Category Archives: Uncategorized
“Jumping o’er times”: An Update on Open Shakespeare
Did you know that the word “jointress”, used by Claudius to describe his new wife and Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, is an Elizabethan legal term for a widow who owns property from her first marriage? I didn’t, until a contributor to … Continue reading
Open Shakespeare Out of Hibernation
Exam season is finishing, our free time is returning, and Open Shakespeare is coming back to life. We held a short meeting yesterday evening, and can now announce what we intend to do in the near future: EXPAND: there will … Continue reading
Introduction: Cymbeline
A play of politics and prophecy, masques and magic, gods and ghosts, nightmares and nationalism, Cymbeline (c. 1609-11) resists categorization. Like The Winter’s Tale it traces a fine line between comedy and tragedy; like Antony and Cleopatra it vacillates between … Continue reading
Word of the Day: Bilbo
Perhaps there will one day be a site called ‘Open Tolkein’. Until then, allow me to draw your attention to the occurences of the name of one of the Old Inkling’s most famous characters in the works of the Bard. … Continue reading
Word of the Day: Parrot
There are nine occurances of this word in Shakespeare, which first entered the English language with Skelton’s satirical Speke Parrot around 1525. The nine instances focus on a variety of the bird’s aspects, and not just the most obvious. Testament, … Continue reading
Word of the day: Quintessence
…as found in the quintessentially Shakespearean ‘What a piece of work is man!’ speech from Hamlet. ‘Quintessence of dust’ marks the speech’s turning point: the former word is the last gasp of Hamlet’s ironic praise for mankind, the latter is … Continue reading
New introductions
Click on the links below to read the most recently uploaded short introductions – and, of course, the plays that go with them: The Winter’s Tale Titus Andronicus King John A Midsummer Night’s Dream Love’s Labour’s Lost As You Like … Continue reading
Happy New Year!
The first few weeks of 2010 have seen the Open Shakespeare team writing more short introductions – roughly two-thirds of the canon now has an introduction on the site or ready to upload. We are also sorting out the last … Continue reading
Latest Developments on Open Shakespeare (v0.8)
The last six months have seen significant developments on our Open Shakespeare project, many of which have are reflected on the website: http://www.openshakespeare.org/ The most major advance is the availability of new HTML and PDF editions of the texts, see, … Continue reading
More Text Up from Shakespeare’s Entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Edition
Another 3 pages (4600 words) are up from the EB 11 Entry on Shakespeare covering most of Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order. Current material can be found on: Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Edition page Source version (plain text in subversion) can … Continue reading