Joseph Campbell “Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is.

[kpete]

Joseph Campbell

“Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.

The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possibilities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That’s where you are. You’ve got to keep both going. As Novalis said, 'The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet.”

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/971052-the-power-of-myth

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Salman Rushdie Says, “Art Is Not Entertainment … It’s a Revolution”

Censorship exists to change the subject. When it is introduced in the realm of art, it becomes the subject; the attack onto the work becomes the work. As Rushdie said, “Assumptions of guilt replace assumptions of innocence.” The question redirects to, why are artists so troublesome? A work that is censored is portrayed as deserving it. Censorship exists as a political distraction, like many of the headlines we read everyday in politics. They are emotional buttons that keep us from focusing on what’s actually happening: wars and war crimes, unethical economics, a battering of civil liberties and extreme irresponsibility toward the environment, just to name a few.

http://hyperallergic.com/51166/salman-rushdie-arthur-miller-freedom-to-write-gary-shteyngart/

[Hari Seldon]

1. Not really what Shakespeare said

He was commenting specifically about ACTING, from the perspective of a playwrite who detested overacting.

Hamlet:
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature:
for any thing so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose
end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the
mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own
image, and the very age and body of the time his form and
pressure.

Ironic of course, as "Shakespeare" was not a real person, but the pen name of Edward de Vere.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. The speech is directed to a company of actors, but the language is about 'the purpose of playing'

and it refers to all of the arts while focusing on the reasons for making theater as part of a lesson about being a better, more truthful artist. The playwright explains his purpose for playing, for making plays which are called plays for a reason.