Be warned: 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. Once the project is (eventually) finished, I’m looking forward to reading them again merely for pleasure.
Continue reading “Quotation* of the Week: 13 August 2018 (#53)”
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. 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 Plausibility™ – 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.
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.
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”
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 