General Chat

Dear All

Hello


William Shakespeare was reputedly born on April 23rd 1564,
a nod there to St Georges Day.

A prolific playwright but also an author of poems.


One of the best known:

SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER'S DAY


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

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Take gentle care
Best wishes
Elizabeth,
xx

Sonnet 18 is a favourite of mine.

I think too many people, maybe uneducated, believe that he purely wrote plays which were scripted in a way they find impossible to understand. However, I am a great believer in explaining, demonstrating how he wrote the "Eastenders" (dross) of his time.

A great writer and a great sonnet.

Love some of his sonnets. I think it is such a pity that so many youngsters are put off Shakespeare for one reason or another. OH thought he didn't like Shakespeare till I persuaded him to come and see a modern (and in parts rather naughty) production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Now he's a convert.

I recently went to our little local theatre to see "Second Best Bed" which is a one woman show and is supposedly Anne Hathaway talking on the evening of Will's funeral. She claims to have written the plays herself. Funny and sometimes very moving.

EDIT. He also died on 23 April

Thank you.

A book I would recommend, that I have recently borrowed from the library, is
"1599
A Year in the Life of
William Shakespeare".

I love A Midsummer Night's Dream. Probably because I have a face like Bottom. :-)

also worth a read - Bill Bryson's book on Shakespeare - very illuminating

Should we continue waiting for another linguistic messiah to save our language from going to pot? Words were his favourite insanity.

I sometimes wonder what the great man would think about our current text facility. Correct use of English is still important.