[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Nick McRae

Maybe what we're looking at with Shakespeare is a marriage of poetic quality and mass appeal. He was good, but he also wrote many accessible and infectious lines. And he did it at the right time and place.

I’ve always wondered how Shakespeare’s plays were understood by their early audiences. His contemporaries naturally would have understood his language better than we do and would have gotten jokes and topical references that need annotating for us. But the language is often so complex and richly layered that I suspect they missed a lot, especially with spectators milling about, commenting on the action, booing at villains, chomping on applies and swilling ale. And I suspect the plays’ dramatic and poetic subtlety—their greatness—was recognized by scholars of a later time.