Peter Adamson and William Shakespeare
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:date: 2023-07-11T10:19:50
:status: draft
:category: faith
:tags: review, blogComment, philosophy

(my comments on “`Patrick Gray on Shakespeare`_” by author)


.. _`Patrick Gray on Shakespeare`:
    https://historyofphilosophy.net/shakespeare-gray

I completely agree with other people on this comment page that
this might be well among the best episodes of the whole podcast.

There were few points where I would like to comment on:

1. One completely unimportant: `Artistotles’s unitites are in my opinion much
   more complicated`_ and the authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth century
   classicism got it in my opinion wrong. Aristotele’s was not set of
   capricious artifical limitations on authors (whole story in one day, all
   story in one place), but it was more general warning for the authors that
   the whole work must held together. For anybody who are not certain what it
   meant I suggest reading amateur writing on any of sites dedicated to the
   amateur writing (Wattpad_, FFnet_, AO3_). Stories which start as a romantic
   comedy involving just him, her and their friends, but then the author
   decides he actually wants to write the large world-saving drama, stories
   where the author never decides whether she writes novel in letters or simple
   telling of a story (so she writes basically the same story twice or even
   more times), stories where the author cannot decide between five different
   plots and so he tries all of them, but finishes none, and many other
   problems. I read it all, and I completely agree that the Aristotle’s
   warning makes a lot of sense.

   And yes, Shakespeare is good enough that he can break even these and yet
   make a perfect drama. For example, I read a study how he was mixing “the long time”
   and “the short time” in *Othello*. How long actually did the story of
   Othello took? There is evidence in the play both for just a few days (which
   gives a viewer feeling of passionate love and jealousy fighting it together)
   as well that it took many months if not years (so that the Othello’s action
   is not hasty and Jago destroys well-established deeply rooted relationship).
   However, because it is Shakespeare, he can write it so well, that the viewer
   just gets the right feeling and never notices the discrepancy.

2. Shakespeare as a conservative Christian and “studies in negation” … why are
   Romeo and Juliet so stupid and how it is sad, that we now use the play for
   exactly opposite it was intended (“All you need is love” is nonsense).

   I absolutely support very often missing notion that most people until
   perhaps Enlightenment of even later were serious believers (I speak mostly
   about Christians, but the situation is exactly the same with Jews and
   Muslims) seriously attempting to achieve sainthood. When critiquing Puritans
   (Shakespeare many times) it was not because they would like to negate all
   morality (as the current philosophers do many times), but because they
   passionately loved true morality and hated hypocrisy and lies. Growing up in
   the Communist Czechoslovakia I have read comments on Shakespeare making him
   into the same secularist and anti-moralist as the authors of those comments
   were.

   I really liked the distinction between the Aristotle’s

3. Our image of the ancient Rome comes from Shakespeare (and
   Racin)

.. _`Artistotles’s unitites are in my opinion much more complicated`:
   {filename}../literature/aristotle-unities.rst

.. _Wattpad:
   https://www.wattpad.com

.. _FFnet:
   https://www.fanfiction.net

.. _AO3:
   https://archiveofourown.org

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See also https://youtu.be/PTBK1M9tBmY … how Shakespeare’s
historical plays are much more important for our understanding
of The Wars of Roses (which are extremely advantageous for the
Tudors’ then in power) than what actually happened.