April 2016

 Shakespeare is more popular today than he has been at any point since his death four centuries ago (there are no hard-and-fast stats to actually prove it, but the scholars to whom I have spoken all agree it is the case).

 The Internet has played its part in the brand Bard propagation (Spark Notes, hem, hem), but it has also produced a mountain of alternative, more contemporary content upon which we could choose to feast. And yet it is Shakespeare who has risen to the top.

 And not just online where he's looked up so much that there are now bespoke Shakespeare search engines. You'll find him sitting on shelves in African bookshops, on laptops in Lapland, and on stage in jungle theatres. You'll hear his words pop up in pop songs, being quoted in movies, and spoken on the street.
 Say: "To be or not to be" in just about any country and the locals will know that you're quoting Shakespeare.
 Crime novelists, business folk, football managers and lawyers all plunder his lexicon for that catchy title or perfectly apt phrase. Image caption David Mitchell as Shakespeare in forthcoming BBC

 How did it happen? How has Shakespeare survived and thrived and transformed into an international superstar, when his contemporaries have not? Okay, fellow playwrights from the Elizabethan Golden Age of theatre are still knocking about - Marlowe, Jonson, Fletcher et al - but not in anything like the same omnipresent way.

 What has Shakespeare's work got that theirs hasn't? In fact, what is it about his writing that outlasts and outwits just about every other wordsmith that's ever lived? There is no writer on the planet who has as much work in daily play as that produced by the Sweet Swan of Avon (as Ben Jonson called him).

 Not even JK Rowling or Bob Dylan can better the Bard. The man and his words permeate the lives of billions of people. Simon Russell Beale, the acclaimed Shakespearian actor, thinks it is the inherent adaptability of the plays that has made them such hearty and hardy travellers over time and space.
"There are no rules with Shakespeare," he says. And then quotes the old joke in which the great director says to the young actor: "There are a thousand ways to play Hamlet [beat] and that's not one of them."
The point being, there are a thousand ways to play Hamlet. There are not a thousand ways to play Willy Loman, the delusional protagonist in Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman. Nor, typically, with a Samuel Beckett part, where the playwright's handed-down directional wishes tend to be very specific. And, there's not a lot of wriggle room for an actress playing Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, or an actor taking on Chekhov's Konstantin in The Seagull.

 It seems only Shakespeare was able to create highly believable three-dimensional characters that can morph in myriad ways. His characters are, Russell Beale says, "very hospitable" to actors.

 The same applies to his plays, which Andrew Dickson, author of the recently published Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare's Globe, says have an "openness" that allows them to be endlessly reinterpreted

They were "designed to be reinvented", says Dickson. Partly because they had so many different audiences to please when originally written - one afternoon Shakespeare would find his work being performed for the royal court, the following day the same piece would be played before the groundlings of Blackfriars.

 But more importantly, they often started life elsewhere. Shakespeare's plays weren't always entirely his in the first place. Professor Gordon McMullan, Director of the London Shakespeare Centre at King's College, London, says Shakespeare "was first and foremost an adapter" (Dickson describes the Bard as "a shameless hack").

 He cites Romeo And Juliet as a centuries-old story Shakespeare took and rewrote. "I'm not saying he was a plagiarist, but he did rely heavily on pre-existing works."    
 

 Improvisation was Shakespeare's thing - lines and parts could be added or removed on a whim, variety was the spice of his writing life with multiple versions of the same play frequently on offer (there are at least three different Hamlet manuscripts). He was not bound up in dogma. If he was struggling to find a suitable word or phrase to describe some action he would simply invent one (try doing that in your school Shakespeare essay). And if he wasn't sure how to end a scene or an act he wouldn't fret about it all night, but instead write a variety of alternatives and hand the problem over to his actors to solve.    
     
 It was he who set the precedent that his dramatic works were ripe for customisation. Go ahead, was his implicit invitation to all future writers, actors, and directors, pimp my plays - cut, paste, adapt, and reinterpret.  

 And so they have been, time and time again. Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein turned Romeo And Juliet into the musical West Side Story. The Bollywood director Vishal Bhardwaj transformed Macbeth into a gangster movie called Maqbool (2003).

 And these are but two examples of thousands of re-imaginings of Shakespeare's plays that have occurred across the world. Which begs the question - why has he travelled so far, so successfully?        
The familiar argument is that his poetic words travelled first-class on the imperial winds of Empire. As England and then Britain extended her reach across the globe, Shakespeare's plays became an important tool of indoctrination, and in Dickson's view, subjugation: "Shakespeare was imposed on Indian children to instil British culture and values."  
                                                                      
 The colonial concept was "teach Shakespeare and they become like you". According to Dickson: "You had to be able to quote Shakespeare at length to land a job in the Indian Civil Service - a test that was maintained right up until the 1920s."  
                                                                                
 But people and Shakespeare can't be tamed so easily. Dickson says the Indians quickly saw the merits in this English literary export. They liked his stories, and so rewrote them in their native language with the overbearing British often cast in highly unfavourable light  
                          
  Shakespeare's appeal spreads across the world -

Such revisions are made easy by the nature of the plays. Many of Shakespeare's stories are set in abstract places with plots that apply to many cultures - Hamlet is about revenge and a young man who doesn't get on with his step-father, Othello is ostensibly about jealousy and Twelfth Night is a good old farce based on mistaken identity.      
                                                                                 
 And it is this universal aspect of his work that ultimately makes it so timeless and timely. The Rwandans see Hamlet as a story of revenge, while some contemporary Manhattan audiences draw a  parallel with King Lear's sad decline with their own perceptions of America's diminishing powers.        

           The Chinese are particularly keen on The Merchant Of Venice for reasons Dickson says date back to its war with Japan and a feeling of inferiority. The Germans - who have long considered Shakespeare to be theirs - found profound meaning in A Midsummer Night's Dream during the Cold War because of the first scene in Act V, in which a wall divides: And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall, That stand'st between her father's ground and mine! Thou, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall, Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne!

Ultimately, though, it has to come down to the writing. I know when Shakespeare travels the texts get changed and much can be lost in translation, but the works are imbued with his brilliance. Even if the words are not the same, the sense of meaning and rhythm remain.
      
He was an extraordinarily gifted observer of the human condition who also happened to have the literary skills to put what he saw into words that resonated in Elizabethan England at first, and now across the globe. Of course he wasn't faultless. His modern resurgence started with Coleridge and the Romantics who - like the Germans - were fond of the idea of the solitary genius. We shouldn't fall into the same rose-tinted trap.

 As Simon Russell Beale says, as a playwright "he could be terrible", but then, as the actor is quick to add, "at his best he is the very best".

One Perspective on Why Shakespeare Is the Greatest

I can't "argue in favor of Shakespeare," because I firmly believe aesthetics are subjective. It doesn't make sense to say "Shakespeare is better than..." or "Shakespeare is the best..." unless you can provide more context, like "If you like X, you'll probably enjoy Shakespeare more than..."

But I can talk about what makes Shakespeare so special to me:

(I lifted much of the following from one of my previous answers: http://www.quora.com/Is-Tyler-Pe...)

1. His use of language is unparalleled or close to it. He was a master of choosing the right word or phrase for what he was trying to say. He was a genius when it came to inventing totally surprising yet deeply evocative ways of saying things. He worked artfully within a rigid set of constraints (blank verse), but, like an expert jazz musician, stretched those constraints to their limits.

---

UPDATE: I've been thinking about this some more, and I fear that when I talk about creative use of language, people will think I mean puns, complex metaphors, alliterative effects, and other show-offy devices. And to an extent I do, because Shakespeare was brilliant at linguistic pyrotechnics.

But, for my money, what he did best was "say what I want to say but in a better way than I ever could have said it." (And yet, using his lines, I can say it.) Which is what all great poets do. They give expressive voice to the human condition. What makes Shakespeare great is that he does it constantly. For almost every feeling it's possible for a human to feel -- for almost every situation it's possible for a human to get into -- Shakespeare has a powerful verse, speech, sentence or phrase about it.

Those of us who know his works well find lines popping into out heads all the time, explaining to us how we feel -- the same way a great song can do that.

Just the other day, my wife posted on Facebook how she got in trouble at work for telling the truth. She complained that she's damned whatever she does -- whether she's honest or deceptive. I found myself immediately thinking of the Fool in "King Lear."

I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides, and left nothing i' the middle ...

When I am wronged because someone doesn't like the way I look -- or the fact that I'm an American or an atheist or whatever, I think of this famous speech, from the "Merchant of Venice."

Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

When I've been accused of something I didn't do, I think of Hermione in "A Winter's Tale"

Sir, spare your threats:
The bug which you would fright me with I seek.
To me can life be no commodity:
The crown and comfort of my life, your favour,
I do give lost; for I do feel it gone,
But know not how it went. My second joy
And first-fruits of my body, from his presence
I am barr'd, like one infectious. My third comfort
Starr'd most unluckily, is from my breast,
The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth,
Haled out to murder: myself on every post
Proclaimed a strumpet: with immodest hatred
The child-bed privilege denied, which 'longs
To women of all fashion; lastly, hurried
Here to this place, i' the open air, before
I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege,
Tell me what blessings I have here alive,
That I should fear to die? Therefore proceed.
But yet hear this: mistake me not; no life,
I prize it not a straw, but for mine honour,
Which I would free, if I shall be condemn'd
Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else
But what your jealousies awake, I tell you
'Tis rigor and not law. Your honours all,
I do refer me to the oracle:
Apollo be my judge!

When I'm jealous, I've think of Helena in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," saying,

How happy some o'er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so...

When I am filled with joy, awe and admiration, I feel as Miranda does in "The Tempest."

O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!

When I hate myself, I think of Hamlet's "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" and when I've looked upon something ghastly, I think of Ophelia's "O, woe is me, / To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!"

---

2. He created psychologically complex and extremely memorable characters that are malleable enough for thousands of actors to put their unique stamps on them. He was also expert at juggling many characters at once.

3. He wrote narratives of many different genres, excelling at each. He was a master at plotting and at interweaving serious content with humor.

4. He was a brilliant rhetorician, able to craft arguments as well as the best lawyers who argue cases before Supreme Court.

5. He had a sponge-like mind and was able to write with knowledge about all sorts of fields.

6. He was able to simultaneously focus on the tiny nuances of day-to-day life and huge, profound philosophical questions.

7. He was enormously influential on Western Culture. His influence, though it's waxed and waned, has remained in place for centuries.Written 24 Oct 2012 · View Upvotes

Not So Fast! Maybe Shakespeare didn't invent some of Phrases He's Credited With

Stop saying Shakespeare invented so many phrases - he cribbed most of them, Australian academic claims

• Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney

5 September 2016 • 1:44pm

 

An Australian expert on Shakespeare claims the bard did not invent many of the words and phrases attributed to him, saying the mistake is due to the Oxford English Dictionary’s “bias” towards citing literary examples of early usages.

Noting examples such as “it was  Greek to me”  and “wild goose chase”, Dr David McInnis, from Melbourne University, said online searches of old texts had helped to uncover pre-Shakespeare uses for many words and phrases that are frequently credited to him.

“Did Shakespeare really invent all these words and phrases?” he wrote in an article for the university’s online magazine.

“The short answer is no. His audiences had to understand at least the gist of what he meant, so his words were mostly in circulation already or were logical combinations of pre-existing concepts.”

 

Dr McInnis, a lecturer in Shakespeare studies, said the Oxford English Dictionary contains more than  33,000 quotations from Shakespeare, including about 1,500 listed as the first evidence of a word’s existence. A further 7,500 are listed as the first evidence of a particular usage or meaning.

 “But the OED is biased,” Dr McInnis wrote.

“Especially in the early days, it preferred literary examples, and famous ones at that. The Complete Works of Shakespeare was frequently raided for early examples of word use, even though words or phrases might have been used earlier, by less famous or less literary people.”

According to Dr McInnis, the phrase “it’s Greek to me” is often thought to derive from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which is believed to have been written in 1599. But internet-based resources have helped to uncover at least one earlier use.

“Now, thanks to digital resources like Early English Books Online, we can search for the phrase ‘Greek to me’ and easily find examples that predate Shakespeare,” Dr McInnis said.

“Fellow playwright Robert Greene’s The Scottish History of James the Fourth was printed in 1598 but possibly written as early as 1590. In it, a lord asks a lady if she’ll love him, and she replies ambiguously: “I cannot hate.’’ He presses the point … at which point she pretends not to understand him at all: “Tis Greek to me, my Lord” is her final reply.”

Likewise, the phrase “wild goose chase” has been shown to pre-date Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: it apparently appears at least six times in a 1593 book about horsemanship by the English poet Gervase Markham. Internet searches have also revealed a use for “eaten out of house and home” that predates Henry IV, Part 2.

However, Dr McInnis noted that Shakespeare sometimes appears to have refashioned existing phrases  - such as “the better part of valour is discretion” - to make them “concise and catchy”.

And, in other cases, such as “to make an ass of oneself”, Shakespeare “seems to have genuinely invented [it]”, Dr McInnis wrote.

“So did Shakespeare really invent all those words?” he asked.