__shakespeare insult kit

Tags

bullying, drama, high school, insult, offensive, play, Shakespeare, writing

Have you ever needed the perfect insult for that arch nemesis? I have found the gold mine of offensive insults! You can thank me later, or now. If only I had this kit of wickedness in high school… Thou shall feareth me, lumpish beef-witted flap-dragon!

Share with us some of your own Shakespearean insults!

– Ermisenda Alvarez

 

Sincerely, Everyone Who Actually Read It

Tags

books, facebook, fiction, Frankenstein, funny, John Donne, literature, Mary Shelley, movies, Nathaniel Hawthorne, quotes, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, The Scarlet Letter

I found this image on Facebook, which sparked this:

I realize the play by Peggy Webling used “Frankenstein” to refer to the monster before the movie, but I’m choosing to overlook that minor detail.  😉

-Eliabeth Hawthorne

What other movie adaptations have gotten unsuspecting students in trouble?  Were you caught by any?  Our English teacher actually let us get away with watching original The Scarlet Letter.

__one world one language

Tags

connected, one language, one world, othello, Shakespeare, ted, tool, weapon

The points I wanted to highlight from this video were: language as a weapon and the concept of one language.

I agree with Mark Pagel when he describes language as a weapon. It is. Just as he describes we can implant our thoughts directly into another person’s brain. Persuading them, manipulating them or encouraging them. The ability to communicate allows us to cooperate and we can achieve the magnificent feats that human kind has reached (e.g. The Great Pyramid or even the iPhone).

My favourite Shakespearan play is Othello. That beautiful play is haunted by one of the most evil characters I’ve encountered, Iago. Someone being evil, for the sake of being evil. Iago’s greatest tool is the seed of doubt. That  tiny idea he implants inside Othello’s pure mind corrupts. How did he tear down a great, humble, loving man into a jealous, broken and murderous husband? Words. Language.

What does Shakespeare have to do with anything?

Tags

Harry Potter, inspiration, point of view, POV, Shakespeare, writing

Ermisenda and I are writing modern urban fantasy, but some of our inspiration comes from an unlikely source.  I became fascinated with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead after reading Hamlet as part of my HS required reading.  Each covers the same time frame from a different POV.  Even more interesting to me was that while Hamlet is a tragedy, the accompanying work by Tom Stoppard is a comedy.  How different a story it became when it followed different characters.

What if instead of reading Harry Potter from Harry’s point of view, we read it from Snape’s?  The book Ermi and I are currently writing is in a format similar to this.  Anyone who has ever dated knows there are two sides to every story, two interpretations to every situation and often two completely different arguments going on at the same time.  Memories become skewed with time so that two people can remember the same event differently.  Playing with this concept, Ermi has written Blind Sight from the perspective of Leocardo Reyes and I have written Blind Sight from the perspective of Aniela Dawson.  The two sides have their own sub plots seperate from the main plot to keep the reader interested in both sides; even when they come together, the characters notice different aspects of the same scene.

Edited on 8/16/11