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Comment by recursive | Hacker News Reader

> a regular person, with no special education, and only a tiny bit of patience, can just sit down and read all of Shakespeare, and understand it. Right now!

This just is not my experience. Today, I spent about 20 minutes trying to understand the first sentence of "Romeo and Juliet". When I get to "From ancient grudge break to new mutiny," I cannot reconcile any dictionary definition of "mutiny" with anything this fragment might reasonably mean.

There are a few definitions of "mutiny", but generally, it's "rebellion against any authority". Who is the authority? Is it the heads of the dignified households? Like the staff of the house is trying to seize power? Or younger members of the family? What's civil blood? If I spent eight hours pondering this prologue, I strongly doubt that I would make any more headway than this.

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> 1. 1567–1667† Discord, contention, tumult; a state of discord; a dispute, quarrel. Frequently in in (a) mutiny, at (a) mutiny. Obsolete.[1]

Mutiny in this case means as defined above. An old grudge is boiling over. Note that it is highly unlikely for the grudge to literally be ancient how I would think of that word today.

“Civil blood” Is a double meaning a reference to the prestige of the families and brings into contrast their incivility in their vendetta. Part of the magic of communication is deliberate double meaning. It is not a well defined API.

As someone with a disability who teaches computer science to students with disabilities (and without), your problems reading Shakespeare do not sound like those of people that come to mind when I read the term “regular person”.

If one is going to attempt to parse every word in the play and believes that it is the only way to follow the plot then one is going to have a bad time. If you could get to the Queen Mab speech reading that way then you’d probably melt at that point.

My suggested way forward is to not attempt to think definitionally about words that are used in a manner you cannot understand. When you arrive at a word like mutiny think that Shakespeare isn’t talking about a literal mutiny (though he might be) but something that is like a mutiny. What are mutinies like, not in cause but in deed. When Shakespeare starts talking about “atomies” he has no knowledge or Bohr or QM, but we know that atoms are really small. When Mercutio mentions Crickets bone… well, Crickets don’t have bones but if they did they would be small.

Shakespeare’s scribes weren’t writing an API for you to extract the plot out of. It’s a lot fuzzier than that.

[1] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/mutiny_n?tab=meaning_and_use

> Part of the magic of communication is deliberate double meaning. It is not a well defined API.

In order to appreciate a double meaning, I'd have to have enough basis of understanding to even be able to recognize it.

> As someone with a disability who teaches computer science to students with disabilities (and without), your problems reading Shakespeare do not sound like those of people that come to mind when I read the term “regular person”.

I don't have any particular diagnosis, but I wouldn't be surprised if I could get one. In any case, I'm just out here operating in regular society. I don't seem to have any particular problems communicating in English anyway, as far as I can tell.

> If one is going to attempt to parse every word in the play and believes that it is the only way to follow the plot then one is going to have a bad time.

I don't believe it is the only way. Most written material, like your post here, I'm able to digest chunks at a time. I just don't understand any of the chunks in Shakespeare.

> If you could get to the Queen Mab speech reading that way then you’d probably melt at that point.

I can read words, but at no point do I ever achieve comprehension in this type of material. If Queen Mab's speech consists of words, I wouldn't even notice a difference.

> When you arrive at a word like mutiny think that Shakespeare isn’t talking about a literal mutiny (though he might be) but something that is like a mutiny.

I don't think I can tell the difference between over-thinking it, and under-thinking it.

My dictionary didn't have that definition in it. My best guess about what was meant was that the two houses each had internal struggles, which is more consistent with the only definitions of "mutiny" I've ever known. Also, it seems to be more consistent with taking a break from the feud.

But now "I'm parsing every word again". When I encounter difficult material, I just don't know any other way to approach it.

100% it’s over thinking it. The double meaning is an instructive example. You can’t know about the double meaning a priori. It’s foreshadowing.

It’s a play from a time when there was no television. No radio. No internet. People would have seen it multiple times and not expected to understand everything during their first watch. Shakespeare straight up invents words.

Are you trying to parse every word in sequence, or just understand the meaning in context? The latter is much easier.

I'd settle for either one. In order to have have a context at all, one must have some critical mass of understanding. The density of parts I can understand is never enough to achieve that. My experience is that any portion of Shakespeare that I attempt to read goes the same way. If I dig farther into "mutiny", there's no way to know if I'm eventually going to produce a "context" or whether I'm on a fool's errand. In order to develop a context, one must somehow achieve a sufficient foothold of comprehension from which to build it. There are precious few sentences in Shakespeare for which I would be able to do that. The farther you get into the play, the more references there are to earlier, so you kind of have to start at the beginning. But I can't understand that part either.

You keep saying it's easy. I believe you when you say that's your experience. What I'm trying to tell you is that it's not easy for everyone. There is no amount of patience that I could apply to this pursuit that would yield success. This is my good-faith best effort to comprehend it and it's not happening.

> What I'm trying to tell you is that it's not easy for everyone.

I think that's undeniably correct.

> There is no amount of patience that I could apply to this pursuit that would yield success.

I think that, however, is very likely incorrect. IMO, you need to develop patience with not understanding, and continuing anyway. Just read the play, see what you pick up, then read it again. Treat it like poetry and don't worry too much about understanding every word; see if you can get the feel. I found that Milton's Paradise Lost took me 3 or 4 false starts over a decade before I managed to get into the flow enough to read the whole thing. There's still probably a lot I missed, but it was thoroughly enjoyable.

Sometimes it's handy have a study guide, though, especially to understand some of the wordplay:

Hamlet[To Ophelia] > Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

Ophelia > No, my lord!

Hamlet > I mean, my head upon your lap.

Ophelia > Ay, my lord.

Hamlet > Do you think I meant country matters?

I read this in high school and was thinking... what the hell are "country matters"? The footnote in the study guide quite succinctly pointed out:

> The emphasis is on the first syllable

Needless to say this became an highly used in-joke amongst my friends.

> continuing anyway

This is a concept that gives me hope. Hope that I could conceivably read it if I needed to. In all practical likelihood, I probably just won't because that type of slog does not sound enjoyable to me. But thanks for the idea anyway. Reading most of the rest of these comments about how easy it is give me a very you're-holding-the-iphone-wrong sensation.

Without looking anything up, I did not find that phrase confusing ..

"From ancient grudge break to new mutiny"

My immediate read is that the two houses have an ancient grudge, and there will be a change in status involving mutiny, in this case the love between Romeo and Juliette(their houses are enemies so you could see this as a form of mutiny).

Who can say if this is what Shakespeare meant, but the phrase didn't seem hard to follow at all, I didn't have to think about it.

Congrats

well Afric here gives a good overview of the whole mutiny thing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40982155 but when reading it I read immediately like so:

The Montagues and Capulets have a long standing feud, an ancient grudge, the mutiny in this case is that the feud has been cold for some time but is now turning hot again and mutiny in our meaning of it pertains because to indulge in violent feuds between families is mutinous against the public order - in other words to have a feud with murders and public fighting you are definitely rebelling against the social authority that decrees this kind of thing should not happen.

The civil blood is not hot and boiling over because it is "civil" as in civilized, but also there is civil blood - the blood of the civilized civillians who are not members of your little feud that will always get hurt when there is violence on the scale of two large and rich households having a feud which means you get the civil blood (of the civillians) on your civil (civilized) hands.

I get that you don't get it, but this is one of those weird things for me - like when you try to explain how some relatively simple bit of code works to a non-developer and they act like you're a madman.

on edit: changed designer to non-developer

I'll note here that as with much of Shakespeare, there are really more edges connecting to the node civil here than the two ones I point out, which I guess is part of the enjoyment of the reading for me.

Thanks for the explanation.

Watch the 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet with Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Absurdly over the top and campy and fun, which I really think shakespeare would have loved. He was a "butts in seats" kinda guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beV56hp4T3w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEzskNtFnIY

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