#shakespeare’s histories

[withasideofshakespeare]

HAPPY SAINT CRISPIN’S DAY!

In celebration of this fine occasion, have some pictures of my company’s production of Henry V this summer.

^ A vengeful tennis ball for Governor Harfleur (that’s me as Harfleur!)

Mountjoy gets told off (also me. I have a penchant for being tormented by Henry V)

“PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CATHERINE!!!”

(That worked?!)

What we’re up against (the King of France)

I would give you more, but unfortunately my mother (the photographer for most of these) exclusively took pictures when I was on stage)

[prokopetz]

One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play's dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It's one of my favourites for two reasons:

It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and

Imagine being the 1603 equivalent of the guy with the cell phone camera in the movie theatre, furtively scribbling down notes in a little book and hoping Shakespeare himself doesn't catch you.

[its-not-a-pen]

--Written Chinese vs English--

[ID: A comic titled "Evolution of Written Chinese vs English". On the left, emperor Qin Shi Huang holds up a scroll and angrily points an ink brush at the viewer and shouts, "There should not be seven different ways to write 'horse'. Starting today everyone will use the same characters-- or else!" On the right, William Shakespeare laughs gleefully while holding a skull and quill and exclaims, "The first rule of English is to have fun and to thine own self be true!" Every word uses a non-standard spelling. Below the cut are full versions of the the panels and a blank version of the Chinese one. End ID]

I'm fascinated by the evolution of chinese and english "spelling." I grew up on hard-to-read Ye Olde English, and assumed all languages were like that. Imagine my shock when I discovered the chinese language had been standardised since 221BC, and I can read words written in the Han Dynasty.

full versions:

notes under the cut

For much of it's history, the English language played it fast and loose with spelling. (No one can spell things wrong if no one can spell things right!) Standardisation only began in the late 15th century as the use of the printing press spread across Europe.

I thought the best person to show this carefree attitude was the Bard himself; Willy Shakes. We have six surviving examples of Shakespeare's signature, and none of them are spelled the same way twice.

In comparison, Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, standardised the writing system as early as 221 BC. He had conquered the six warring states and decided to do away with their writing systems. This made the administration of a centralised government easier, and it served as a demonstration of his absolute authority. The writing on the book* is "horse", and "torn apart by carriage".

**That scroll he's holding is actually called a book in Chinese, it is made up of bamboo slips, like a big sushi mat!

All designs are available on redbubble: I thought it would be fun to include a blank version of qin shi huang, so you can write stuff on him.

[demigoddessqueens]

Happy 2,068th to when we should totally just stab Caesar!! Grab a knife with your bestie!

[dogzcats]

OPHELIA (details)

But long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death.

[yourgirlfoe]

Ya'll ever go, "fuckin' hell, I know this smell!" and it's the smell of a February evening from 2017 ?

[diioonysus]

women in art: titania

[ctnsto]

Beauty is terror.

[the-overanalyst]

i've come to realize there are only two kinds of tragedies: preventable and inevitable. preventable tragedies are the kind where everything could have maybe worked out if only. if only romeo had gotten the second letter. if only juliet had woken up earlier. if only creon had changed his mind about antigone sooner. if only orpheus hadn't turned around.

inevitable tragedies are the kind where everything was always going to end terribly. of course macbeth gets deposed, he murdered his way to the throne. of course oedipus goes mad, he married his own mother. of course achilles dies in the war, he had to fulfill the prophecy in order to avenge his lover.

both kinds have their merits. the first is more emotionally impactful, letting the audience cling to hope until the very end, when it's snatched away all at once leaving nothing but a void. the second is more thematically resonant, tracking an inherent fatal flaw in its hero to a natural and understandable conclusion, making it abundantly clear why everything has to happen the way it does.

[hello-is-anyone-there]

Me and the boys on Dunsinane Hill

[withasideofshakespeare]

Reading Henry VI Part 3 is like some kind of morality test. I’ll cheer somebody on, set my book down to grab a snack or go to work or whatever and think holy shit, they’re a war criminal. I support war crimes?

[wh0-is-lily]

Queen Magazine, July 17th, 1968 Photographed by John Hedgecoe

[oscarwildin]

the academic trinity of “damn it, richard”

[leisureflame]

THOU, THEE, THY, THINE. SAME THING RIGHT?

NO.

Although they seem very similar, Shakespeare would be in tears if he saw how most people mix them up. lets save William the misery and teach you when to correctly use thou, thy, and thine.

THOU

Thou = You (in subject form)

"Thou art killing me." "Art Thou crying?"

THEE

Thee = You (in object form)

"I want to kill thee." "My dog ate thee in my dream."

THY

Thy = Your (before a word that starts with a consonant)

"Thy mother." "Give me thy duck."

Thyself is used the same as any other thy+word combination like "thy mother" but without a space

"Take care of thyself."

THINE

Thine = Your (before a word that starts with a vowel)

"Thou art on thine own." "Thine answer hath satisfied mine query."

OR

Thine = Yours

“This is thine.” “The throne is thine, should thou choose to take it.”

(last 2 examples by @bookishwenchmeltha)

Now Shakespeare can truly rest in peace.

Go follow me @leisureflame for more posts like this!

[luciferslilith7]

"I'm a woman written in a cryptic dead language."

Source : 📍 pinterest

[ambxtxo]

donna tartt’s reading list

In an interview, Tartt lists her favorite authors and the names of a few works. I have listed the most popular works from each author and the specific ones she recommended as well.

Homer

The Iliad

The Odyssey

Greek Poets and Tragedians

Argonautica

Antigone

Prometheus Bound

The Oresteia

Medea

Oedipus Rex

The Bacchae

The Frogs

Dante

Inferno

Purgatorio

Paradiso

Shakespeare

“I went back and read Macbeth and Hamlet during the pandemic”

Macbeth

Hamlet

Dickens

“Dickens was a part of my familial landscape, the air I breathed.”

A Tale of Two Cities

Great Expectations

Nabokov

Pale Fire

Lolita

Proust

In Search of Lost Time

Swann’s Way

Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment

The Brothers Karamazov

Yeats

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

Borges

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth

Ethan Frome

Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited

Helena

Salinger

Catcher in the Rye

Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway

Orlando

Edward St. Aubyn

The Patrick Melrose Novels

Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore

Norwegian Wood

Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Don DeLillo

White Noise

Underworld

W.G. Sebald

Austerlitz

The Rings of Saturn

Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking

The White Album

Other Specific Books

Memoirs d’Outre-Tome by Chateaubriand

Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford

All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski

A Balcony in the Forest by Julien Gracq