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William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52
- DavidSJ 11y agoModerators, can you append [1616] to the title? This is old news.
- gavinpc 11y agoMiss Hathaway had as a lover That infamous son of a glover Whatever Will said In their second-best bed She edited cover to cover A sort of rambling article from NYT whose most notable feature was a beautiful sidenote style and the lack of a scrollbar. For those interested in Shakespeare and new media, here's a thing I've been working on http://gavinpc.com/project_willshake.pdf http://gavinpc.com/project_willshake.pdf
- na85 11y agoContrarily, I found it engrossing.
- justinmk 11y agoYour PDF is thought-provoking, as was the NYT article.
- gavinpc 11y agoThank you. That means a lot to me. I have worked on that project mostly in secret for over ten years, and I had resolved that yesterday had to be a release date of some kind. So yeah, I hadn't slept, and I needlessly (and foolishly) criticized the OP whose thread I'd recklessly hijacked for self-promotional purposes, hoping that a topical limerick from my college days would buy me a little good will. I should have done a Show HN instead.
- cooper12 11y agoYeah the lack of a scrollbar and an inability to highlight text really irked me, especially because I wanted to search some of the terms in the article to find out more. I really don't get why they bother with these anti-features...
- themartorana 11y ago"Shakespeare was the most commonly used spelling in his day, but by the 18th century, the version most favored was Shakespear, and only in the 20th century did Shakespeare become the standard. Interestingly, of the six surviving signatures the great man himself left behind, not one is spelled Shakespeare." He must have gotten it wrong. Thank goodness we've corrected it for him. Not like he was particularly good at English.
- icebraining 11y agoOf the six signatures, three are abbreviations, and the other three don't coincide among themselves. Besides, he did use the modern form when he wrote his name in print, just not in his signature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_Shakespeare's_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_Shakespeare's_name
- themartorana 11y agoOh be quiet with your logic and evidence. In the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling "Shakspere", as used in the poet's own signature, became more widely adopted in the belief that this was the most authentic version. I guess I lean this way. (I do acknowledge what you said about the man himself spelling his own name differently, makes me wonder why...) But I have always been perplexed about different spellings and pronunciations of proper nouns. My name is Dave in every language, I assure you. Sounds like the Elizabethans were all kinds of lax with spelling!
- davidgay 11y ago> My name is Dave in every language, I assure you. My name is David in English and French. Which brings up the awkward question of whether it's Дъйвид or Давид in Bulgarian.
- vidarh 11y agoEveryone were all kinds of lax with spelling. If you ever get involved with genealogy you will likely learn to hate the extreme levels of inconsistency there will be in written records covering the same person. It's not unusual to e.g. find church records written by the same priest spelling a parishioners name differently in different records, and these were official records.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 11y agoIn an intersection of recent topics in HN, I highly recommend the Globe's 2012 rendition of Twelfth Night, in which Stephen Fry plays Malvolio. I was never so much a fan of his as most seem to be around here, but his performance was frankly good, if somewhat similar to the character from Blackadder II. As for the rest of the cast, they range from solid to excellent.
- Brakenshire 11y agoCheers for that. I stumbled across their online player recently, but was a bit overwhelmed. Might give your suggestion a go: https://globeplayer.tv/videos/twelfth-night https://globeplayer.tv/videos/twelfth-night
- oppcmsku 11y agoIs there a place you can watch it online?
- n72 11y agoIndeed, saw it in NYC. Thought his performance was good. Mark Rylance, of course, was incredible.
- andrewclunn 11y agoFirst Prince now Shakespeare?!
- ams6110 11y agoSadly (?) the only memories I have of Shakespeare are the forced readings in my sophomore (Julius Caesar) and junior (King Lear) years in high school, both of which I hated and for which Cliff's Notes were my crutch to get through.
- whateveridunno 11y agoI thought it was illegal not to have read Hamlet by 21? Seriously though, give it another try. Shakespeare's wide-ranging enough that there's likely to be something to your taste. And with his comedies, especially, I'd recommend watching Shakespeare and not reading him- that's how his plays were meant to be experienced. Although it's nice to read an annotated version and discover all the (often dirty) jokes you didn't get. Added benefit to reading Shakespeare: you'll understand about 40% more literary allusions (read the Bible, Ovid, Homer, and Virgil to get the rest).
- shiro 11y agoGrown up in Japan and got into theatre, I've tried a few of Shakespeare (in Japanese translations), but I didn't fully get it---until I came to US and actually read it aloud in English. I agree that it is much more approachable as spoken words.
- henrikschroder 11y agoOne thing that never ceases to amaze me is that there are so many succesful modern retellings of his plays. Something about the stories are just timeless. Watch the originals, by all means, but the reimagined ones are not too shabby either: Romeo + Juliet, modern day "Verona Beach" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VBsi0VxiLg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VBsi0VxiLg Much Ado About Nothing, set in modern days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnmZc8uoEbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnmZc8uoEbo Hamlet, set in the 1800's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rd74Gniz-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rd74Gniz-A Richard III, set in WW2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXc0-EME0C8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXc0-EME0C8
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- mirimir 11y ago> “To be or not to be,” said Hamlet, prince of Denmark, “that is the question.” Yesterday, Hamlet’s creator was; today, he is not. Of that there is no question. OK, so I'm moved to quote Samuel Butler: > To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead. I got that (as I recall) from Peter Watts' Echopraxia. It's rather comforting, because I can always imagine that I will awaken ;)
- dclowd9901 11y agoWhen I wake up and my first thought is "I'm alive!" It's actually going to be a good day.
- mirimir 11y agoRight. And when my first thought is "WTF?", it helps to think "At least I'm alive!" ;)
- f1hybrid 11y agoThat's beautiful. The thought of dying scares me though because I just hate the idea that it will happen in the middle of an important thought.
- bryanrasmussen 11y agoright, if you were in the middle of solving P versus NP it would suck to be hit by a lighting bolt.
- kingsleymani 11y agoJudge: Pats fans' Deflategate suit 'without merit' see more infor here http://sh.st/IGVR3 http://sh.st/IGVR3
- fullshark 11y agoI don't get it
- edko 11y agoOn exactly the same date, Miguel de Cervantes, Novelist and Poet, is dead at 68.
- userbinator 11y agoAm I the only one who finds the tense in the title a bit confusing? For a moment I was wondering whether he was actually born in 1964...
- tempestn 11y agoThe entire article is written in present tense, as if it's a current news event; makes for a more interesting read. I don't think they're too concerned about people thinking William Shakespeare just now died.
- chrisau 11y agoWhat a wretched year! Bowie, Rickman, Prince and now Shakespeare too?! Say it ain't so. Taken too soon. RIP.
- noobie 11y agoYou know why I love Shakespeare? Because only thoughtful minds can understand his writings. Ones that can bear to get out of their technology-infested worlds and actually focus on a story that has and can keep your attention, when words meant more than simple communication. Promises were called oaths and there were such things as enduring love, faithfulness, and trust, yet, there were still scandals and mistakes. But it was all overcome in a story that few today would venture to understand in its original context. It takes little intelligence to comprehend what a text means, but in poetry and stories we find beautiful manifestations of every moral and in these I think we find the vulnerability of this plague we call humanity.
- tiatia 11y agoShakespeare https://cardiffshakespeare.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/william-shakespeare-dramen-und-apokryphen/ https://cardiffshakespeare.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/william-... http://www.shak-stat.engsem.uni-hannover.de/ http://www.shak-stat.engsem.uni-hannover.de/
- davidvaughan 11y agoThis is wonderfully sly and humorous.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]