Tolkien's views on Shakespeare | Lord of the Rings

It is commonly believed that Tolkien disliked, or had strong opinions of, William Shakespeare. However, there seemed to be a lot of nuance.

We would see that there were some plays he enjoyed and some he gave criticisms of.

One which he enjoyed was a live play of Hamlet calling it a “very good performance” (Letter 76)

However, it would be shown in other letters he would despise certain aspects of Shakespeare’s work in Macbeth and others.

However, the latter could also be seen as a form of literary criticism, critiquing aspects of his works while not projecting an overall view of Shakespeare as a whole.

[thinkofsomethingcooler]

Interesting video! I believe the ppl who misinterpret Tolkien as disliking Shakespeare wholly misunderstood what he wrote in those passages. 1:53 Here To me it sounds like Tolkien did not support the reading and quoting of Shakespeare but rather the seeing of it — meaning in the classroom it’s taught as literature and read by many quite dryly not acted or performed. And this misses the whole point of Shakespeare, as he was a playwright. Even sonnets should really be said aloud not read. I agree 99% of ppl including professors wholly miss the point of Shakespeare. As Tolkien was a linguist he most likely appreciated the language and the poetry of all the plays and even more likely felt that leaving the words on the page unspoken was a crime. Edit: even in his review of Hamlet he said he’d wished he’d not read it before seeing it as he went in with misconceptions of how much he’d like it or be moved by it based on reading the play beforehand.
I never understood why Shakespeare is taught this way it really ruined it for me too. I found it Buffoon like dated and quite unbelievable until I saw a good production of it. Changed my entire perspective.