20 Replies to “The Children Are Our Future”

  1. Shakespeare may be a pain in the ass because of archaic language but he is the most prominent author in the history of English literature. I suspect few Americans would fit in the top 100 and probably no black Americans. That’s why they study American literature in the US.
    Having recently read a (200? page) summary of American literature, I noticed a big difference between 1970 and today. They have dragged out a bunch of female and black authors who were previously unknown. I believe their major contribution to culture was that they walked erect. They have rewritten history for political purposes. I guess nothing’s new there.

  2. I did impeticos thy gratillity; for Malvolio’s nose is no whipstock: my lady has a white hand, and the Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses. (12th Night)
    I like Shakespeare, especially the Histories, but I have no clue what he’s talking about.

  3. Of course Shakespeare doesn’t represent diversity, his writing is in a class of it’s own.
    What none of these people can explain is why diversity is a good thing in and of itself or what it has to do with literature worth reading.

  4. Or, as the Kinks put it,back in 1972 (Muswell Hillbillies, one of the best LPs of all time)
    You keep all your smart modern writers
    Give me William Shakespeare
    You keep all your smart modern painters
    I’ll take Rembrandt, Titian, Da Vinci and Gainsborough,
    The chorus sums it up (though they have the wrong century)
    I was born in a welfare state
    Ruled by bureaucracy
    Controlled by civil servants
    And people dressed in grey
    Got no privacy, got no liberty
    Cos the twentieth century people
    Took it all away from me.

  5. So a single writer doesn’t represent diversity, but a different single writer does?
    It occurs to me that in order to be admitted to this university, one must display a distinct lack of intelligence.

  6. Act 5, Scene 8 Enter MACBETH
    MACBETH
    Why should I play the Roman fool and die
    On mine own sword? Whiles I see lives, the gashes
    Do better upon them.
    MACBETH
    Why should I commit suicide like one of the ancient Romans? As long as I see enemies of mine alive, I would rather see my sword wound them than me.
    Enter MACDUFF
    MACDUFF
    Turn, hellhound, turn!
    MACDUFF
    Turn around, you dog from hell, turn around!
    MACBETH
    Of all men else I have avoided thee.
    But get thee back. My soul is too much charged
    With blood of thine already.
    MACBETH
    You are the only man I have avoided. But go away now. I’m already guilty of killing your whole family.
    MACDUFF
    I have no words.
    My voice is in my sword. Thou bloodier villain
    Than terms can give thee out!
    MACDUFF
    I have nothing to say to you. My sword will talk for me. You are too evil for words!
    They fight
    MACBETH
    Thou losest labor.
    As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air
    With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.
    Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
    I bear a charmèd life, which must not yield
    To one of woman born.
    MACBETH
    You’re wasting your time trying to wound me. You might as well try to stab the air with your sword. Go fight someone who can be harmed. I lead a charmed life, which can’t be ended by anyone born from a woman.
    MACDUFF
    Despair thy charm,
    And let the angel whom thou still hast served
    Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb
    Untimely ripped.
    MACDUFF
    You can forget about your charm. The evil spirit you serve can tell you that I was not born. They cut me out of my mother’s womb before she could bear me naturally.

  7. Does Shakespeare represent diversity any more than Audre Lorde does? Or any less? How many feminist black authors are writing in the U.S.A. today? And what do they write about? How many sixteenth century Englishmen are writing in the U.S.A. today? And what do they write about?

  8. Is the Bard but of value if of modernity writ?
    Or canst only the wench of colour show our style well?
    Nay, but as Dirtman has well spoke, in diversity is not a singularity seen.

  9. I’ve read African American feminist authors … and Audre Lorde … you’re NO William Shakespeare !!

  10. Unfortunately, even Shakespeare’s works are being tampered with.
    Nearly 4 decades ago, the BBC undertook to produce all of his plays. PBS broadcast them over the next few years and I watched most of them. I didn’t like all of the productions, but they preserved Shakespeare’s words and the way they were to be expressed.
    On the whole, those productions were well worth watching.
    Moving ahead into the 21st century, and the BBC produced some of them again as the series The Hollow Crown. On the whole, those that I saw on PBS left a lot to be desired.
    For example, this past Sunday, I watched Henry the Sixth, Part 1. Much of the material, such as that about Joan of Arc, was completely cut and I had a hard time following along with my copy of the script.
    In short, it didn’t do justice to the play. I don’t fault the actors, though I thought some of them were miscast. The blame lies with the director and the producers and I wondered just what they were trying to accomplish with that low-brow production.
    Evidently, someone forgot that one of the joys of Shakespeare is in hearing or reading well-crafted words presented in a manner that delights the mind and spirit.

  11. William Shakespeare died four-hundred years ago this very year, and he is still the greatest poet and playwright in the English language. No poet or playwright writing today will be remembered even one-hundred years from now.

  12. With regards to concerns about diversity, I think the Bard himself would respond by quoting his own work:
    ….it is a tale
    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
    Signifying nothing.
    Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5

  13. And one of my favorites … which always reminds me of Hillary Clinton …
    Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
    And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
    Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
    Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
    That no compunctious visitings of nature
    Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
    The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
    And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
    Wherever in your sightless substances
    You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,
    And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
    That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
    Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
    To cry ‘Hold, hold!’ (1.5.45-61)
    Hillary was unsexed a long time ago … witness her concubine, Huma

  14. He was also one of the most influential. His works inspired several musical works including Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello and Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.

  15. To be, or not to be, an idiot while away at university. That’s the question. Now shuffle off children.
    One thing for sure, these children are in for a long and weary life, if portraits of classic scholars offend them in the hallways of higher learning.

  17. Interesting ironic tidbit. The first American performance of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” was in Philadelphia (the largest city in Pennsylvania) in 1759.
    From the University of Pennsylvania website…
    “Penn has a long and proud tradition of intellectual rigor and pursuit of innovative knowledge… That tradition lives today through the creativity, entrepreneurship, and engagement of our faculty, students, and staff.”
    Heh… long and proud.

  20. My complaint about Shakespeare is that in highschool we read his plays. It always struck me as kind of silly to read a play. I wonder if kids hundreds of years from now will be made to read movie scripts in highschool English class.

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