All the world's a stage/& all the men & women merely players...As You Like It.Seeing as I seem to be having something of a Shakespearean week today's trivia is Shakespearean. With that in mind, & bearing in mind my household is soccer mad in season, Tottenham Spurs [yes, the London soccer club] was named after a Shakespearean character: Harry Hotspur in Henry IV. True. Look it up.
Shakespeare was a country lad. There are over 600 references to birds & animals in his plays. What's more he knew their habits & habitats rather well also.
Most of us quote bits of Shakespeare all the time. Everything from *all that glitters is not gold* to *to sleep, perchance to dream...* He is also responsible for inventing 1 700 English words; words like bedroom, majestic, laughable, critic, submerge, assassination. Not as easy as it looks. Consider that the average American has a vocab of roughly 10 000 words. If you're really smart [or majored in literature at college ;P] you might have a vocab of 15 000. Shakespeare had a vocab of 29 000. Someone didn't have enough to do if they sat down & actually counted!!
Most people think of Shakespeare as a playwright but in fact he was an actor who wrote plays. He is supposed to have really enjoyed playing the ghost that plagued Hamlet. I completely understand that! He performed before both Elizabeth I & James I.
In 1603 Shakespeare was 39 years old & the Black Death swept through London killing 33 000 people. *Sweet Will* survived the plague.
Uranus' moons are all named after characters in Shakespeare's plays: Oberon, Titania, Juliet, Caliban, Sycorax.
While Shakespeare did not die *without issue* he has no descendents. His son [Hamnet, of all things] died as a child. His daughters married & had children who did not survive leaving Shakespeare definitely as *one of a kind*. And to top it all off his gravestone does not bear his name. Nope ~ but he did think to curse anyone who was considering moving his bones.
Good friend for Jesus sake forebear
To dig the dust enclosed here
Blessed be the man who spares these stones
And curst be he who moves my bones.
4 comments:
The bit that irritates me about him though is that he left his wordly goods to his daughter. His long suffering wife, Anne received only the "second best bed"! The cheek of the man!
Um, Jeanne...you do realise, don't you, that the 2nd best bed was the marital bed? The best bed was for guests.
Heh...I came across some Shakespeare cartoons the other day, in a random internet wandering, and wondered to myself...hmmm...and what would my lovely aussie friend think of that... :-P
Yeah, yeah, I've heard the theories. I think it is quite possible that it meant in addition to the things she would have received legally as long suffering spouse as well, but it sounds so funny and is a much better story this way :)
Post a Comment