People live
their lives at such a faster pace these days, and all multi-threading, that it
takes a real effort to consciously slow down and listen and watch to something.
It's part of the joy, I suppose, at least for me. I think this problem of
attention (or lack thereof) has as much to do with cultural expectations
regarding how Shakespeare should be read, watched, you name it. I can listen to
some “Baixo Contínuo” from the baroque period lasting for a couple of hours,
but some people come and go, fall asleep, eat dinner, etc. At theatres and
opera houses, boring opera or play can be wonderful to watch the world go by
with. At least that’s what I hear. I quite understand that attention is
context-dependent - maybe 'Baixo Contínuo music' was intended to be not
listened to. Bach pieces composed for flute and harpsichord are a good example.
Finding crappy books like this one is a bit like turning off love. Sometimes for
the sake of the whole, one is prepared to cherish even the ragged fingernails
and that odd snorting sound when she laughs, but we see the relationship is
doomed from the start. A great deal of the Shakespeare books that aspire to
greatness — and indeed achieve it — demand patience in our tackling of them. Is
that too much to ask? In literature, I'm thinking of Rilke, Celan, Mann, and of
course, Shakespeare. Onstage drama: “Measure for Measure” has hardly any plot
but is full of beautiful poetry, which requires very good understanding of
what’s going on — something singularly lacking in this book. When it comes to
great works of fiction, does anyone really claims to have read only their
lookalikes? All of Rilke, Celan, Hölderlin, the Titus Groan trilogy, several
Dickens works et al, can we really read them by skipping the longer chunks and “gibberish”
parts?
If you don’t
like the way they talk and all the fancy words in Shakespeare, this book is for
you.
NB: I bought it
in a book fair, almost for nothing.
