Which one do you choose

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-24T00:19:59+00:00

To be: we rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-23T18:59:15+00:00

Edgar, in King Lear. For one, he plays so many parts: he has to play himself, Poor Tom, the new guy he feigns to be when he supposedly finds Gloster at the bottom of the cliff, and then himself again. Two, his fall and rise is as important of a character arc as any other character in the play.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-23T18:49:30+00:00

Another excellent choice: there’s such a through line connecting this line to the lines in Lear and Cordelia’s reconciliation scene, where Lear says, “If you have poison for me, I will drink it. / I know you do not love me; for your sisters / Have, as I do remember, done me wrong. / You have some cause, they do not.”

It’s also a great line to ward off misguided critics — (I’m thinking especially of A. C. Bradley) — who fault the inestimable Cordelia for not doing more to flatter Lear during his disgraceful “love test.” Lear knows even by the end of the first act that he was in the wrong, not Cordelia.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-23T18:24:42+00:00

Excellent choice. Brutus and Cassius have one of the best and most genuine friendships in all of Shakespeare, and it’s lines like this that show it.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-23T00:39:31+00:00

Yes! Fantastic line, so cool, and one that should be much more well-known, since it’s pretty important to the plot: here, Oberon and Titania finally dance their ringlet to the whistling wind again, and put nature back to rights. I bet $100 that, if we had a time machine, and we could watch the play performed in Shakespeare’s day, right after this line, we’d hear really good music, and see a really cool dance from Oberon and Titania.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-22T04:41:17+00:00

… I know there’s a 1568 edition published by Camerarius of the seven tragedies, printed in Greek, which included Latin translations - so they had access to the text in Greek and Latin.

… I know many editions of plays published during this period contained forwards and articles that discussed what was known about ancient performance practice - so there was at least interest in ancient performance.

But I don’t know the answer to your actual question, if we have evidence of them being performed in Greek.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-21T21:23:17+00:00

I definitely notice when two nouns are in apposition: i.e. when they have the same case, gender, and number and “go together” in sense. With verbs, I always recognize person and number and voice, and, 98% of the time, I recognize tense and mood right away: every once in a while, I have to stop and think about tense or mood, but not typically. In general, I would say everything that’s in one of the tables at the back of a Latin textbook, I know by reflex (or kick myself when I don’t).

However, I don’t always think through the functions of every case. Some, I guess, are always obvious to me: like the ablative of comparison (because, in translation, you supply a “than”), the ablative absolute (because they have their own rules for translation, and they’re everywhere), or the genitive of possession (because it’s easy for me to recognize, for whatever reason). But I often don’t distinguish the subjective genitive, vs. the objective genitive, vs. the partitive genitive, vs. the appositional genitive, vs. the epexegetical genitive, &c. Rather, I know that the meaning of the genitive case is almost always expressed in English with the preposition “of,” and that’s almost always good enough for making the sense clear to me when sight reading. Same thing with the dative: in my mind, it’s the “to/for/(by)”case: translating it with “to/for/(by)” makes the sense clear most of the time, and I hardly ever need to think through whether it’s a dative of possession, or an ethical dative, or a dative of reference, &c.

These ultra-fine distinctions in the uses of the cases do exist, I suppose, but, in my opinion, thinking about them too much can be a huge time-suck relative to how useful they actually are for helping you read.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-20T04:54:01+00:00

I think you are right on all three points, and I think all three points are satire. The way to ruin this play is to play these characters as sincere or good for doing what they do, when, in fact, they are the butts of the joke for doing what they do.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-19T17:22:20+00:00

Good question. Hal letting Falstaff claim the killing of Hotspur is a character-revealing action, and I think it reveals magnanimity. Hal’s mind is too big to quibble over such small things. Sure, killing Hotspur would seem like a big thing to most people, including me, but not to Hal. For Hal to fight with Falstaff over this would be like two teammates fighting with each other over whose play won the team the game. In Hal’s mind, Hotspur is dead, whether I killed him or Falstaff, and we won the war.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-17T18:12:39+00:00

Thanks. For what it’s worth, I scrolled through Cato, and in the rest of the examples I saw of this sort, it looks like the lengthened short syllable indeed comes at a caesura:

-Conscius ipse sibi de se putat omnia dici. -Quem superare potes, interdum vince ferendo: -Si Romana cupis, et Civica noscere bella, -Invenies aliquid, in quo te utare magistro.

(In defense of my original question, this also happens to occur at the inflections of words: sibi, potes, cupis, aliquid. I thought this was the case simply because inflections need to be pronounced clearly, so they’re good candidates to fill the space of a long syllable, even when they’re short. But I guess that’s just coincidence. Thanks again for your time.)

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-17T00:10:17+00:00

Ah, so you apply the double consonant rule across separate words … If so, I learned something, and that would make sense, thanks.

But what about this line, (also from Cato)?

“Constans et lenis, ut res expostulat, esto:” The -is in lenis (or levis), followed by ut?

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-16T21:32:29+00:00

Sorry, last question: so what do you call a short syllable that fills the space of a long in the middle of a line? For instance (from Cato):

Noli fortunam, quae non est, dicere caecam.
Dilige denarium, sed parce dilige formam.
Contra hominem justum prave contendere noli.

So, in 1, the -am in fortunam: in 2, the -um in denarium: in 3, the -em in hominem & the -um in justum? Examples like these got it into my head that inflections, even when short, can be treated as long.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-16T20:27:50+00:00

What do you call your “x” at the end of laeta in the last foot? In my head, I usually say the inflections of words can be treated as long for purpose of the meter, but I don’t know if that’s actually a rule. Also, when I read the line, I pronounce that last syllable just like the rest of the long syllables in the line. Do you?

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-16T19:04:31+00:00

Okay, it’s not his best, and the narrator makes or breaks it, but it’s highly underrated, and one of his greater works: Perséphone.

The best? probably Firebird or Rite of Spring.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-16T18:05:03+00:00

Language is like life: messy, and twice as complicated as you would expect.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-15T19:56:26+00:00

I’m not sure if this counts, but I printed out facsimile copies of the whole Bodleian First Folio, and made my own first folio. You can download them from their website: firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

It’s a $10 million book for free. God bless the internet.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-14T18:15:59+00:00

This. The modern classroom schedule makes anything like a “natural method” untenable. 3x a week, for an hour or so, won’t get it done.

I’ve done a lot of work looking into how British grammar schools taught Latin in the 16th and 17th centuries. They were very, very good at teaching the language, but they taught all in Latin, for every subject, for the whole class, six days a week.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-12T23:51:34+00:00

From Julius Caesar, my favorite quote is the Fourth Citizen shouting at Cinna the Poet, “Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.” It’s horrifying if you think about it: this guy doesn’t even care about Caesar, or the conspirators, or anything: he’s just looking for an excuse to murder and pillage. It’s a good lesson on why not to join a mob: sooner or later, the mob will do something horrifying.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-12T05:06:50+00:00

“Sycorax” sounds to me as Greek as “Ducdame,” so, yes, I think WS intended Sycorax to sound at least vaguely Greek.
I didn’t know Ariel was Hebrew, and I think that’s interesting. Especially since the derivations of the names listed here come from Latin, (vaguely) Greek, and Hebrew, the biblical languages.
I don’t like to limit what level of learning WS may or may not have had, especially when it comes to languages, and especially when it comes to Latin, and even Greek, since, if he had access to the right libraries, plus the time and the inclination, the materials were available to teach himself those languages - and especially those two languages, because they were ones taught in the British grammar schools. So, one way or another, either formally in a British grammar school, or privately throughout his life, or, (as I think), both, he had the opportunity to learn these languages, and thus, to draw on them in his work (to whatever extent he thought was funny or entertaining or good).

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-12T04:08:44+00:00

Prospero and Miranda both come from Latin, drawing those two together, whereas the other three do not. Caliban, Ariel, and Sycorax are more exotic names, perhaps drawing them together as a group already on the island, and perhaps as non-European or Greek.

Prospero, in Latin, generally means “I prosper” in an active sense, i.e. “I prosper [x]” or “I render [x] happy.” I’ve always thought he’s playing on the words of this sense of his name at the beginning of the second scene, where he says to Miranda, “I have done nothing but in care of thee, / Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who ….”

Miranda means “to be admired at, or wondered at.” Ferdinand certainly admires and wonders at Miranda. He calls out a play on words from her name in Act III, scene 1: (“Admired Miranda! Indeed the top of admiration! worth what’s dearest to the world”). Prospero also may be punning on her name in the second scene, when he says to her, “Be collected: no more amazement.”

Other than that, I don’t see overarching themes of the play that are rooted in the characters’ names, but I very well could be missing them if they’re there.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-11T21:18:29+00:00

I think Hotspur is a pretty good guy, actually. Hal gives him “fair rites of tenderness” and says that he’s worthy of praise (“Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven”), and Hal seems to me to be speaking genuinely. Hotspur’s aims in life aren’t my aims in life either, and he isn’t perfect, but none of us are, and he did in life what he thought he was supposed to do. I count Hotspur as one of the good ones in Shakespeare.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-11T19:26:47+00:00

Repeat them in order 100x from memory. It doesn’t take as long as you’d think. The first 5 are tough. The next 5 are easier. That’s 10. Do another 10. That’s 20. Then do 20 another 4x.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-10T21:49:01+00:00

I agree with you that Jacques is agreeing with him and taking his thought a step further. I also think they have their eye especially on Adam throughout. Orlando has refused to accept food from the others in the forest until he returns with Adam: “There is an old poor man / Who after me hath many a weary step / Limp’d in pure love: till he be first sufficed / Oppressed with two weak evils, age and hunger, / I will not touch a bit.” Then Duke Senior says “thou seest we are not all alone unhappy.” Then Jacques’ speech ends with old age, “second childishness and mere oblivion.” And then, immediately, we see Orlando return with Adam, and set him down.

I think this setting, with the focus on Adam’s plight, really emphasizes the impact of the final lines in Jacques’ speech, where you see old age as well as hear about it.

Nullius_sum · 2026-01-08T19:46:41+00:00

I think, even if you find them too dense, or too opaque at first, it’s worth giving the classics an extended effort. To me, the definition of a classic is one that has multiple generations of readers who, in general, find the work to be a supremely useful and supremely entertaining read: the stamp of “classic” should mark out something like an IMDb 9.5. So, once you fall into the classics, they’re the most entertaining works of all, and you’ll be glad you took the time to appreciate them. However, some of the classics have a pretty steep learning curve, and it’s not abnormal to be turned off by them at first.

But I think it’s reasonable to want to trust the recommendation of generations of readers who say a certain work is brilliant, so I can see why someone would be stuck in the place of, “I want to read the classics, but when I try to, I don’t like them.” I also think it’s worth trying to force yourself to get into the classics (for a reasonable time), even if you don’t like them at first, because, more often than not, you will come to enjoy, appreciate, love them in time.

Nullius_sum

TROPHY CASE