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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Wasn't the Globe built on marshland in London?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Show biz folk have many superstitions - one particularly related to the W.S. play "MacBeth" - it is considered that mentioning the name brings bad luck so the play is always referred to as "The Scottish Play."
An old episode of the PBS TV show from Bitain called "Black Adder" delt with that superstition with hilarious results! If you can find a copy of the episode your students would enjoy it, I'm sure.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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>>Wasn't the Globe built on marshland in London?<<
Dunno. I have the Rose bit on the authority of a mad-woman Shakespearean acting teacher only. Figured I'd put it up and see if it got shot down.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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The new Globe Theatre in London is an exact replica of the original Globe. But with electricity and a spinkler system. And toilets.
It only puts on plays during the summer. This was also true in Wordy William's time.
Disagree with jheem over the inclusion of so many words from the plays in the OED simply because they were in Shakespeare's opera. I read an article from the Oxford Press some years ago which stated that usage since his time decided inclusion or exclusion. [name-dropping] Blame Dr Johnson and his bloody dictionary. I do. I had lunch sitting on the steps of his house the other day. It's just round the corner from where I work when I'm in London [/name-dropping].
WS plays should be looked at in the political context of the Elizabethan/Stuart milieu in which they were written and performed. Can you discern any political or cultural difference between those written before 1603 and those written after?
You should let your students see "Shakespeare in Love" and then have them find some of the quotations (the whole script was quotes from the plays). It's also hilarious in its own right.
"Richard III" was shameless propaganda for the Tudors, largely culled from an essay justifying the Tudor revolt written by Sir Thomas More. Not that it helped him much more. Poor Dickie got the bird and poor Thomas got the chop.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>usage since his time decided inclusion or exclusion [in OED]
this rather surprised me, as the OED is rife with nonce-words and others with the single citation being only another dictionary. but I couldn't find a single counterexample in a quick search.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2004
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Disagree with jheem over the inclusion of so many words from the plays in the OED simply because they were in Shakespeare's opera.
Dr Johnson was part of the problem, but the availability of some concordances of Shakespeare's works made the editor's task easier. I based my suggestion on a partially digested and half remembered reading of the fourth chapter (Shakespeare's Dictionary) of John Willinsky's enjoyable book Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED (pp. 57-75).
You should let your students see "Shakespeare in Love".
Yes, indeed, a fun movie. There's also a short scene in Last Action Hero with Joan Plowright (Laurence Olivier's widow) as a high school English teacher showing a scene from her husband's Hamlet before it gets re-image-ined by the lead kid. The look on her face, when she says they may remember him from some commercials he did, is priceless.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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W. S. is also known as the Bard;
4/23/1564--born rather late in birth order in a very large family;
4/23/1616--died very young, in my way of thinking, at only 52
Maybe things have been figured out since I went to school but wasn't there a whole thing that we really didn't know who Shakespeare was, nor his exact date of birth or death.
I remember some conjecture that WS was actually Sir Francis Bacon.
A good intrigue for the kids no?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
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Perhaps. But the article, from memory, wasn't a defence of the inclusion of so many of his or the selection criteria. It just mentioned how Shakespeare's nonce-words made it into the dictionary and cited Johnson's dictionary within the context, although exactly how I can't remember. I'm not about to start arguing the finer points, because I don't remember them if they were even there!
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veteran
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veteran
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His date of birth is not known, just when he was baptized. But his date of death is known as the will was probated. There's about as much of documentary evidence as you would imagine from a middle class English man of his time. Maybe a little more. (Ducks behind a rock while the Oxfordians load cannons and fire.)
I hold the outlandish belief that William Shakespeare was William Shakespeare. And even if he were an alien, it would have little to do with his texts. Bacon, Oxford, Mercutio Florio. There's been a ton of conjecture on who he was. Ben Jonson seemed to think WS was WS. Not to be tautological, but it's good enough for me.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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WS was actually Sir Francis Bacon.
It's true. But did you also know that Sir Francis Bacon was actually Christopher Marlowe? And that Christopher Marlowe was actually Queen Elizabeth I? But wait, that's not the weird part! The weird part is that Queen Elizabeth I was actually Ethel the sea pirate's daughter.
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