If Shakespeare had written novels, reading them would be the correct way to appreciate them. But he wrote plays. If you want to appreciate them, you should go and watch them performed.
I think this is where Tolstoy made his big mistake in trying to appreciate Shakespeare.
Now the sonnets are meant to be read - but one at a time, not in great blocks.
Paul
Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole of the civilized world to be trivial and positively bad, or whether the significance which this civilized world attributes to the works of Shakespeare was itself senseless. [snip]
--- Leo Tolstoy, Tolstoy on Shakespeare |