Think you're missing the point about the "high art" comment, which is just that we should introduce people to shakespeare in the way it was intended - as entertaining theater, not boring undecipherable books.
I can vouch for this, I hated reading Shakespeare and just sparknotes'd everything. Maybe I would've loved it if I had watched a funny play instead.
Re:Shakespeare’s plays, sonnets, and poems
by AlbertCory on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @12:31PM
(#31909853)
If he just left it at that, I wouldn't have any objection.
Although if I'm in Ashland and going to see a Shakespeare play, I'll usually read it first. It helps to know what they're talking about. Some characters have three different names in the same play, for example.
> Like, Shakespeare was not high art. We must stop treating him that way and kill the love of literature in children by forcing them dryly read “To be or not to be.”
Is that not the same thing?
But then you lost me at the 2nd sentence.
Who TF cares what "high art" was then? Or who the groundlings at the Globe were? They apparently had better taste than the people at court. Not the first time.
In the early days of rock 'n' roll or blues or rap or hip-hop or jazz (etc.) only lower-status people were into it.
And your "theory" about Ben Jonson (not "Johnson") has been debated (and debunked) for literally centuries, along with several other possibilities. Are you just now discovering it?
People in every culture of the world always have and continue to love Shakespeare's plays. At the same time, there are children who can't be torn away from their Harry Potter books. If they read at all.