Uncle Bill Shakespeare...Alive and Well!

10 Shakespearean Terms Of Endearment (link)​


Lambkin​

"When lamb isn’t enough of a diminutive, try lambkin. Used lovingly to refer to a person who is exceptionally sweet, young and innocent, this is the ultimate warm and fuzzy pet name. The Oxford English Dictionary attributes the first two recorded citations of lambkin to Shakespeare in Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V, both from 1600. In Henry IV, Part 2 Pistol breaks the news of the king’s death with the following line: “Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is king.”
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Ian McKellen suggests why film actors don't always look the most naturalistic on stage.
 

Another picture - so stylistically close to these that Howard Pyle most likely made it at about the same time - was printed in the July 1877 issue of Scribner’s Monthly with the vague title, “A Quotation from ‘King Lear’”.

The original pen-and-ink was, I thought, last heard of when it was sold at auction by Scott & O’Shaughnessy in New York City on April 27, 1916. But, in poking around online, I came across it, semi-misidentified - but viewable here in a nice, high-resolution scan - in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.
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The extended quote, by the way, is from Lear himself and goes:

Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.
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(comment)
kev ferrcoara said...

This is quite interesting.

"The Lear quote is about experiencing hardship to give yourself a more empathetic sense of what the less well-off go through. And by that knowledge, to realize that the "heavens" are unjust. So, to right things, it behooves us to give the excess goods we accumulate to the less fortunate. A basic christian plea for charity".

Pyle seems to be making a parallel between the line about taking medicine (physic) so to become more empathetic to the plight of the unfortunate, to the ability of the black character in the image to take real medicine himself. Pyle seems to be saying of the black man "he is sick just as you get sick, so have empathy. For he must be a man just as you are a man. So give him the medicine he needs."

"This is much more of an editorial cartoon than a joke cartoon, obviously. And it presumes a strong familiarity for Shakespeare among its readership, probably justified".

"The editors' decision to remove the exact quote to replace it with the vague "a quote from King Lear" turns the cartoon into more of a puzzle to solve. I suppose the idea would be the fun of remembering the "take physic" line and applying it to the circumstance portrayed by the cartoon, of the giving of medicine.

"But I wonder if, in doing this, they have negated Pyle's presumed message, to give charity to the poor minority, for they are like us, see"?

"This is assuming I have Pyle's intentions right. It could after all be simply an immature comic statement of the one line in Lear being transposed to such blighted circumstances as the characters shown live within. It really depends on what Pyle social consciousness was understood to be at that time. Pyle was certainly capable of the wittier, editorial version, rather than the simple transposition of the haughty line into low circumstance".
 
The Wild Goose Chase
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This phrase is old and appears to be one of the many phrases introduced to the language by Shakespeare. The first recorded citation is from Romeo and Juliet, 1592:

Romeo: Switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or I'll cry a match.
Mercutio: Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five.
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Our understanding of the term differs from that in use in Shakespeare's day. The earlier meaning related not to hunting but to horse racing. A 'wild goose chase' was a race in which horses followed a lead horse at a set distance, mimicking wild geese flying in formation.

The equine connection was referred to a few years before Shakespeare's usage, in Gervase Markham's equestrian instructional manual A Discource of Horsmanshippe, 1593. Markham describes the rules of the race at length, the essential point being that the horses follow each other like geese in flight:

"The Wild-goose chase being started, in which the hind∣most Horse is bound to follow the formost, and you hauing the leading, hold a hard hand of your Horse, and make hym gallop softly at great ease, insomuch, that perceiuing your aduersarie striue to take the leading from you, suffer him to come so néere you, that his Horses head may wel nye touch your Horses buttocke, which when you sée, clappe your left spurre in your horses side, and wheele him suddainlie halfe about on your right hand, and then take him vp againe, till such time that he be come to you againe: thus may you doo of eyther hand which you will, and in neuer a one of these turnes, but you shall throw him that rides against you, at least twenty or thirtie yardes behind you, so that whilst you ride at your ease, he shal be forst continually to come vp to you vpon the spures, which must wearie the best Horse in the world. Also in thys match, gette your law in the Wild-goose chase, which is most vsually twelue score to bee twentie score, that if your aduersary chaunce to haue more spéede then you, yet with your truth and toughnes, you may reco∣uer him: for that Horse that lets another ouer-runne hym twenty score at the first in a wild-goose chase, it is pyttie he should euer be hunter".
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Had the Complete Works somewhere once but couldn't understand it then and wouldn't understand it now, must say something about my IQ level. :)
 
Expectation is the root of all heartache.
William Shakespeare

Heartache wasn't around in The Bard's day, what he actually said was:
"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises."
It's from: "All's Well That Ends Well."
So now you know.
 
"Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words since I first called my brother's father dad". (King John)
 
Shakespeare Ghost Town
Lordsburg, New Mexico

Some of the Old West's most notorious outlaws frequented this mining town.

"In 1870 when some prospectors discovered a rich silver ore nearby, they renamed it Ralston City after William Ralston, who financed their mining operation".
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"It was almost a ghost town in 1879 when Colonel William G. Boyle bought up most of the land and goods claims. In an attempt to give the town a fresh start, he gave it a new name: Shakespeare. Mining operations picked up again, and for a little while, the small town grew lively".

"In its heyday, Shakespeare was a theater of old western tales filled with colorful characters.

"Rumor has it that the skinny kid who washed dishes at the hotel in the mid-1870s was none other than Billy the Kid. In 1881, notorious cattle raiders “Russian Bill” Tattenbaum and Sandy King were captured and hanged in Shakespeare. Records state that the men were executed because “Russian Bill stole a horse and Sandy King was just a damn nuisance.”

"But all that glitters is not gold, and Shakespeare’s future was not meant to be. A larger town sprang up three miles away next to the new railroad, and the mines closed not long after the depression of 1893. In 1935, ranchers Frank and Rita Hill bought the abandoned town.

"In 1970, Shakespeare was declared a National Historic site. Today, the Shakespeare Foundation strives to preserve the town as a monument to the real Old West".

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How Maps Shaped Shakespeare
An exhibition in Boston delves into historical maps to show how the Bard saw the wider world
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"International travel was treacherous and expensive during Shakespeare’s day, so it’s not surprising that neither he nor many of his contemporaries ever left England. But in a time before TV or the internet, maps were a source not just of coveted information, but of entertainment. As the British Museum notes, to own or look at a map meant the viewer was literally worldly, and atlases and wall maps were used not as ways of navigating places most people would never encounter, but as symbols of education and adventure". (Read More)
 

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And speaking of "Hamlet", parts of it were performed in the original Star Trek episode, "The Conscience of the King":

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THAT IS, UNTIL CAPTAIN KIRK BARGED IN AND BROKE UP THE PERFORMANCE

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SIMPLY BECAUSE HE HAD OTHER THINGS IN MIND....

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BUT, ALAS, HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED

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Labor Day Reflections by William Shakespeare

There’s no better time than Labor Day weekend to contemplate labor in the weekday.

"He — like high tech types today — appreciated the 24/7 nature of his work. Both aspects, the 24 and 7, are realized in Hamlet when the soldier Marcellus describes Denmark’s shipping yards filled with workers in “sweaty haste, does make the night joint laborer with the day.” On top of the 24 comes the 7, as he speaks of “shipwrights whose sore tasks do not divide the Sunday from the week.”

"The Bard realized that any workplace may be tough to navigate, given personal quirks and boss’ demands. Enduring this pressure can cause anyone in an office to sigh, “O full of briers is this working day world”. (As You Like It)". (Read More)
 
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