Be warned: Â today’s post has little to do with Shakespeare per se, except as an example of my own peculiar insanity, and a way of getting rid of an ‘ear-worm’ that has been plaguing me since May.
Category: Shakesnobbery
300: This … is … SHAKESPEARE!
A few numbers for you:
Broadly 100 posts a year …
Just short of 200,000 words …
Plays read for the first time: 9 (of varying quality) …
Here I am, 300 not out!
Quotation* of the Week: 13 August 2018 (#53)
Thankfully, we can’t have a third series of The Hollow Crown, but what about adaptations of the Roman plays?
If there’s one thing my (currently stuttering) Pony Tail Shakespeare read-through project has given me so far, it’s a greater love for the History Plays. Â Once the project is (eventually) finished, I’m looking forward to reading them again merely for pleasure.
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Forensic Friday (#01): RIII I.i.20-21
We can give those long dead words tone, inflection, pace … and meaning.
THIS is what we do, students.
We are archaeologists of the written word. Â Remember that.
We take our soft brushes and gently but resolutely stroke away the accumulated layers of popular misconception, plain bullshit, and systemic Shakesnobbery that surrounds a text until we are left with the bare bones – the words themselves …
Then – armed with contextual knowledge that keeps us somewhere on the Continuum of Plausibilityâ„¢ – we ‘perform’ (and that is precisely the word, so enjoy the performative aspect of the work) forensic autopsies on those long-dead words: we dissect, analyse and record our findings. Â
Occasionally, what we’re looking at might seem as alien as some of the stuff Scully chops up in the X-Files, but we persevere, we find points of reference, and with care we perform a kind of necromancy: we can practically bring the sample in front of us to life. Â
We can give those long dead words tone, inflection, pace … and meaning.
The subject’s about 400 years-old.
Think I found some tetrameter, Mulder …
THIS … … … is OCR H472/01 (Drama and Poetry pre-1900), A Level English Literature, section 1, question A … your Shakespeare extract task.
Continue reading “Forensic Friday (#01): RIII I.i.20-21”
