We celebrate his birthday every year, but clearly he deserves much more.
Requested by The Man for Aeiou.
Patience, Please
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We celebrate his birthday every year, but clearly he deserves much more.
Requested by The Man for Aeiou.
I’m shocked that iambs aren’t required here.
(1) Well, that is part of his traditional birthday celebration, and there should be some opportunity for the iambically challenged to discuss my illustrious cousin.
Iambs are not prohibited, however.
“About the wood go swifter than the wind.”-A midsummer Night dream
A Midsummer Night dream is my favorite ,because it’s the only one that has a happy ending. What are other MBers favorites?
I’m glad to hear that iambs are allowed.
The Bunniful’s related to the Bard?
Considering your art, I’m not surprized.
On Shakespeare’s birthday last year, we went to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at a local library.
It was quite funny, in an somewhat subtly-insane kind of way. Maybe not even that subtle.
Twisted Tales: William Shakespeare is HILARIOUS in a Muserly way.
(4) You are most kind. A distant kinship, true —
considering the years between — unknown
to me until this year. The link I found
by chance. The bard’s two grannies sisters were,
Webb their surname; their brother Henry my line
sustained, however many “greats” ago.
“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
“Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.”
Nurse:
Madam!
Juliet:
I come, anon.—But if thou meanest not well,
I do beseech thee—
Nurse:
Madam!
Juliet:
By and by, I come—
To cease thy strife, and leave me to my grief.
To-morrow will I send.
Romeo:
So thrive my soul—
Juliet:
A thousand times good night!
Romeo:
A thousand times the worse, to want thy light.
Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books,
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.
Taiwan Hippo Fan, my sister she is,
Good performer of monologues of his,
Though me, I must say I don’t have the gift,
And wow, the first two lines up there rhyme ift.
3–That’s my favorite too (I got to be Hermia once upon a time).
But doesn’t “As You Like It” have a happy ending? And several others besides (which I can’t think of right now)?
Henry IV, Part 1
6: I know! I read the one of Romeo and Juliet because it was in the back of our version at school. I was laughing the whole time.
9- You call those iambs? Shame on you, dear Pan.
A few days ago, someone got a hold of my phone when I was over at my friend’s house, and they laughed at me for an hour for having Shakespeare’s birthday on my phone’s calander.
But soft! What light through yonder MuseBlog breaks?
It is a thread, and Shakespeare is its theme.
Arise, fair thread, and craunch the marmoset
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, its maid, art far more fair than it.
Be not its maid, for it is envious.
Its marmoset’s hide is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.
O! it is my MuseBlog! O! it is my love!
O, that it knew it were.
Anyways, my favorite it The Tempest.
“Arise, fair thread, and craunch the marmoset…”
My favorite line of the day.
13 (POSOC): No, I never said they were iambs. And I never said I was trying very hard, either.
I like The Tempest, too, but my favorite is Richard III.
15-classic
did i ever tell you guys the pirate story?
well if i did here it is again! twice the fun!
it’s not really a story. but hemmel was teaching iambic pentameter to our brit lit class. his method is to make us all stand up and shout “i AM a PIrate WITH a WOODen LEG!” and bang our supposedly wooden leg against the ground. it’s one of those immortal jokes (ie, the kind that never die)
That’s a memorable demonstration, all right, but it’s misleading as an example of iambic pentameter. You’d never say the sentence with stresses anything like that in normal speech. Instead you’d stress I, pi-, and wood-, and leave the rest unstressed. At least it has ten syllables.
O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other word would smell as sweet.
Come, gentle night, — come, loving black brow’d night,
Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of Heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
I, too, have seen The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged). It was great.
Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
Bliss in our brows’ bent; none our parts so poor
But was a race of heaven.
It hath been taught us from the primal state
That he which is was wished until he were,
And the ebbed man, ne’er loved till ne’er worth love,
Comes deared by being lacked. This common body,
Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,
Goes to, and back, lackeying the varying tide,
To rot itself with motion.
To be furious,
Is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood
The dove will peck the estridge.
Friends, Romes, Country Men!
Lead me your Ear(s?)
I come to burry Ceaser, Not prase him…
R&J was not my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, it seems like a comedy with a tacked on tragic ending.
Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme – I thank you, gentlemen –
This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good: – if ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man, that functions
Is smother’d in surmise; and nothing is
But what is not.
My favorites are Macbeth and Taming of the Shrew.
:idea:TNÖ:idea:
10- It’s the only one with a happy ending that I have read, though there are (probably?) others that have happy endings too.
To be or not to be!
That is the question
Tis noble thy heart
dang, I forgot the rest!
Oh, now I remember! Though the rest after “To die: to sleep;” is just from a book of “famous quotations” or something like that.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. – Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.
*stands up* Hello, my name is Eccentric, and I am iamb-challenged.
I haven’t read all of Shakespeare yet, but so far my favorites have been Midsummer Night’s Dream and Othello. Unfortunately, I actually know a guy who is like Iago – not as clever, but twice as evil.
I…actually haven’t read anything.
I’ve seen the ballet “Romeo and Juliet” twice, though
“Much Ado About Nothing” has a happy ending! I was in that, and so was Brendan. I was Don Pedro, and he was Friar Francis and Conrad!
So, any anti-stratfordians here, do you think Shakespeare had too buisy of a life? too little education? not enough skill?
It seems to me that there ought to be someone nowadays with the name Shakespeare. Ashley Shakespeare, going to school in some tiny midwestern town, or something of the sort.
31- I do believe there was a man named William Shakespeare, but there is simply not enough evidence to support the idea that he wrote the plays usually attributed to him. Too little education is a main reason for my opinion. How could a person who received so little schooling be an expert at so many different and varied fields? Sailing, law, medicine, the royal court, everything. Another reason has to do with books. At the time the plays were written, books were fairly valuable. So why, in his will, did Shakespeare mention none of his books or folios? Could it be that he had none? And why did he have so little fame during his life? Francis Bacon, another writer during that time period, was famous from coast to coast. It seems that a writer of “Shakespeare’s” magnitude would have been somewhat well-known. I believe that a group of people, probably working together, authored the plays. This would be the only way to have so much knowledge in one place.
REVIVE THIS THREAD!!!
I have to memorize the Dagger speech from Macbeth for English. All I remember are the first few lines.
Is this a dagger which I see before me
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still…
oh, darn it.
-shudders-
You know you’re addicted to theater when you wince at the name of the Scottish play even when you’re not in a theater.
35-
I said it by accident in a theater right before a performance, and I had to wait in the audience…
Second the revival. Luv Shakespeare.
“I beseech your grace to pardon me!
I know not by what power I am made bold
in a presence such as this.
But I entreat your grace that I may know
the worst that will befall me,
If I refuse to wed Demetrius.”
That is the sole remnant of Midsummer Night’s Dream left in my memory. It’s been a few years…
I finally managed to get it memorized!
Oh, and keep it revived please.
Hmm, should I start with his lines to the servant, or just the soliloquy?
“[Go bid my mistress, when my drink is ready,
She strike upon the bell.]
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet in form as palpable
As this which I now draw. [draws dagger]
Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going,
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o’ th’ other senses,
Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There’s no such thing.
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one half-world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate’s off’rings, and withered murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s his stride, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives.
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
[a bell rings]
I go, and it is done. The bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to Heaven or to Hell.”
Yay!