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William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52

nytimes.com

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Re: William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52

#61

Post by themartorana »

mhurron wrote: post #30
themartorana wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh be quiet with your logic and evidence. In the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling "Shakspere", as used in the poet's own signature, became more widely adopted in the belief that this was the most authentic version. I guess I lean this way. (I do acknowledge what you said about the man himself spelling his own name differently, makes me wonder why...) But I have always been perplexed about different spellings…

> My name is Dave in every language No it most likely is not. For one it is a short form of the name David, so it has already been mangled, and then like any other written word will change how it is written to attempt to show the sounds in the written rules of that language. This can lead to additions of letters or some very strange changes to the spelling of the name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_%28name%29 "…

I wouldn't respond to any of them. Do you understand my point? I am "Dave" (or David to my mother). That's it. You can spell or pronounce it however you want, but you're speaking of or to someone other than me.

Re: William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52

#62

Post by anexprogrammer »

whateveridunno wrote: post #16
ams6110 wrote: post #13

Sadly (?) the only memories I have of Shakespeare are the forced readings in my sophomore (Julius Caesar) and junior (King Lear) years in high school, both of which I hated and for which Cliff's Notes were my crutch to get through.

I thought it was illegal not to have read Hamlet by 21? Seriously though, give it another try. Shakespeare's wide-ranging enough that there's likely to be something to your taste. And with his comedies, especially, I'd recommend watching Shakespeare and not reading him- that's how his plays were meant to be experienced. Although it's nice to read an annotated version and discover all the (often dirty) jokes you didn'…

I'd highly recommend performances using original pronunciation if you can track some down. It makes a remarkable difference compared to the RP commonly used for Shakespeare. Half the rhymes just don't work in modern English, and especially not in RP English.

It took me a little while to tune in to what sounds to modern ears like a heavy West Country (pirate!) accent. That said I found it far easier to enjoy than RP.

For a little background on OP, see a 10 min Open University explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s or this 6 min comparison of a speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi-rejaoP7U

Re: William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52

#63

Post by jobigoud »

themartorana wrote: post #61
mhurron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My name is Dave in every language No it most likely is not. For one it is a short form of the name David, so it has already been mangled, and then like any other written word will change how it is written to attempt to show the sounds in the written rules of that language. This can lead to additions of letters or some very strange changes to the spelling of the name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_%28name%29 "…

I wouldn't respond to any of them. Do you understand my point? I am "Dave" (or David to my mother). That's it. You can spell or pronounce it however you want, but you're speaking of or to someone other than me.

What if you move to a country where the language doesn't have one of the sound in your name. Like 'D' or 'V'? And you have to transliterate your name to fill forms.

It's a common problem for at least Russian and Chinese names which can't be spelled accurately with the roman alphabet.

As a concrete example, Japanese doesn't have a native 'V' sound, so your name would be slightly mispronounced.

Re: William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52

#65

Post by thekaleb »

mhurron wrote: post #30
themartorana wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh be quiet with your logic and evidence. In the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling "Shakspere", as used in the poet's own signature, became more widely adopted in the belief that this was the most authentic version. I guess I lean this way. (I do acknowledge what you said about the man himself spelling his own name differently, makes me wonder why...) But I have always been perplexed about different spellings…

> My name is Dave in every language No it most likely is not. For one it is a short form of the name David, so it has already been mangled, and then like any other written word will change how it is written to attempt to show the sounds in the written rules of that language. This can lead to additions of letters or some very strange changes to the spelling of the name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_%28name%29 "…

Dawei in Mandarin.

Re: William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52

#66

Post by arto »

Mahn wrote: post #64
DavidSJ wrote: post #34

Moderators, can you append [1616] to the title? This is old news.

On that note, it's pretty impressive that the NY Times already had online presence back then. This was way before Geocities and Lycos.

And way before New York, even. New Amsterdam was renamed to New York only after 1664.

Re: William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52

#67

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

vidarh wrote: post #9
themartorana wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh be quiet with your logic and evidence. In the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling "Shakspere", as used in the poet's own signature, became more widely adopted in the belief that this was the most authentic version. I guess I lean this way. (I do acknowledge what you said about the man himself spelling his own name differently, makes me wonder why...) But I have always been perplexed about different spellings…

Everyone were all kinds of lax with spelling. If you ever get involved with genealogy you will likely learn to hate the extreme levels of inconsistency there will be in written records covering the same person. It's not unusual to e.g. find church records written by the same priest spelling a parishioners name differently in different records, and these were official records.

That's because spelling was sort-of-phonetic. If it made the sound of the word you wanted, it was okay.

In fact there was no concept of standardised correct and consistent spelling.

Re: William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52

#68

Post by thekaleb »

ams6110 wrote: post #13

Sadly (?) the only memories I have of Shakespeare are the forced readings in my sophomore (Julius Caesar) and junior (King Lear) years in high school, both of which I hated and for which Cliff's Notes were my crutch to get through.

I never enjoyed Shakespeare until I began reading King Henry IV on a mobile WAP site on my Nokia about 12 years ago while guarding some railroad tracks.

Re: William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52

#69

Post by dagw »

themartorana wrote: post #61
mhurron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My name is Dave in every language No it most likely is not. For one it is a short form of the name David, so it has already been mangled, and then like any other written word will change how it is written to attempt to show the sounds in the written rules of that language. This can lead to additions of letters or some very strange changes to the spelling of the name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_%28name%29 "…

I wouldn't respond to any of them. Do you understand my point? I am "Dave" (or David to my mother). That's it. You can spell or pronounce it however you want, but you're speaking of or to someone other than me.

I wouldn't respond to any of them.

I take it you haven't lived in a country where pronouncing "Dave" is tricky. If I was to not respond to everybody who didn't pronounce my name correctly when I lived in England it would have been some very lonely and infuriating years. At the end of the day I accepted that the exact pronunciation of my name wasn't that important as long as everybody understood who we where talking about.

Re: William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52

#70

Post by gavinpc »

justinmk wrote: post #19
gavinpc wrote: post #2

Miss Hathaway had as a lover That infamous son of a glover Whatever Will said In their second-best bed She edited cover to cover A sort of rambling article from NYT whose most notable feature was a beautiful sidenote style and the lack of a scrollbar. For those interested in Shakespeare and new media, here's a thing I've been working on http://gavinpc.com/project_willshake.pdf

Your PDF is thought-provoking, as was the NYT article.

Thank you. That means a lot to me.

I have worked on that project mostly in secret for over ten years, and I had resolved that yesterday had to be a release date of some kind. So yeah, I hadn't slept, and I needlessly (and foolishly) criticized the OP whose thread I'd recklessly hijacked for self-promotional purposes, hoping that a topical limerick from my college days would buy me a little good will.

I should have done a Show HN instead.

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