Today Google announces that their “full view” book search will support PDFs for public domain works. Nice! Remember to search “full view” texts only to get this feature. Try searching “Shakespeare”. Go on, I dare you. Many many many many hits. Great stuff. I am going to be very busy.Technorati Tags: pdf, public domain, shakespeare, google

The Internet Multicasting Service has some readings of Shakespeare available for listening, including Sir John Gielgud reading a 4 part series on the sonnets, and also excerpts from Mucho Ado and Julius Caesar. Normally I would love this, but the formats are primarily streaming, which I hate. If I can’t get it on MP3 and add it to my portable collection, it’s as if it doesn’t exist to me. But I figure others might not be quite so harsh.

Technorati Tags: shakespeare, sonnets, audio

Now this is the type of article I’ve always wanted to write. “How to Read Shakespeare” breaks it down into approachable bites – sentence structure, grammar, pronoun usage, etc… and shows little tricks for deciphering words into something you can better understand. I agree with pretty much everything the author says, although he keeps pushing the SparkNotes, and I’m not a big fan there. I’m afraid students will read the supplementary material, not the original.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Claudius’ opening words (since I have them to music as part of Hamlet in Space :)), and they make a good case for the examples the article discusses: “Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death the memory be green….” What?

The article says that Shakespeare would freely rearrange the words in his sentences to suit the rhythm he needed, so you have to mentally put them back into the order you’ll better understand. Well, I spot “our dear brother Hamlet”, so we have “Though yet of our dear brother Hamlet’s death the memory be green.”

Still feels backward, maybe the end needs to go at the beginning: “Though yet the memory of our dear brother Hamlet’s death be green.” At this point, perhaps you pull out the annotated guide if you don’t immediately realize that to “be green” is “to be fresh and new.” So, finally, “Though yet the memory of our dear brother Hamlet’s death is still fresh in our minds…”

Another good one is “I have of late but wherefore I know not lost all my mirth” (another good musical one, this time from HAIR).

“I have of late” equals “Lately, I have.” I have what? Lost all my mirth.

“Lately I have lost all my mirth, but wherefore I know not.” Knowing that “wherefore” means “why” from the footnotes, we do that trick one more time and are left with, “Lately, I’ve lost all my mirth, but I don’t know why.”

I could do that all day. 🙂

I always treated Tybalt as one of Shakespeare’s better villains.  He’s got nothing but hate in him, and he’s not afraid to draw his sword and go one-on-one with any challenger.  Certainly he’s a coward at heart, as they all are – he runs after he kills Mercutio, for instance.

Then again…  On the train lately I’ve been reading the script, because I’m that kind of geek.  And I notice passages like the end of Act I scene i, where Benvolio is explaining what happened to Lord Montague, and I get this:  “The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepared, which, as he breathed defiance to my ears, he swung about his head and cut the winds, who nothing hurt withal hiss’d him in scorn…”  Does that mean that Tybalt stood there slashing at the air with his sword and not hitting anything?

Then later there is the lengthy passage where Mercutio describes Tybalt’s swordsmanship.  Is he being fair, or sarcastic?  Or both?  Is Tybalt a swordsman to be feared, or is he all talk?

Very cool, Amy over at ShakespeareHigh has started a podcast. I must have missed the memo, because she’s up to her fourth episode and I just found out about it ;). She’s going with the “Students Guide to Shakespeare 101” approach. Very tutorial, working through quiz time questions like “Did Shakespeare write in Olde English or Modern English?” Right now she’s running it as if the user is sitting down behind an online guide, so I hope for those of us who listen to podcasts away from the computer she breaks from that pattern eventually. One of the major benefits of podcasting is taking it with you so you can learn this stuff on the train, in the car, at the gym, etc… all places where you can’t click on the link when the narrator tells you to.

Good luck, Amy! You’ve got a new subscriber, and hopefully a bunch more :).

Technorati Tags: shakespeare, podcast