shakespeare

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 09:57 PM

Kendall - the dumbing-down (of America or anywhere else) won't stop anytime soon. But there are still opportunities for people who give a shit to prod the young to think and strive, and to connect with the world beyond the end of their nose. And maybe that's all anyone can really hope for - to light a few fires. One way is by insisting on teaching "hard stuff" in school, especially literature; another is to keep traditions such as all the odes of folk music alive. Some of us do it on purpose, and some of us just can't help ourselves. Sic semper....

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 09:59 PM

that should have been "all the modes of folk music" but then "odes" doesn't suck either.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: kendall
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 08:32 AM

I still correct my children's grammar whenever they stray, and they still resent it, but most of the time they use proper English. (At least they do when I'm around.) On occasion, they will thank me for holding their feet to the fire, especially when they hear their peers butcher the language.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: Azizi
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 08:40 AM

Peace,

You're the kind of teacher I wish I had had.

Thanks for caring about your students and challenging them to do what others think is beyond them.

I'm glad that they are proving those nay sayers wrong.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: Helen
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 02:01 PM

I read all the sonnets in order, and from start to finish it is a play in itself. It's Shakespeare's own love story.

I love the sonnets, but this is my favourite - but I can't see that anyone would think it is still relevant today, not even in the daytime soapies, let alone in our own love lives. :-)

Helen


XXXIV.

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?

'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:

Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross.

Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 03:22 PM

YES!

Got it in one, Helen!

Thanks.
ttr

Subject: RE: Shakespeare
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 04:27 PM

I loved the Sonnets also. They are in turn sweet, smart, sassy, witty, droll, sad, such a collection of ideas and emotions and so succinct.

SRS

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 07:43 PM

I dunno why, but the sonnets have never excited me the way the plays (even the bad ones) do. Even Titus, and Cymbeline and Coriolanus, at their most dreadful, have the power to put me in the time and place and recognize why the people there were so much like me, or I like them, in spite of the gulf of time and place and station between us.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: GUEST,Dave Crutcher
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 11:14 AM

Shakespeare & his contemporaries brought virtually all walks of life together to listen to stories about their society & what made them human beings, in buildings of largely vernacular architecture; they also taught us our language to a large extent. What could be more 'folksy' than that? Come to the Globe in London for a performance if you don't believe me - you'll be part of the play itself, and part of a communal experience. Don't listen to the modern soundbites - Sh. was neither truly populist or elitist, he told stories for everyone.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: Peace
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 11:50 AM

He was a play writer and his job was to entertain. If his plays didn't they were closing the same night they opened.

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: kendall
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 04:36 PM

"And enterprises of great pith and moment become sicklyed over with the pale cast of thought, and lose the name of action."

The man that hath no music in him, nor is not moved by sweet concord of sounds, is fit for treasons spoils and strategems. The motions of his spirit are as dull as Arebus. Let no such man be trusted."

How can anyone call that "Junk"?

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: GUEST,ivor
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 07:47 PM

What do you make of all that,Wendy,NY

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: John O'L
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 06:17 AM

'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle.'

Useless junk.
Anybody could've written that.
Eh Wendy?

Subject: RE: shakespeare
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 07:58 AM

Any genius, that is.