It being Wednesday, it's time again for a bit of the Bard. I'm not 100% certain I'll manage a post next Wednesday, since we'll be travelling home from Arizona at that point, so this may be our last Wednesday with Shakespeare entry until 2010. We shall see ( Read more... )

It's Wednesday, and Wednesday means Shakespeare. Okay, technically I believe it means "Odin's Day", and is in commemoration of that Norse God - I defer to everflame (aka Tessa Gratton) to know that sort of thing for sure. But here at Writing and Ruminating, I try to provide a bit of the Bard midweek ( Read more... )

Today I return to these lines from the comical character Don Armado in Love's Labour's Lost: "Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio." I am, of course, quoting them out of context, as one inevitably does when quoting Shakespeare. (Just think of Catherine Morland - from Austen's Northanger Abbey, quoting from Twelfth Night as ( Read more... )

Today I awoke with these lines from Love's Labour's Lost in my head:

"Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio."They come at the end of a monologue by Don Armado, one of Shakespeare's comic characters who is sometimes referred to as "the braggart". Yet even though they're the end of a comic soliloquy, they have a depth - and a ( Read more... )

It is widely believed that A Midsummer Night's Dream was first performed during a marriage celebration, and that Elizabeth I was present at the wedding. This deduction comes from the incorporation of nuptials within the play itself, as well as a number of references to the Queen herself (particularly in the comments of Oberon when he describes ( Read more... )

The first play featured here during Brush Up Your Shakespeare Month was Much Ado About Nothing.

ACT I, scene 1:

Leonato "How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!"

Beatrice I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you.

Benedick What! my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?

Benedick Would you ( Read more... )

Poetry in Motion

The first thing I want to talk about today is the poetry in Love's Labour's Lost. And no, I'm not going to repeat 2/3 of the play here, which is about how much of this particular play is composed in verse. In fact, the play is pretty much all iambic pentameter, only some of which is blank verse (a phrase used to talk about ( Read more... )

Today we're moving on to another of Shakespeare's comedies. It's an early one, that was performed for Queen Elizabeth I at Christmas time, most likely in the year 1597, although it's possible that it was performed even earlier than that. The cleverness and wordplay of this one presage what is to come in plays such as Much Ado About Nothing, and I ( Read more... )