Shakespeare

[MJE]

You said you were typing on her Mackintosh (In the UK anyway we would just say 'Mac' anyway) which to us sounds like you could be typing while sitting on your Mother's rain coat and hopefully it won't rain as your Mother will get wet without her rain coat. (Not nearly so funny when explained is it?).

Took me a moment to get his joke myself!

     Well, I *did* think of that connection - but it seemed so unlikely a joke that I thought Nigel must have really meant something else I couldn't see. (Sorry, Nigel.)
     The computer's name is Macintosh, so that's what I say. I'm not on the whole inclined to use slangy abbreviations like "Mac". I don't use Australian colloquialisms like "info" or "arvo" or "pokies" or anything like that, either; I just don't like them. (Poker machines are *very* Australian nowadays!) I normally avoid any diminutive forms that end in "-ie" or "-o". We call rainwear raincoats here, not mackintoshes (or should that be "Mackintoshes"? - proper noun and all that - I suppose it was named after a person's surname); but if we did call them m/Mackintoshes, that is probably the word I would use, not "mack".
     It's true that if a joke has to be explained, it loses all or most of its humorous effect; but it is still better to have the explanation than to be in an agony of puzzlement at what you missed that others found so funny.

Regards, Michael.

[MJE]

Edited to add: Yes, seeing the play in person probably adds to your understanding of parts of it, you can at least make an educated guess if the speech being made is in anger/joy/sorrow!

     Just came back and saw this addition.
     I can only speak for myself, not others. But I can't even conceive of how this could make me understand a speech whose very words convey no meaning to me. I might detect that the speaker is angry, joyful, sad, and so on - but still have no idea from their words *why* they feel that way.
     I guess I set more store by the actual meaning of words, and very little by body language, emotion, and so on. And I believe I am completely gestureless and without body language when I speak, although it's difficult to observe yourself when you're talking with someone in what seems your natural way. These do not come naturally to me, and I would not even know how to do them, and wouldn't do it right if I tried to fake it. (I'm probably not devoid of tone of voice and facial expression, though.)
     And, listening to someone else, I tend to find it irritating and distracting if I notice that they keep moving their hands about in a way that is totally meaningless to me. Mostly I can just ignore it and not even be aware of it; but if I do notice it, it can become distracting.
     That's why, when some experts insist that the actual meaning of words spoken by someone convey only about 20 percent of the actual communication and body language, gestures, and so on 80 percent of it, I am totally sceptical. I can't imagine how that can possibly be the case. Reverse those percentages, and it begins to look a little believable to me.
     And I cannot, even in theory, conceive of any style of emotional expression, body language, and so on that could lend meaning to those Shakespeare quotations I gave earlier.

Regards, Michael.

[Fiona1986]

Michael, you'd be endlessly frustrated by my Mum! She talks with her hands all the time, usually miming the action she is talking about. Even on the phone I see her waving hers hands about despite the fact that the person on the other end of the line clearly can't see her actions!

[MJE]

Michael, you'd be endlessly frustrated by my Mum! She talks with her hands all the time, usually miming the action she is talking about. Even on the phone I see her waving hers hands about despite the fact that the person on the other end of the line clearly can't see her actions!

     If she was less than clear in her words and relied on her hands to fill in the gaps, I probably wouldn't even understand her. (I don't even understand the *point* of gesturing while speaking, and can't see any way this can express meaning, emotion, or anything. It just looks rather silly to me - or maybe sometimes it's some kind of unconscious reaction, like scratching your nose, or saying "umm... err..." in speech when you are unsure of yourself.)
     So if your mother does this even when on the phone, is she holding the phone by craning her neck against her shoulder? That must be a sight, although she might be at risk of getting "phone neck" if she does it all the time.

     I will have to finish up very soon for now. I wasn't meaning to spend most of the evening posting here, but it's somehow happened - time just somehow slipped away from me. And there was so much else I had to do, too.

Regards, Michael.

[Fiona1986]

Oh no, she talks clearly as well. It just happens that if she's talking about brushing her hair she will be absent mindedly using one hand to mimic the action of brushing her hair. She does manage to limit herself to waving one hand around while on the phone!

[Aurélien]

The manner in which the lines are delivered actually adds more meaning/understanding to the words. I will admitt that there were times when I couldn't work things out, but trust me- Shakespeare on Stage trumps reading his plays.

Indeed yes, Pippa-Stef. The plays were meant to be experienced live in the theatre, not read 'cold' away from the theatre.

Perhaps you should try some of Shakespeare's poems, Michael....they are at least shorter.

'Aurélien Arkadiusz'

[Dick Kirrin]

As a matter of fact, I'm taking a mixed bunch of my pupils to a guest performance of Macbeth in November. I'm looking forward to it, but then again, I didn't have to teach the play in class. Some short summary (in German) will do.
Teaching Shakespeare is very difficult, I can imagine. But I must admit I like his plays and some of his sonnets are about the most beautiful pieces of poetry a man could write to a woman he loved.

Back to the topic, many of the "old" authors are difficult, it's not only Shakespeare. In fact there are a lot of playwrights that are worse.
The trouble is that it is at least partly a matter of age. Quite a lot of all the topics mentioned are simply very complex. Many grown-ups have trouble understanding it all, and it is even harder for teenagers.

When I was at school, we had to do two plays by Bertolt Brecht.
The first one "Mother Courage" we did when I was about 14-15 years old and I positively loathed it - simply because I couldn't understand what made the characters act the way they did.
At about 17, we did Galilei - and believe it or not - I loved it and still do. Maybe I was older, maybe our then teacher didn't have that "This-is-sacred-literary-heritage" approach which banned any kind of critism and therefore we were really able to discuss at eye level with her.
Whatever it was, it got me interested in literature. That and my religious education lessons where I was first confronted with literary science for which I will be eternally grateful.

Cheers

Dick Kirrin

[Katharine]

Oh no, she talks clearly as well. It just happens that if she's talking about brushing her hair she will be absent mindedly using one hand to mimic the action of brushing her hair. She does manage to limit herself to waving one hand around while on the phone!

Do you think your mother and I are related as that's exactly the kind of thing I do!

We call rainwear raincoats here, not mackintoshes (or should that be "Mackintoshes"? - proper noun and all that - I suppose it was named after a person's surname); but if we did call them m/Mackintoshes, that is probably the word I would use, not "mack".
Regards, Michael.

I thought the term 'mac' is used quite a bit in Enid Blyton books, have I got that wrong, or has it been altered in Australian versions?

[Fiona1986]

I thought the term 'mac' is used quite a bit in Enid Blyton books, have I got that wrong, or has it been altered in Australian versions?

I'm pretty sure they do say 'mac/k' in the books, actually in relation to rain coats, obviously and not Apple Computers!

[MJE]

Indeed yes, Pippa-Stef. The plays were meant to be experienced live in the theatre, not read 'cold' away from the theatre.

Perhaps :) you should try some of Shakespeare's poems, Michael....they are at least shorter.

     Well, I guess, in theory at least, anyone is capable of learning to understand anything, if they make enough effort. But I am also congenitally incapable of understanding poetry, with very, very few exceptions. Oddly enough, I had a brief phase of being quite interested in Japanese haiku, and even wrote a number of haiku-like verses in the same spirt - not *calling* them authentic haiku, though, because I probably didn't observe, or even know, the many subtle rules governing that form. But, that anomaly aside, poetry generally doesn't speak to me at all.
     I'm still puzzled, though, as to how seeing something declaimed on stage in what is supposed to be an eloquent manner can in itself bring meaning and enlightenment to those exact same words that, when read, are totally meaningless (from my own viewpoint).
     As for love poetry, alluded to in connection with the sonnets - I've never been in love, so I'm probably especially incapable of understanding that even at the most basic level. I vaguely remember English classes at school covering a few Shakespeare sonnets, and they were equally incomprehensible to me - just mercifully shorter!

Regards, Michael.

[MJE]

I thought the term 'mac' is used quite a bit in Enid Blyton books, have I got that wrong, or has it been altered in Australian versions?

     Oh no, I've seen the term "mackintosh" in Blyton books (I don't know about the short form "mack"), and knew what it means; I just meant to say that the term doesn't seem to be used in Australia.

Regards, Michael.

[Aurélien]

True, love poetry is easier to respond to when one is young, hot-blooded, and in pursuit of an elusive young lady....

I guess that the same can be said for our appreciation of pop songs about the highs and lows of relationships.

Old codger, ‘Aurélien Arkadiusz’

[MJE]

True, love poetry is easier to respond to when one is young, hot-blooded, and in pursuit of an elusive young lady....

I guess that the same can be said for our appreciation of pop songs about the highs and lows of relationships.

     I meant a much deeper inability to respond to it than this. I meant not merely that I felt a bit past it now, even while understanding it - but quite literally not understanding falling in love, pursuing lovely young ladies, and so on. For whatever reason, I never got into any of this in the least. And if you'd met me when I was in my teens or twenties, I think hot-blooded is the last impression you'd have got of me. Cool and aloof, more likely - not exactly unfriendly, but detached and dispassionate - wrapped up in my own mental life (at many points, this basically meant Blyton, Beethoven, and trains!) more than being involved in the real world. It's not without reason that my junior school headmaster often wrote in my reports, "He lives in a little world of his own" - and it wasn't meant as a compliment, either.
     I am of course aware that love is one of the main themes, if not *the* main theme, of most pop songs. While hearing a song I used to know as a child or teen may give me a vague rush of nostalgia, and evoke specific memories of the places and times when I first knew that song, I do not respond in the least, tiniest bit, to the message of young love it revolves around. This can feel quite poignant to me, because I am aware of having totally missed, and totally not comprehending, something I know is a normal experience for most people - indeed one their young lives may revolve around to the point of obsession. So hearing such a song may make me feel simultaneously nostalgic yet alienated from the common experience of my own culture - which really feels quite weird and contradictory.

Regards, Michael.

[mynameisdumbnuts]

I always enjoyed reading Shakespeare with my classmates in school. One of my fondest college memories is reading "Twelfth Night" with a group of friends, just sitting on the floor in a friend's apartment, each of us assigned one or two characters.

I've read "King Lear" by myself and found it difficult. Plays aren't meant to be read alone, they're group efforts and best seen on stage (or screen). I think Kenneth Branagh's "Much Ado About Nothing" and "Henry V" are particularly good. And he does Hamlet waaaaaay better than Mel Gibson.

A good website for help with Shakespeare's plays is http://nfs.sparknotes.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

[dsr]

I'm still puzzled, though, as to how seeing something declaimed on stage in what is supposed to be an eloquent manner can in itself bring meaning and enlightenment to those exact same words that, when read, are totally meaningless (from my own viewpoint).

When your reading a play, you can't just immerse yourself in it, you have to think about other things as well - ie. who's speaking. You can't just watch and enjoy, you're having to calculate. It's so much easier on the stage.

We tend to go to Ludlow festival most years. Their performance of Macbeth a few years back was excellent, very much a suspense-thriller, and the Comedy of Errors was a rolling-in-the-aisles farce. Neither would have been anything like as good, if read.

Having said that, it is handy having a script with you. Shakespeare does tend to bring his characters on for the first time with the line "good morrow, coz. How are things with you my dear brother and adviser to the Duke of Westmoreland", and if you don't pick up the ID check - or you don't recognise him when he comes out in a different costume - you're forever wondering who he is for the rest of the play.