background preloader

Absolute Shakespeare - plays, quotes, summaries, essays...

Absolute Shakespeare - plays, quotes, summaries, essays...

Shakespeare Insult Kit Shakespeare Insult Kit Since 1996, the origin of this kit was listed as anonymous. It came to me on a piece of paper in the 90's with no attribution, and I thought it would make a cool web page. Though I searched for the origin, I could never find it. In 2014, Lara M informed found the originating author. Combine one word from each of the three columns below, prefaced with "Thou": My additions: cullionly whoreson knave fusty malmsey-nosed blind-worm caluminous rampallian popinjay wimpled lily-livered scullian burly-boned scurvy-valiant jolt-head misbegotten brazen-faced malcontent odiferous unwash'd devil-monk poisonous bunch-back'd toad fishified leaden-footed rascal Wart-necked muddy-mettled Basket-Cockle pigeon-liver'd scale-sided Back to the insulter. Chris Seidel

mental_floss Blog & The Quick 10: 10 Things You Probably Didn't... With Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince coming out in the U.S. later this week, it's time to out myself as a Slytherin Supporter. Maybe you already knew that. Nothing against Gryffindors - I'm no Voldemort or anything - but I always tend to like the villains a little more than the do-gooders. To celebrate Harry and Co.'s sixth movie (and sixth book), here are a few facts that you may not have known about the gang in gold and red (and maybe a couple about the set in silver and green). 1. It has a sour tone to it, doesn't it? 3. 4. 5. 7. 8. 9. There's obviously a ridiculous amount of Harry Potter trivia out there, and since Harry Potter fever is about to sweep the world again, we might as well share it.

William Shakespeare Intro William Shakespeare scarcely needs an introduction. Born in 1564, he was an English playwright, poet, actor, favorite dramatist of queens and kings, inventor of words, master of drama, and arguably the most famous writer of all time. In his 36 plays and 154 sonnets, he left behind the evidence of a brilliant mind, a wicked sense of humor, a deep sensitivity to human emotions, and a rich classical education. We know all about his work. In the 400 or so years since Shakespeare died on his 52nd birthday in 1616, there have been plenty of rumors about the Bard and the personal experiences that may have inspired his works. Shakespeare changed the English language, inventing dozens of new words we still use today.

Open Source Shakespeare: search Shakespeare's works, read t For Better for Verse | Sonnet 73 accent: emphasis given a syllable in ordinary usage, as provided by a pronouncing dictionary. See also stress. accentual-syllabic: the prosodic mode that dominated English-language poetry 1400-1900, and that this tutorial exclusively addresses. acephalous line: a “headless” line in iambic or anapestic meter, which omits (a) slack syllable(s) from the first foot. alexandrine: iambic hexameter line, usually with a strong midpoint caesura; most familiar in Romance-language poetry but not rare in English. alliteration: repetition of the same initial sound in nearby words. anapest: metrical foot consisting of two slacks and a stress: υ υ / anaphora: repetition of a word or phrase in initial position. assonance: harmonious repetition of the same vowel sound in nearby words. ballad meter: quatrain in alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter lines rhyming abxb, traditionally used in folk narrative and during modern times adapted to lyric poetry. blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter. caesura: consonance:

Macbeth Stop us if you've heard this one before: a man hears an exciting prophecy about his future and decides to take fate into his own hand by killing his king. Things go rapidly downhill. Sure, it's possible that you were just tra-la-la-ing through the Internet and randomly stumbled over this guide, but we're guessing that you already know Macbeth's basic plot. After all, it is one of the most famous works of English literature, and it's even loosely based on some real-life 11th century events found in Holinshed's Chronicles. So let's tell you something you might not know: when it was first performed by Shakespeare's company around 1606, Macbeth was the latest in ripped-from-the-headlines, up-to-the-minute political events. It's basically The Dark Knight trilogy of the (very) early 17th century. (1) It was written in 1605 or 1606, right after James I, the first Stuart king, took up the crown of England in 1603. Coincidentally, Macbeth begins with the stage directions, "Enter three witches."

Magazine | How well did Shakespeare know history? As Shakespeare's history plays are performed in their entirety by the RSC, Shakespeare aficionado Steve Tomkins offers his own assessment of their meaning and significance. Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous love stories of all, its popularity enhanced by modern revivals on film and stage. Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear and Othello are among Shakespeare's other high-profile works, fixtures on school reading lists and often being reinvented. But his history plays are less well known, although a unique staging of them by the Royal Shakespeare Company hopes to address that. Over four days, they are being performed in their entirety, in the order they were written, first in Stratford-upon-Avon and then in London. They offer an Elizabethan perspective on the Middle Ages, but is it an accurate one? Which plays belong to Shakespeare's history cycle? The cycle starts with Richard II, followed by Henry IV parts 1 and 2. Are these all the history plays Shakespeare wrote? Not quite. It's quite long.

50 Most Influential Books of the Last 50 (or so) Years In compiling the books on this list, the editors at SuperScholar have tried to provide a window into the culture of the last 50 years. Ideally, if you read every book on this list, you will know how we got to where we are today. Not all the books on this list are “great.” The books we chose required some hard choices. We also tried to keep a balance between books that everyone buys and hardly anyone reads versus books that, though not widely bought and read, are deeply transformative. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 45.

Macbeth Stop us if you've heard this one before: a man hears an exciting prophecy about his future and decides to take fate into his own hand by killing his king. Things go rapidly downhill. Sure, it's possible that you were just tra-la-la-ing through the Internet and randomly stumbled over this guide, but we're guessing that you already know Macbeth's basic plot. After all, it is one of the most famous works of English literature, and it's even loosely based on some real-life 11th century events found in Holinshed's Chronicles. So let's tell you something you might not know: when it was first performed by Shakespeare's company around 1606, Macbeth was the latest in ripped-from-the-headlines, up-to-the-minute political events. It's basically The Dark Knight trilogy of the (very) early 17th century. (1) It was written in 1605 or 1606, right after James I, the first Stuart king, took up the crown of England in 1603. Coincidentally, Macbeth begins with the stage directions, "Enter three witches."

A Midsummer Nights Dream Girl meets boy. Girl falls in love with boy. Girl loses boy when mischievous fairy sprinkles love "juice" on boy's eyelids, making him fall for another girl. No, it's not the latest romantic comedy to hit theaters near you; it's a play that was dreamed up by William Shakespeare toward the end of the 16th century. A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595) was written around the same time Shakespeare whipped up his famous play about two "star-cross'd" lovers, Romeo and Juliet. Over the years, there's been a lot of speculation about the occasion for which Shakespeare might have written the play. …and after the teenagers chased each other around the woods for a night, they all lived happily ever after in perfect marital bliss. Call us crazy, but does anyone out there wonder whether true happiness in this play exists? We want to be satisfied with this play's happy ending, but enchantment gets in the way. So now we turn to you, Shmoopster.

IRISH LITERATURE, MYTHOLOGY, FOLKLORE, AND DRAMA Irish Writers OnlineIrish PlayographyStudy Ireland: Poetry - BBCIrish Women Writers - M. OckerbloomIreland Literature GuidePoetry Ireland / Éigse ÉireannEarly Irish Lyric Poetry - Kuno MeyerSonnets from Ireland - E. BlomquistColum's Anthology of Irish Verse - Bartleby.comBREAC - Digital Journal of Irish Studies Medieval Celtic ManuscriptsThe Book of KellsCarmina GadelicaCELT Irish Electronic Texts Irish Writers OnlineIreland Literature ExchangeBibliography of 19th-c. Jonathan SwiftJonathan Swift ArchiveJonathan Swift Biography - IncompetechGulliver's Travels - U. Bram StokerDraculaBram Stoker Biography - Classic Literature LibraryBram Stoker's Dracula - Carstens smith Oscar WildeThe Official Home Page of Oscar WildeWilde Biography - BBCOscar Wilde OnlineCELT: Oscar WildePoetry of Oscar Wilde - Bartleby.com George Bernard ShawShaw Biography - C. William Butler YeatsYeats Biography - Poetry FoundationCollected Poems - W. Donn ByrneByrne Biography - J. Fine Art The Faery Harper Oisín

The Tempest Written between 1610 and 1611, The Tempest is William Shakespeare's final play. (OK. If you're nitpicky, it's the last play he wrote entirely by himself.) In it, Shakespeare portrays an aging magician who has been living in exile with his young daughter on a remote island for the past twelve years. Over the course of a single day, Prospero uses his magic to whip up a tempest to shipwreck the men responsible for his banishment. He then proceeds to dazzle and dismay the survivors (and the audience) with his art as he orchestrates his triumphant return home where he plans to retire in peace. For a lot of audiences and literary scholars, Prospero seems like a stand-in in for Shakespeare, who spent a lifetime dazzling audiences before retiring in 1611, shortly after The Tempest was completed. If Shakespeare is like Prospero, then playwriting is similar to being a lonely magician on an island. So just what does it mean to be an artist?

Poet Seers - Poem of the Day Harvard University Library: Open Collections Program: Home

Related: