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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2014 7:50:11 GMT -5
This week marks the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth. Yet the way we remember history’s most renowned playwright might have been very different had it not been for a formidable foe. Writing in the FT, Chris Laoutaris reports that in November 1596 a woman named Elizabeth Russell declared war on Shakespeare and his theatrical troupe, in the process nearly destroying the dramatist’s career. Russell rarely features in accounts of Shakespeare’s life, yet her actions determined how we think of him today: as the Shakespeare of the Globe Theatre. FT - The battle to build Shakespeare’s GlobeUnfortunately, these days the Globe Theatre is a bit of a tourist trap which I tend to avoid!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2014 19:29:05 GMT -5
Shakespeare is admirable for his use of and contributions to the language, and for his poetry. But his works describe much that is simply too violent and gruesome to be tolerated in the world of to-day as we struggle towards civilisation. The blue pencil is overdue where Shakespeare is concerned. Let revised and corrected editions of his plays be put out, and the original texts consigned to locked cabinets in our larger libraries, where they may be consulted only by bona fide scholars. I contend that it was the reading of Shakespeare's original drama by youths of the day that led directly to the war of 1914. Some one such as Shaw makes a much more suitable and less harmful model for modern youths.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2014 11:46:28 GMT -5
Bowdlerised Shakespeare is not, in general, as good as the original, Sydney. The causes of the First World War may include Shakespeare, I suppose, although how?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2014 2:17:25 GMT -5
. . . The causes of the First World War may include Shakespeare, I suppose, although how? How, kleines c? Simply by treating as acceptable the unacceptable, speaking about the unspeakable, and making out that the uncivilized might be incorporated into our tottering proto-civilization.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2014 6:16:34 GMT -5
What is acceptable, Sydney?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2014 18:59:03 GMT -5
In cases such as this one instinctively turns does one not to the O.E.D., wherein we find:
"Orig. pronounced, according to the analogy of words in -ble from Fr. and L., 'ACceptable, and so in all poets to the present day; but from the tendency to treat it as a direct derivative from the vb. ac'CEPT, as in ad'VISable, mi'STAKable, de'NIable, under'STANDable, the pronunciation ac'CEPTable is now more prevalent. So with the derivatives acceptably, -ableness. Sometimes compared acceptabler, -est. Capable, worthy, or likely to be accepted or gladly received; hence, pleasing, agreeable, gratifying, or welcome."
That "likely" is significant here. We must perforce conclude that to be beyond the pale there has to BE a pale!
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2014 1:03:04 GMT -5
A recent issue of the T.L.S. makes passing reference to a film entitled Anonymous, which puts forward a theory that the plays and poems of S. were written by the Earl of Oxford. Happily I found on the inter-web some information about this film. I have not yet watched it properly, but having dipped in I can report that there is a great deal of costume and many crowd scenes. Here from it are two snap-shots depicting an Elizabethan performance - I expect at the Globe. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(film)Have any among our membership already watched it?
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2014 12:01:12 GMT -5
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Post by ahinton on Oct 28, 2017 10:13:05 GMT -5
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