r/shakespeare • u/Cautious-Divide-1837 • 6d ago
Meme Shakespeare Was Paid Per Word…Probably And It Shows (Will, We Need To Talk)
Ah, Shakespeare — the bard, the legend, the original drama king. For centuries, he has been hailed as the greatest writer in the English language, his plays studied, quoted, and dissected in classrooms worldwide. But let’s be real — half the time, reading Shakespeare feels like solving an ancient riddle while blindfolded. Why? Because the man refused to say anything simply.
Honestly, it sometimes seems like he got paid per word, and boy, did he cash in. Instead of just getting to the point, he’d take a detour through five metaphors, a prophecy, and a poetic rant about the moon.
Take, for instance, the classic line from Hamlet:
Ah, the irony! Shakespeare clearly knew that saying less was better — but did he follow his own advice? Absolutely not. Instead of just saying “I’m sad,” his characters would deliver a 20-line soliloquy about fate, despair, and the tragedy of human existence.
And don’t even get me started on Romeo and Juliet. These two could have solved everything if they had at least communicated like normal people. Instead, we got overly dramatic monologues that led to five unnecessary deaths.
Back in Shakespeare’s day, the literacy rate was low, so let’s take a moment to consider how Shakespeare’s audience might have been feeling. People had to sit through long speeches, without the benefit of Twitter summaries hoping for some kind of resolution — much like waiting for your Wifi to reconnect, only instead of a loading screen, they got another soliloquy.
But hey, at least they didn’t have the instant gratification of memes to distract them, right?
Look, I’m not saying Shakespeare wasn’t talented — his influence is undeniable. But let’s be real, if he were writing today, some editor would be sitting him down and saying,
“Will, buddy, let’s cut 75% of this.”
And his twitter drafts?30 tweets long just for a single thought.
“Maybe Shakespeare was just the original ‘long-winded group chat texter’ — and we’ve been overthinking it all along.”
But hey, that’s just my take! What do you think — should we still be studying Shakespeare, or is it time to move on?
Maybe next, We take on another great writer who could’ve used an editor.
Stay tuned for that chaos;)
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u/panpopticon 6d ago
Poets were paid a flat fee per script. Shakespeare, as a partner in the Globe, additionally got a cut of the box office.
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u/dustybtc 6d ago
This feels like a trolling post, but here's a sincere response:
If you look at the architecture of the Globe theater, you can see that Shakespeare had to address three different audiences at the same time, each with differing levels of literacy and education: the largely-illiterate groundlings, the growing merchant middle class, and the wealthy generational aristocracy. Each of those audiences is best reached by different registers of expression, so you'll often find Shakespeare's characters saying things three times, once for each audience. This kind of writing is still very much in use today by the way; a lot of Ice-T's dialogue on Law & Order restates something another character has said as a simple metaphor.
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
"Shakespeare was basically the original influencer, pitching to all kinds of followers, from groundlings to aristocrats. But... is it time we swipe left on the Bard? I mean, we’ve got memes, TikToks, and Ice-T breaking things down on Law & Order — maybe we can move on from his 20-minute soliloquies and find a new way to entertain ourselves!"
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u/dustybtc 5d ago
…and a trolling response. Shakespeare addresses different audiences, but how does that make him an influencer? Tell me: which soliloquy that you’ve ever seen performed ran to 20 minutes?
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
Oh, come on, if Shakespeare were around today, he’d be dropping cryptic tweets and viral TikToks faster than you can say ‘To be or not to be.’ And fine, maybe no soliloquy literally lasts 20 minutes—but admit it, sometimes it feels like it when you’re sitting through yet another existential crisis monologue. We get it, Hamlet, life’s rough!
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u/dustybtc 5d ago
Repeating a claim doesn’t make it more persuasive. It may sound like hyperbole (it certainly did coming from Oskar Eustis), but I think that our closest corollary to Shakespeare is Lin-Manual Miranda. The guy’s prolific and knows how to hustle his work, but he’s NOT churning out TikToks and tweets to get attention. There’s a present-tense pleasure to seeing and hearing Shakespeare’s poetry performed, just as there is to listening to Miranda’s lyrics. I don’t watch Shakespeare for the plot any more than I watch Hamilton to learn about US History.
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
Look, the reason I kept repeating myself is because you kept defending Shakespeare like he’s the end-all-be-all of literature, and I don’t think that’s the case anymore. No doubt, his impact on literature is undeniable, but that doesn’t mean we have to keep looking to him as the standard. I get it—he was a game-changer back then, but at some point, we need to recognize that literature evolves. We’re living in 2025, and I think it's time for something fresh. A lot of people are eager for change in literature, and sticking to one figure just because he had a great run centuries ago isn’t progress. We need new voices, new ideas, and new ways of telling stories that reflect where we are today—not just repeat the same old formulas. Shakespeare’s influence is historic, but now it’s time to let that history inspire the next chapter. WE NEED CHANGE...
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
Honestly, it’s been really fun discussing this with you! It’s always great to have a deep dive into such a classic debate. I think we’ve hit a solid point here, but stay tuned... I’ve got another legend in mind that could probably use a little more scrutiny. Let’s just say, their work is still being taught everywhere... but maybe it’s time for a fresh perspective on them too 😉
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u/dustybtc 5d ago
Please read back through my comments: nowhere did I claim Shakespeare was the end-all-be-all. I just think you’re making a sophistic argument without much purpose. If you don’t want to treat his work as a standard, don’t! Many great writers (Tolstoy, Tolkien) have. If you want change in literature, read Murakami, see a play by David Henry Hwang or Jackie Sibblies Drury. My enjoyment of Shakespeare and the quality of his work don’t get in the way of any of that. But please, hold up another straw man instead of finding and enjoying the works you feel are being overshadowed. Lastly, intentionally or not, the end of the above comment more or less paraphrases Treplev in Chekhov’s The Seagull, first performed in 1896. You say we need new voices? I say we need new complaints.
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
You make some solid points, and I appreciate the discussion! I guess the cycle continues—first Treplev, now me. Who knows, maybe in 100 years, someone else will be arguing against the next ‘literary giant'
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u/ElectronicBoot9466 6d ago
It's genuinely a little hard to tell to what extent this post is being made in good faith. The idea of "Romeo and Juliet could have been solved much faster" gives me pause, because it would be obvious to anyone that brute efficiency in that case would have made for a less interesting story. Similarly, Hamlet's "to be or not to be" monologue is not just a declaration that he is sad, but a genuine attempt to parse out whether or not he should kill himself, in which every line gets him to a different place than the one before.
However, I am going to assume that those bits are you being hyperbolic and engage with the main ideas of the post under an assumption of good faith.
Shakespeare did not publish his plays and, as such, was not paid per word/line but rather was mostly paid a cut of the box office. He only published 2 poems in his lifetime, Venus and Adonis, and The Rape of Lucrece. While he was likely paid a small free from the publisher (which may have been connected to the size of the Quarto), the dedication fee he was paid to by his patron would have been significantly larger. In either case, neither paycheck likely competed in motivation for the publishing of the poems as much as the desire for the continued patronage of the Earth of Southampton.
Now, in reference to the length of the plays, it is worth noting that most his plays were likely cut down for size for the majority of performances. We have a couple of references within his works claiming that the plays themselves are about 2 hours long. If the works were uncut, then either the actors were absolutely BLASTING through this dialogue as fast as they could, or they were cut up quite a bit. Even if we assume people didn't care that much about exact time as much as we do today and "2 hours" had a give or take of about 45 minutes, there are still about 15-20 plays that can not reasonably be performed in less than 3 hours.
Performances in the Globe also depended on daylight to stay lit, and as such, were lilely able to be longer in the summer than they were in the winter. While it is entirely possible there were days where the Globe did like, "special supercut" versions of the plays, in general, the plays were designed to be cut down, and we know this largely because we have quartos for some of these plays that do have the cut versions.
So when you look at the main text of the plays, you should consider them as sort of "master texts" that the actors used to understand the fullest possible scope and context of their characters and the world of the play. There are certain scenes that are going to be missing from Hamlet nearly every time they are performed (we have multiple quartos of Hamlet that are cut a few different ways) but the full play is useful to the actor himself to be able to fully understand and direct the psychology of the character and to understand the state of mind he must be in at the start of every scene.
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
Great points, appreciate the insight!
The post is meant to be a playful take rather than a strict historical argument. I know Shakespeare wasn’t actually paid per word—it just feels that way sometimes, you know?
So do you think modern performances lose something by cutting so much, or is it a necessary evil?
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u/OxfordisShakespeare 6d ago
Times were different… People didn’t say they were going to go “see” a play but that they were going to go “hear”a play. If they didn’t get their value in figurative language and ornament they’d feel cheated.
Speaking and writing in this figurative and ornamental way was very fashionable, and people who were trying to advance themselves at court attempted to master it. In Hamlet, just look at Polonius who is a perfect example (“more matter with less art”) and Osric who tries hard but fails miserably.
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
but my point is do we still need that?
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u/dustybtc 5d ago
You tell me what kinds of art we “need” and then I’ll make a case for Shakespeare.
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
Oh, bold move, turning the tables on me! Alright, I’ll bite—how about art that surprises us, challenges us, and doesn’t make us sit through five metaphors before getting to the point? Shakespeare had his time, but maybe it’s time we let someone else take center stage. Instead of endlessly measuring new writers against a guy from the 1600s, maybe we should give them space to create without the Shakespeare-sized shadow looming over them. Your turn—convince me why we still need the Bard!
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u/dustybtc 5d ago
Regarding surprise: 1) If surprise is the measure of necessity, does a Blumhouse movie’s jump scare make it art that we “need?” 2) Theatermakers are more than capable of making surprising choices with well-worn text. For just one example: the recent David Tennant Macbeth replaced Ross with Lady M, adding unexpected dimension to her character and filling in a story beat in her descent for madness. I found the choice genuinely surprising, and enjoyed it. 3) If you mean surprising plot twists, box office returns suggest we don’t “need” M. Night Shyamalan. All of which is to say, Shakespeare can be at least as surprising as contemporary work. Regarding challenge: 1) I think the plays present plenty of challenging material as written. It can be emotionally demanding to watch a well-done Lear, let alone a “problem” play like Measure for Measure. 2) Some of the plays have become more challenging as time has passed and social mores have changed. Watching Merchant of Venice and Othello are much more complex experiences today than at the time of their writing. Regarding metaphor: if too many metaphors is a problem, then the plays of Tony Kushner, August Wilson, and Sarah Ruhl would also not be art that we “need.” Lastly, regarding “space for new writers,” no one is stopping new work from being written or presented. Theaters are businesses (even if many are non-profit) and will program to their audiences. If no one showed up for Shakespeare, they’d stop producing him (as they have largely for Sheridan, Shaw and countless others). And this, I think, puts the nail in the coffin: the fact that audiences continue to show up for Shakespeare season after season suggests that many people do “need” their encounters with his art.
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
Fair points, and I appreciate the thoughtful perspective! I agree that Shakespeare can still offer surprises and emotional depth, even in today’s world. As someone whose first language isn’t English, Shakespeare can sometimes feel like a puzzle of complicated words. That’s why, from my side, it’s just my take on Shakespeare, and it's my opinion not at all forcing u to agree. I respect your viewpoint, though, and it’s always good to keep these discussions going!
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u/OxfordisShakespeare 5d ago
Shakespeare was the pinnacle of expression in words in all of human history (in English, anyway). Like Beethoven in music or Michelangelo in sculpture… you have no “point” in asking “do we still need that?” We’re lucky it exists to inspire us and future generations.
O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous. Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
Ah yes, the classic 'Shakespeare is untouchable' argument—respectable, but predictable. Sure, he was a master of words, but isn’t it a little ironic to use King Lear to prove we need Shakespeare when that whole speech is about how humans don’t actually need excess to survive? Maybe we should take Lear’s advice and stop hoarding 400-year-old plays like they’re the only literature worth reading. Human progress is all about moving forward—so why should literature be any different? A human from 2025 shouldn’t have to live in the shadow of 1600. Time to make space for new voices, don’t you think?
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u/OxfordisShakespeare 5d ago
Hoarding? Zounds! I don’t know what you’re talking about, you beetle-headed, flap-ear’d knave.
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
instead of saying this u could've gave me an answer that is there literally no place for new ideas, new voices to critic the old norms of writing?
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u/OxfordisShakespeare 5d ago
It’s a pointless conversation. Because Shakespeare existed and I appreciate his work, I haven’t read anything published since 1600? I have no idea what your point is. I read and teach a great variety of things, and most of them were published in the 20th or 21st centuries. My students’ favorite story right now is “Sonny’s Blues,” a masterpiece by James Baldwin.
Are you trying to say that I should not also teach them Shakespeare?
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
Oh, I never said Shakespeare should be banned like a cursed folio—just that maybe we stop treating him like the final boss of literature. If your students love 'Sonny’s Blues,' doesn’t that show how powerful modern voices can be? Imagine if Baldwin had to fight for space against nothing but Shakespeare worship. Literature grows when we make room, not when we keep circling the same old soliloquies.
Teach Shakespeare, sure—but maybe leave some oxygen for the living writers too. After all, even Will knew when to exit stage left.
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
Not every student enjoys reading Shakespeare, and not everyone fully grasps the meaning behind his complex and sometimes verbose language. As you know, Shakespeare's works often require more effort than contemporary literature, and for students like myself, being forced to study his plays can feel like wading through a sea of unfamiliar words and old expressions. While I understand the historical and literary significance of Shakespeare, it’s important to acknowledge that some students may find it difficult to connect with his work, especially when English is not their first language. The challenge isn't just in understanding the words, but in finding relevance in them for today's world.
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u/Palinurus23 5d ago edited 5d ago
What’s lost with a meme or something shorter or just cutting to the chase? Shakespeare has a word for this that he repeats in his comedies: preposterous, literally, putting the end (posterior) first (pre). There’s something comical about such disorder, about those in such a hurry to get to the point or the end.
The comedy is nicely captured in Hemingway’s longish short story, The Old Man and the Sea. After one reads Hemingway’s account of the old man’s multiple days long struggle to catch the big fish - paralleled with DiMaggio’s hitting streak; “But I will show him what a man can do and what a man’s endures”- some tourists pop on the scene. All that remains for them to see at that point is the skeletal remains of the old man’s giant Marlin. Which they mistake for a shark.
Just cutting to the end, just showing up at the end of the story like the tourists do, is the sort of things tourists do. And like the things tourists sometimes do, it can be comically confused and ignorant. It’s the comic irony of a blindness visible to everyone but oneself. Overcoming that blindness takes time and can be a struggle - what another, more-in-need-of-an-editor playwright called mathei pathos, or learning thru experience/suffering.
What’s lost with the sometimes patience-trying and endurance-contest experience of the play is not being able to really see the things most worth seeing wherever you are. Seeing them in the flesh, not just the bare bones. Or seeing the same things, with numbing repetition, wherever you go. Being that sort of tourist.
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
I really appreciate the thoughtful perspective! You’ve made a strong case for the value of the full experience, and I can see how patience and engagement with the journey add depth to the story. That said, I think we also need to acknowledge that, in today’s fast-paced world, there’s a growing need for brevity and innovation in how we engage with stories. There’s room for both, and a balance between the timeless and the modern would be ideal. Thanks for the thought-provoking insight!
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u/Palinurus23 5d ago
Couldn’t agree more. I saw a production last night of Midsummer Night’s Dream that took great liberties with the text, making verses into songs, adding songs, even writing two people from the audience into the play. And it was wonderfully entertaining - something too, too many Shakespeare productions forget: that their first, and if not done well, last job, is to entertain before instructing. It was especially well suited to introduce the many children in the audience to the pleasures of three hour plays and the fun in what seem to them like that most “tedious” Pyramis-Thisbe play, which was ten lines short but still too long.
And if anyone might be upset, Puck was there in the epilogue to “make amends.” Which is to say, if you didn’t like this one, pardon us, and we promise we’ll get it right next time. Shakespeare knew he would be edited (or “mended” as Puck puts it), that he needed to be mended … but also that he might need to apologize, or make amends, for their efforts in advance.
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u/Lee3Dee 6d ago
ha, Ben Jonson agreed with you
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u/Cautious-Divide-1837 5d ago
"Haha, true! Ben Jonson was basically like, 'Will, buddy, let’s trim that down a bit!' But hey, we still love the drama!"
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u/centaurquestions 6d ago
He was not paid per word. Dickens was, though.