Sunday, November 7, 2021

Kathleen Battle - 5 Japanese Love Songs

https://youtu.be/Noqn1Qo4LFA

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Tips for Journalists that Never Go Out of Style

40 Time-tested Tips for Journalists that Never Go Out of Style

By Jezzamine Andaquig on October 10, 2017

1. Always get the name of the dog.

2. Better to get it right than get it first.

3. Trust is our most important asset.

4. Endure the awkward silences in interviews.

5. Avoid clichés.

6. Pick up the damn phone.

7. And get out of the damn office.

8. Only quote when paraphrasing doesn’t do a better job.

9. With multimedia: complement, don’t repeat.

10. Know your equipment before you hit the field.

11. Give credit and thanks for user submissions.

12. Follow the money.

13. Ask open-ended questions.

14. Keep asking yourself: what is the story REALLY about?

15. Get good natural sound.

16. Experiment and take risks.

17. Capture more b-roll than you think you need.

18. When the eye and the ear compete, the eye wins.

19. Better to coach writers than fix broken stories.

20. Reports are about information; stories are about experience.

21. Arrive early, stay late.

22. Don’t let the powerful answer in the passive voice: “Mistakes were made.”

23. The best quote often comes after the reporter closes the notebook.

24. Journalism is a discipline of verification, not assertion.

25. Good writing is not magic, it’s a process.

26. Great journalism comes at the intersection of craft and opportunity.

27. Take responsibility for what readers know and understand.

28. Each reader brings an autobiography with them to a story.

29. In a nut graph, it’s not the graph that’s important, but the nut.

30. Place the emphatic word in a sentence at the end.

31. The antidote to procrastination is rehearsal.

32. Show AND tell.

33. Get a good quote high in the story.

34. Express your most important idea in the shortest sentence.

35. The most powerful form of punctuation is white space.

36. Write early to learn what you still need to learn.

37. Tell the audience what you know—and how you know it.

38. Don’t just interview the boss, talk to the mechanic.

39. To find stories, take a different route home.

40. If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

Source: https://www.poynter.org/40-time-tested-tips-journalists-never-go-out-style

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Information Overload is the Bane of my Life

My daily struggle is to understand what is important, to my situation, in the constant barrage of information on the Internet, newspapers and cable news.

What can and should be ignored?

Is my purpose to seek distraction, novelty and entertainment?

Or is the goal and purpose to gain valuable knowledge?

What do I hope to accomplish?

“There are things that attract human attention, and there is often a huge gap between what is important and what is attractive and interesting."
- Yuval Noah Harari

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

DAS KAPITAL

DAS KAPITAL
Karl Marx

General Info

Context

Summary

Terms

Summary and Analysis

Chapter 1: The Commodity (Section one)

Chapter 4: The General Formula for Capital

Chapter 6: The Sale and Purchase of Labor-Power

Chapter 7: Labor and Valorization Processes

Chapter 10: The Working Day

Chapter 14: The Division of Labor and Manufacture

Study Tools

Study Questions and Suggested Essay Topics

Quiz

Bibliography

Please Note!

How to Cite This SparkNote

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Order Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy at BN.com

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LINK: http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/daskapital/

Friday, May 25, 2012

Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

But if Shakespeare himself is maybe about meaning and truth, I don't know, then he is certainly about pleasure and interest, we start with pleasure and interest, but maybe eventually it gets to meaning and truth.
Stephen Greenblatt

First of all, Shakespeare is about pleasure and interest. He was from the first moment he actually wrote something for the stage, and he remains so.
Stephen Greenblatt

First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.
Stephen Greenblatt

I believe in broken, fractured, complicated narratives, but I believe in narratives as a vehicle for truth, not simply as a form of entertainment, though I love entertainment, but also a way of conveying what needs to be conveyed about the works that I care about.
Stephen Greenblatt

I believe that it is a whole lifetime of work on Shakespeare's part that enabled him to do what he did. But the question is how you can explain this whole lifetime in such a way to make it accessible and available to us, to me.
Stephen Greenblatt

I believe that nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare. I wanted to know where he got the matter he was working with and what he did with that matter.
Stephen Greenblatt

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.
Stephen Greenblatt

I wanted to hold onto and exploit the power of narrative. This is not only a book about a great storyteller, but there have to be stories about the storyteller.
Stephen Greenblatt

I'm not spitting in my own soup, I love having spent my life thinking about these things-but you don't have to know anything about his life, even though I've just written a biography!
Stephen Greenblatt

I've been at this for 40 years. And, as an academic, I've been content with relatively small audiences, with the thought that the audience I long for will find its way eventually to what I have written, provided that what I have written is good enough.
Stephen Greenblatt

It is not that Shakespeare's art is in technicolor and fancy, and that real life is black and white and tedious. The life that Shakespeare was living was the only life he had, and he had to use it to create what he was doing.
Stephen Greenblatt

No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.
Stephen Greenblatt

Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life.
Stephen Greenblatt

The Shakespeare that Shakespeare became is the name that's attached to these astonishing objects that he left behind.
Stephen Greenblatt

Well it is certainly the case that the poems - which were in fact published during Shakespeare's lifetime - are weird if they began or originated in this form, as I think they did, because the poems get out of control.
Stephen Greenblatt

What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.
Stephen Greenblatt

What matters here are the works - finally without them his life would be uninteresting. What matters, that is, are the astonishing things that he left behind. If we can get the life in relation to the works, then it can take off.
Stephen Greenblatt

What we know is that Shakespeare wrote perhaps the most remarkable body of passionate love poetry in the English language to a young man.

My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish.
Stephen Greenblatt

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/stephen_greenblatt.html#vgZmwem33M3tLRGx.99

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Beginner's Mind

Sit down before facts like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly whatever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
- T.H. Huxley

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

My Diverse Blog Topics Demonstrate My Struggle To Focus On One Topic By Attempting To Categorize Many Interesting Tings Into Themes

Work In Progress:

This account is a member of the following 105 blogs:

Monday, September 19, 2011

A Hanging

http://www.george-orwell.org/A_Hanging/0.html

Essay:

A Hanging

by George Orwell

It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like
yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We
were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with
double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet
by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of
drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the
inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the
condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.

One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny
wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick,
sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the
moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were
guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by
with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a
chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his
arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their
hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while
feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish
which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite
unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly
noticed what was happening.

Eight o'clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air,
floated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, who
was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with
his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was an army doctor, with a
grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. "For God's sake hurry up,
Francis," he said irritably. "The man ought to have been dead by this
time. Aren't you ready yet?"

Francis, the head jailer, a fat Dravidian in a white drill suit and gold
spectacles, waved his black hand. "Yes sir, yes sir," he bubbled. "All
iss satisfactorily prepared. The hangman iss waiting. We shall proceed."

"Well, quick march, then. The prisoners can't get their breakfast till
this job's over."

We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the
prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close
against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing
and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed
behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped
short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had happened--a
dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came
bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging
its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together.
It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it
pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a
dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. Everyone
stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the dog.

"Who let that bloody brute in here?" said the superintendent angrily.
"Catch it, someone!"

A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after the dog, but
it danced and gambolled just out of his reach, taking everything as part
of the game. A young Eurasian jailer picked up a handful of gravel and
tried to stone the dog away, but it dodged the stones and came after us
again. Its yaps echoed from the jail wails. The prisoner, in the grasp of
the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another
formality of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed
to catch the dog. Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and
moved off once more, with the dog still straining and whimpering.

It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of
the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound
arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never
straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place,
the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed
themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped
him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the
path.

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to
destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to
avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of
cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he
was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working
--bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues
forming--all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be
growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air
with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the
grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned--reasoned
even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together,
seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two
minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone--one mind less, one
world less.

The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the
prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a brick erection
like three sides of a shed, with planking on top, and above that two
beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey-haired
convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his
machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word
from Francis the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than
ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up
the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope round the
prisoner's neck.

We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough
circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the
prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of
"Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!", not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for
help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog
answered the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the
gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down
over the prisoner's face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still
persisted, over and over again: "Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!"

The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes
seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and
on, "Ram! Ram! Ram!" never faltering for an instant. The superintendent,
his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick;
perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number--
fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The Indians
had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were
wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened
to his cries--each cry another second of life; the same thought was in
all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable
noise!

Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he
made a swift motion with his stick. "Chalo!" he shouted almost fiercely.

There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had
vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of the dog, and
it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when it got there
it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard,
where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. We went
round the gallows to inspect the prisoner's body. He was dangling with
his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a
stone.

The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare body; it
oscillated, slightly. "HE'S all right," said the superintendent. He
backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody
look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his
wrist-watch. "Eight minutes past eight. Well, that's all for this
morning, thank God."

The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. The dog, sobered and
conscious of having misbehaved itself, slipped after them. We walked out
of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting
prisoners, into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts, under
the command of warders armed with lathis, were already receiving their
breakfast. They squatted in long rows, each man holding a tin pannikin,
while two warders with buckets marched round ladling out rice; it seemed
quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had
come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to
break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering
gaily.

The Eurasian boy walking beside me nodded towards the way we had come,
with a knowing smile: "Do you know, sir, our friend (he meant the dead
man), when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor
of his cell. From fright.--Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you
not admire my new silver case, sir? From the boxwallah, two rupees eight
annas. Classy European style."

Several people laughed--at what, nobody seemed certain.

Francis was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously. "Well,
sir, all hass passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It wass all
finished--flick! like that. It iss not always so--oah, no! I have known
cases where the doctor wass obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull
the prisoner's legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable!"

"Wriggling about, eh? That's bad," said the superintendent.

"Ach, sir, it iss worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall,
clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will
scarcely credit, sir, that it took six warders to dislodge him, three
pulling at each leg. We reasoned with him. "My dear fellow," we said,
"think of all the pain and trouble you are causing to us!" But no, he
would not listen! Ach, he wass very troublesome!"

I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the
superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. "You'd better all come out and
have a drink," he said quite genially. "I've got a bottle of whisky in
the car. We could do with it."

We went through the big double gates of the prison, into the road.
"Pulling at his legs!" exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst
into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment
Francis's anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink
together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a
hundred yards away.

IndexIndex
Essay

Other Authors: > Charles Darwin
> Charles Dickens
> Mark Twain
> William Shakespeare

George Orwell. Copyright 2003, george-orwell.org

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Taming of the Shrew - Peter O'Toole and Siân Phillips

ShakespeareAndMore | March 11, 2008 | 23 likes, 1 dislikes

A few pictures added of the younger Peter O'Toole and Sian Phillips to the audio from an LP album, released in 1962.

two excerpts, starts with Petruchio's first meeting with Kate, Act II, scene 2, line 154 (Hortensio's "And with that word she struck me on the head") and continues through to Petruchio and Kate's exit.

Then the dinner scene (Act 4, scene), where Petruchio makes sure a tired Kate doesn't eat and he lays out his plan: "Thus have I politicly begun my reign"...unfortunately, some cuts of the text..

the superb Siân Phillips is best known for her role from TV as Livia as in "I Claudius", a portrait of Livia described by wiki as "as a thoroughly wicked, scheming political mastermind" given to poisoning.

go here to see John Cleese perform this scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2NnhB...

go here to see Marc Singer perform this scene in a very comic style:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsL8K9...

Petruchio - Peter O'Toole
Katherina - Siân Phillips
Hortensio - Richard Gale
Baptista - Norman Tyrrell
Grumio - Henry Woolf
Curtis - Peter Birrel

from "Living Shakespeare" LP STS-11A/12A
directed by John Hale, sound effects by Desmond Leslie

Category:

Entertainment

Monday, October 25, 2010

Biography

Williamm Shakespeare (1564–1616), `The Bard of Avon', English poet and playwright wrote the famous 154 Sonnets and numerous highly successful oft quoted dramatic works including the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet;

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!"
--Lord Polonius, Hamlet Act I, Scene 3

While Shakespeare caused much controversy, he also earned lavish praise and has profoundly impacted the world over in areas of literature, culture, art, theatre, and film and is considered one of the best English language writers ever. From the Preface of the First Folio (1623) "To the memory of my beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare: and what he hath left us"--Ben Jonson;

"Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe
And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give."

Over the centuries there has been much speculation surrounding various aspects of Shakespeare's life including his religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sources for collaborations, authorship of and chronology of the plays and sonnets. Many of the dates of play performances, when they were written, adapted or revised and printed are imprecise. This biography attempts only to give an overview of his life, while leaving the more learned perspectives to the countless scholars and historians who have devoted their lives to the study and demystification of the man and his works.

England's celebration of their patron Saint George is on 23 April, which is also the day claimed to be the birth date of Shakespeare. Although birth and death dates were not recorded in Shakespeare's time, churches did record baptisms and burials, usually a few days after the actual event. The infant William was baptised on 26 April 1564 in the parish church Holy Trinity of Stratford upon Avon. He lived with his fairly well-to-do parents on Henley Street, the first of the four sons born to John Shakespeare (c1530-1601) and Mary Arden (c1540-1608), who also had four daughters. John Shakespeare was a local businessman and also involved in municipal affairs as Alderman and Bailiff, but a decline in his fortunes in his later years surely had an effect on William.

In his younger years Shakespeare attended the Christian Holy Trinity church, the now famous elegant limestone cross shaped cathedral on the banks of the Avon river, studying the Book of Common Prayer and the English Bible. In 1605 he became lay rector when he paid £440 towards its upkeep, hence why he is buried in the chancel. Early on Shakespeare likely attended the Elizabethan theatrical productions of travelling theatre troups, come to Stratford to entertain the local official townsmen, including the Queen's Men, Worcester's Men, Leicester's Men, and Lord Strange's Men. There is also the time when Queen Elizabeth herself visited nearby Kenilworth Castle and Shakespeare, said to have been duly impressed by the procession, recreated it in some of his later plays.

Although enrolment registers did not survive, around the age of eleven Shakespeare probably entered the grammar school of Stratford, King's New School, where he would have studied theatre and acting, as well as Latin literature and history. When he finished school he might have apprenticed for a time with his father, but there is also mention of his being a school teacher. The next record of his life is in 1582, when still a minor at the age of eighteen and requiring his father's consent, Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway (1556–1623) married in the village of Temple Grafton. Baptisms of three children were recorded; Susanna (1583-1649), who went on to marry noted physician John Hall, and twins Judith (1585-1662) who married Richard Quiney, and Hamnet (1585-1596) his only son and heir who died at the age of eleven.

It is not exactly clear what Shakespeare was doing in the first few years after the marriage, but he did go to London and worked at The Globe theatre, possibly as one of the Queen's Men whose works were harshly anti Catholic in a time of rising Protestantism. He was writing poems and plays, and his involvement with theatre troupes and acting is disparagingly condemned in a 1592 pamphlet that was distributed in London, attributed to Robert Green the playwright titled "Groats Worth of Witte" haughtily attacking Shakespeare as an "upstart crow";

"Yes trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tyger's hart wrapped in a Player's hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Iohannes fac totum [Jack-of-all-trades, Master of none], is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. O that I might entreate your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses: & let these Apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions."

By 1593 the plague was haunting London and many who were able fled the teeming city for the cleansing airs of open country. While it was a time for many upstart theatres, the popular public entertainment of the day, they were often shut down and forbidden to open for stretches of time. Shakespeare probably spent these dark days travelling between London, Stratford, and the provinces, which gave him time to pen many more plays and sonnets. Among the first of his known printed works is the comedic and erotically charged Ovidian narrative poem Venus and Adonis (1593). It was wildly popular, dedicated with great esteem to his patron Henry Wriothesly, third earl of Southampton, the young man that some say Shakespeare may have had more than platonic affection for. It was followed by the much darker The Rape of Lucrece in 1594, The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599 and the allegorical The Phoenix and the Turtle(1601).

At this time of prolific writing, Shakespeare began his association until his death with The Lord Chamberlain's Men. With the accession of James I they became the King's Men, who bought and performed most of Shakespeare's plays. The troupe included his friend and actor Richard Burbage. They performed frequently at court, and in the theatres that Shakespeare was co-owner of including the Blackfriars, The Theatre, and The Globe in London until it burnt down during a performance of King Henry VIII. It is said that Shakespeare himself acted in a number of roles including the ghost inHamlet and Old Adam in As You Like It. In the late 1590s he bought `New Place' on Chapel Street in Stratford, one of his many real estate investments.

Shakespeare wrote most of his plays as `quarto texts', that being on a sheet of paper folded four ways. A few of his plays were printed in his lifetime, though they appeared more voluminously after his death, sometimes plagiarised and often changed at the whim of the printer. First Folio would be the first collection of his dramatic works, a massive undertaking to compile thirty-six plays from the quarto texts, playbooks, transcriptions, and the memories of actors. The approximately nine hundred page manuscript took about two years to complete and was printed in 1623 as Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. It also featured on the frontispiece the famous engraved portrait of Shakespeare said to be by Martin Droeshout (1601-c1651).

Under the favour of the court The Kings' Men became the eminent company of the day. Most likely Anne and the children lived in Stratford while Shakespeare spent his time travelling between Stratford and London, dealing with business affairs and writing and acting. In 1616 his daughter Judith married Quiney who subsequently admitted to fornication with Margaret Wheeler, and Shakespeare took steps to bequeath a sum to Judith in her own name. William Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, according to his monument, and lies buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford upon Avon. While there is little known of her life, Anne Hathaway outlived her husband by seven years, dying in 1623 and is buried beside him. It is not clear as to how or why Shakespeare died, but in 1664 the reverend John Ward, vicar of Stratford recorded that "Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Johnson had a merie meeting, and itt seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted." His tombstone is inscribed with the following epitaph;

Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare
Blessed by y man y spares hes stones
And curst be he y moves my bones

Poetry

It is generally agreed that most of the Shakespearean Sonnets were written in the 1590s, some printed at this time as well. Others were written or revised right before being printed. 154 sonnets and "A Lover's Complaint" were published by Thomas Thorpe as Shake-speares Sonnets in 1609. The order, dates, and authorship of the Sonnets have been much debated with no conclusive findings. Many have claimed autobiographical details from them, including sonnet number 145 in reference to Anne. The dedication to "Mr. W.H." is said to possibly represent the initials of the third earl of Pembroke William Herbert, or perhaps being a reversal of Henry Wriothesly's initials. Regardless, there have been some unfortunate projections and interpretations of modern concepts onto centuries old works that, while a grasp of contextual historical information can certainly lend to their depth and meaning, can also be enjoyed as valuable poetical works that have transcended time and been surpassed by no other.

Evoking Petrarch's style and lyrically writing of beauty, mortality, and love with its moral anguish and worshipful adoration of a usually unattainable love, the first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man, sonnets 127-152 to a dark lady. Ever the dramatist Shakespeare created a profound intrigue to scholars and novices alike as to the identities of these people.

Tragedies

Some probably inspired by Shakespeare's study of Lives (trans.1597) by Greek historian and essayist Plutarch and Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (1587). Some are reworkings of previous stories, many based on English or Roman history. The dates given here are when they are said to have been first performed, followed by approximate printing dates in brackets, listed in chronological order of performance.

Titus Andronicus first performed in 1594 (printed in 1594),
Romeo and Juliet 1594-95 (1597),
Hamlet 1600-01 (1603),
Julius Caesar 1600-01 (1623),
Othello 1604-05 (1622),
Antony and Cleopatra 1606-07 (1623),
King Lear 1606 (1608),
Coriolanus 1607-08 (1623), derived from Plutarch
Timon of Athens 1607-08 (1623), and
Macbeth 1611-1612 (1623).

Histories

Shakespeare's series of historical dramas, based on the English Kings from John to Henry VIII were a tremendous undertaking to dramatise the lives and rule of kings and the changing political events of his time. No other playwright had attempted such an ambitious body of work. Some were printed on their own or in the First Folio(1623).

King Henry VI Part 1 1592 (printed in 1594);
King Henry VI Part 2 1592-93 (1594);
King Henry VI Part 3 1592-93 (1623);
King John 1596-97 (1623);
King Henry IV Part 1 1597-98 (1598);
King Henry IV Part 2
King Henry V 1598-99 (1600);
Richard II 1600-01 (1597);
Richard III 1601 (1597); and
King Henry VIII 1612-13 (1623)

Comedies, again listed in chronological order of performance.

Taming of the Shrew first performed 1593-94 (1623),
Comedy of Errors 1594 (1623),
Two Gentlemen of Verona 1594-95 (1623),
Love's Labour's Lost 1594-95 (1598),
Midsummer Night's Dream 1595-96 (1600),
Merchant of Venice 1596-1597 (1600),
Much Ado About Nothing 1598-1599 (1600),
As You Like It 1599-00 (1623),
Merry Wives of Windsor 1600-01 (1602),
Troilus and Cressida 1602 (1609),
Twelfth Night 1602 (1623),
All's Well That Ends Well 1602-03 (1623),
Measure for Measure 1604 (1623),
Pericles, Prince of Tyre 1608-09 (1609),
Tempest (1611),
Cymbeline 1611-12 (1623),
Winter's Tale 1611-12 (1623).

http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/

Friday, June 25, 2010

Spark Notes Entire Treatment of Hamlet by Shakespeare

I have copied the notes from Spark's site to use for my own use in reading one play by Shakespeare. Hamlet is considered straight forward, easy to follow and understand. My grasp of plays is not my strongest suit but Shakespeare is given such prominence in English Literature that I thought reading one of his plays would be enriching. He has so many plays to choose from that it gets overwhelming when trying to guess where to start so Hamlet is the choice for now.

Sample Test

1. Whom does Polonius send to France to spy on Laertes?
(A) Reynaldo
(B) Ophelia
(C) Guido
(D) Marcellus

2. Where does the ghost appear during the play?
(A) The castle ramparts and the great hall of Elsinore
(B) Fortinbras’s tent and Hamlet’s bedchamber
(C) The castle ramparts and Gertrude’s bedchamber
(D) Gertrude’s bedchamber and the great hall of Elsinore

3. How did Claudius murder King Hamlet?
(A) By stabbing him through an arras
(B) By pouring poison into his ear
(C) By ordering him to be hanged
(D) By poisoning his wineglass

4. Where is the university at which Horatio and Hamlet studied?
(A) Paris
(B) Oxford
(C) Constantinople
(D) Wittenberg

5. Whose skull does Hamlet discover in the churchyard?
(A) The former court jester’s
(B) Reynaldo’s
(C) Ophelia’s
(D) His father’s

6. Which of the following characters cannot see the ghost?
(A) Marcellus
(B) Hamlet
(C) Gertrude
(D) Horatio

7. Who escorts Hamlet on the voyage to England?
(A) Cornelius and Voltimand
(B) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
(C) Marcellus and Bernardo
(D) Captain Vicissus and the one-eyed thief

8. Where do Hamlet and Laertes fight during Ophelia’s funeral?
(A) In the nearby woods
(B) Beside Ophelia’s grave
(C) Inside the church
(D) Inside the grave itself

9. Which of the following characters survive the play?
(A) Fortinbras, Horatio, and Osric
(B) Prince Hamlet, Polonius, and Gertrude
(C) Claudius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern
(D) Ophelia, Laertes, and King Hamlet

10. What does Hamlet claim to be able to tell the difference between when the wind is from the south?
(A) A flea and a fire log
(B) A nymph and a nihilist
(C) A hawk and a handsaw
(D) A shark and St. Timothy

11. In whose history of Denmark did Shakespeare find background material for his play?
(A) Oedipus of Thebes
(B) Saxo Grammaticus
(C) Franz Guntherhaasen
(D) Dionysus Finn

12. How does Ophelia die?
(A) Claudius stabs her.
(B) Hamlet strangles her.
(C) She slits her wrists.
(D) She drowns in the river.

13. Whose story does Hamlet ask the players to tell upon their arrival to Elsinore?
(A) Priam and Hecuba’s
(B) Antony and Cleopatra’s
(C) Gertrude and Claudius’s
(D) Ophelia’s

14. Why, according to Polonius, has Hamlet gone mad?
(A) He grieves too much for his father.
(B) He despises Claudius for marrying Gertrude.
(C) He is in love with Ophelia.
(D) He is jealous of Laertes and longs to return to Wittenberg.

15. Who is the last character to die in the play?
(A) Horatio
(B) Hamlet
(C) Claudius
(D) Fortinbras

16. How many characters die during the course of the play?
(A) Two
(B) Five
(C) Seven
(D) Eight

17. Who speaks the famous “To be, or not to be” soliloquy?
(A) Claudius
(B) Hamlet
(C) The ghost
(D) Laertes

18. In what country do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die?
(A) Belgium
(B) Denmark
(C) England
(D) Poland

19. Why does Hamlet decide not to kill Claudius after the traveling players’ play?
(A) Claudius is praying.
(B) Claudius is asleep.
(C) Claudius pleads for mercy.
(D) Gertrude is in the next room.

20. Who killed Fortinbras’s father?
(A) Prince Hamlet
(B) Laertes
(C) Fortinbras
(D) Hamlet’s father

21. Which character speaks the first line of the play?
(A) Bernardo
(B) Francisco
(C) Hamlet
(D) Horatio

22. In which of the following years was Hamlet most likely written?
(A) 1570
(B) 1601
(C) 1581
(D) 1610

23. Which of Claudius and Laertes’ traps for Hamlet succeeds in killing him?
(A) The poisoned cup
(B) The sharpened sword
(C) The poisoned dagger
(D) The poisoned sword

24. Which character speaks from beneath the stage toward the end of Act I?
(A) The ghost
(B) Hamlet
(C) Claudius
(D) Polonius

25. Who returns Hamlet to Denmark after his exile?
(A) Horatio
(B) Claudius
(C) A group of pirates
(D) A group of monks