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Tolkien and shakespeare

balbo biggins
Rohan


Apr 23 2015, 1:44pm

Post #1 of 9 (1712 views)
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Tolkien and shakespeare Can't Post

simple question,

was tolkien influenced by shakespeare? the ride of the Rohirrim certainly has parallels to henry V 'once more unto the breach' speech


Otaku-sempai
Immortal


Apr 23 2015, 2:13pm

Post #2 of 9 (1677 views)
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It seems to me, I've read that Tolkien didn't particularly care for Shakespeare. [In reply to] Can't Post

That may have been specifically about how the Bard treated mythological subjects such as the Court of Oberon in "A Mid-summer Night's Dream."

Actually, after a quick scan of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, it seems that he disliked Shakespeare as a boy while attending King Edward's School (Letter 163). Tolkien might have gained a greater appreciation for the playwright in later years, but I'm not sure that he took much (if any) inspiration from him.

"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock


geordie
Tol Eressea

Apr 23 2015, 5:35pm

Post #3 of 9 (1666 views)
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Which part of The Ride of the Rohirrim reminded you of 'Once more into the Breach'? [In reply to] Can't Post

 
Basically, to give a simple answer to a simple question, Tolkien was not at all fond of Shakespeare - as has been said, when he took part in a debate at school he 'poured a load of abuse' on the Bard (paraphrase from memory)

And also, in the 1930s he re-organized the English curriculum at Oxford so that students could read for a degree without reading any Shakespeare at all!


Darkstone
Immortal


Apr 23 2015, 5:52pm

Post #4 of 9 (1673 views)
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It's hard to conceive... [In reply to] Can't Post

...of any writer in the English language during the past 300 years *not* being influenced by Shakespeare.

******************************************


CuriousG
Half-elven


Apr 23 2015, 5:55pm

Post #5 of 9 (1659 views)
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The Ents [In reply to] Can't Post

I believe it says somewhere in Letters (Brethil has cited it before, I think) that Tolkien wished, while reading Macbeth, that the forests literally swarmed like an army, not figuratively, and that helped shape his idea of the Ents. So that would be one way in which he was influenced by Shakespeare.


Elizabeth
Half-elven


Apr 23 2015, 6:53pm

Post #6 of 9 (1649 views)
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Less than by other sources. [In reply to] Can't Post

Tolkien was most heavily influenced by Celtic and Germanic/Nordic mythology, which were his academic (day job) specialties. If you're interested in this question, you might enjoy Tolkien and the Study of His Sources by Jason Fisher (who sometimes posts here as visualweasel).








Bracegirdle
Valinor


Apr 23 2015, 7:09pm

Post #7 of 9 (1645 views)
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I think Saruman said... [In reply to] Can't Post

"Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the ORCS of war".

or not . . .TongueTongue



Brethil
Half-elven


Apr 24 2015, 12:18am

Post #8 of 9 (1624 views)
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You are quite right, CG [In reply to] Can't Post

Indeed, my dear, it is the letdown of Birnam Wood not marching to Dunsinane Hill which I think begins the mixed relationship JRRT had with the Bard (no, not *that* Bard. He was quite well respected.)Wink This subject and comparison has always fascinated me (as you can tell by the length of my nattering).


A note attached to #163 (to Auden, 1955) is where he mentions:
(about Ents) "Their part in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays wiht the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of 'Great Burnam wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war."


In the same letter, he goes on to describe reading Shakespeare 'which I disliked cordially' at school; but being taken and rather falling in love with language, old language as in the study of Anglo-Saxon but also finding Gothic, and being swept away by the mere science as art that is language. So this was a formative time, as adolesence and late childhood are, and thus I think the scheme-rhyming (and relatively modern, in comparison to ancient tongues) prose of Shakespeare suffered in comparison to the discovered gem of older, alliterative and thus wildly aural languages (and of course, when Finnish and its tales followed later, Earandil himself was born) to a very sound-gifted man. And in part, I wonder too if the intellectual road less travelled simply appealed to him, at this formative age.


I think also he saw Shakespeare as a thing primarily of the stage: not of the mind, and of the pen, to be enjoyed for higher language. He enjoyed a performance of Hamlet, which he wrote about in 1944 (#76) to Christopher Tolkien:


"Plain news is on the airgraph; but the only event worth of talk was the performance of Hamlet which I had been to just before I wrote last. I was full of it then, but the cares of the world have soon wiped away the impression. But it emphasized more strongly than anything I have ever seen the folly of reading Shakespeare (and annotating him in the study), except as a concomitant of seeing his plays acted. It was a very good performance wiht a young rather fierce Hamlet; it was played fast without cuts; and came out as a very exciting play. Could one only have seen it without having read it or knowing the plot, it would have been terrific....But to my surprise the part that came out as the most moving , almost intolerably so, was the one that in reading I always found a bore: the scene of mad Ophelia singing her snatches."

He also disliked, in later years, the use Shakespeare made of Elves, based on his conception of the older and mythic conceptions that he preferred and expanded upon. Noted in the very beginning of #131 (to Waldman, ~1951):


"But to those creatures which in English I call misleadingly Elves*...*intending the word to be understood in ancient meanings, which continued as late as Spenser - a murrain on Will Shakespeare and his damned cobwebs."



But its not all bad; as noted above, he enjoyed the tale of Hamlet when seen (not read). Interestingly in 1954 (#156) he also makes rather a colleagial, and somewhat softer, remark about Shakespeare: "There are, I suppose, always defects in any large-scale work of art; and especially in those of literary form that are founded on an earlier matter which is out to new uses - like Homer, or Beowulf, or Virgil, or Greek or Shakespearean tragedy! In which class, as a class not a competitor, The Lord of the Rings really falls though it is only founded on the author's first draft!"


There is an early comment, in #77, in 1944, to Christopher, in that JRRT says Sam, "is behaving well, and living up to repute. He treats Gollum rather like Ariel to Caliban..." Is this a direct influence? Or a scholar making a metaphorical comparison? Myself, I think the latter. I think Gollum was a definite conception, and at the time it was a convenient, linear way to ascribe an approximately equivalent relationship to another person familar with literature.

I also do not think Hamlet can be called 'influence' on its own merits. Hamlet indeed may show not the influence of Shakespeare on JRRT, but more of a common ancestry in this case, as the original Mad Prince tale is purported to have origins in the Icelandic sagas, particularly of the Saga of Hrolf Kraki, which would be known to a scholar such as JRRT and one who studied Beowulf.


I do like how JRRT uses some Shakespearean references as humor ... in 1959 he was asked by a cat breeder through Allen & Unwin if she could register a litter of Siamese cats in names taken from LOTR (# 219) "My only comment to that is of Puck* upon mortals. I fear that to me Siamese cats belong to the fauna of Mordor, but you need not tell the cat breeder that."

*(Puck: Lord, what fools these mortals be!) Laugh


Overall, I think that the influence was pretty minimal. The knowledge of Shakespeare does seep into the consciousness, that is true: unavoidable I think. But if points of similarity exist I think they may be just signs of some LCA (last common ancestor) from European legend that the two independently hit upon for inspiration. Unlike many, JRRT was not taken by the prose, or the language, of Shakespeare; which is such a large part of the body of work considering so many of the actual tales were inspired from history and/or myth. In JRRT's case, I think other hands had that honor.







(This post was edited by Brethil on Apr 24 2015, 12:24am)


AshNazg
Gondor


May 4 2015, 9:53am

Post #9 of 9 (1423 views)
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Turin's death always reminded me of Romeo and Juliet [In reply to] Can't Post

In fact, there are a number of similarities between the two texts.

But apparently Turin's death was inspired by Kullervo in the Kalevala.

Perhaps Shakespeare took inspiration from similar sources that Tolkien did?


(This post was edited by AshNazg on May 4 2015, 10:03am)

 
 

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