5/28/2009
Proiect info
Minna no nihongo
Curs Engleza
William Shakespeare: A Quick Overview
Before we settle down to some particular matters, it might be useful to offer something like a historical overview, so that we can see where the relatively few works we are studying fit into the grand scheme of the complete works. So I would like now to move to a rapid and cursory factual outline of Shakespeare and his work.
William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the provincial market town of Stratford-Upon-Avon, in south-central England, to a middle-class family. His father was a business man, a glover, who was a respectable and, for a time, prosperous citizen. He owned property and held public office. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, came from a well-established and respected family.
Shakespeare grew up in Stratford, and in 1582 (at age 18) he married Anne Hathaway (age 26). Their first child, Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583, and two years later, twins were born to the couple: Hamnet and Judith. The record of these births is the last official evidence we have of Shakespeare's life until we hear of him in London as a successful playwright in 1592, some seven years later.
The gap in the record is called the Lost Years, and it has provided scholars an apparently insoluble puzzle. When and how did Shakespeare become a playwright? When did he go to London? What exactly did he do in these obviously important formative years from age twenty to twenty-seven? There have been all sorts of suggestions, ranging from the idea that Shakespeare worked as a schoolteacher or tutor in a well-connected family to the proposal that he sailed around the world with Francis Drake (the dates are not quite right here, but who could resist such a romantic idea?). An enormous industry has arisen trying to penetrate this puzzle. But no definitive clue has turned up to resolve the problem. Given the scholarly energy thrown at this problem, the total silence is very strange.
At any rate, from 1592 on, when we first hear of Shakespeare as a successful playwright in London, there are frequent and regular references to Shakespeare and his works in various legal and publication records. He worked as an actor, producer, playwright, and chief shareholder of a company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men. This company built its own theatre on the South Bank of the Thames (the Globe Theatre), which has recently been restored as a working theatre (in a slightly different location). Near the end of Shakespeare's working life, the company acquired royal patronage (becoming the King's Men) and began using another theatre, this time one which made indoor productions possible.
After twenty years as a working professional in London, Shakespeare evidently retired and returned to Stratford in 1611 or 1612, where he died in 1616 at the age of 56. He was buried in the local church. The first edition of his collected works (some of which had appeared separately) was put together by London friends and colleagues and appeared in 1623 (this is the so-called First Folio, in which many plays appeared in print for the first time).
This historical record of Shakespeare's life is quite detailed but infuriatingly insufficient to give one any sense of the personality of the man. None of the historical record includes a personal communication to or from Shakespeare, a reliable anecdote, or even a well authenticated likeness (in words or pictures). Thus, we have no way of knowing anything about the character or the daily life of the man. Given the amount of scholarly digging which has gone on for generations, this absence is remarkable. But it is so.
However, this historical cloud undoubtedly has an interpretative silver lining, for the total absence of personal information means that the form of very misleading but popular interpretation which insists that we must understand the text exclusively as a commentary upon the life is impossible to pursue with much conviction (not that that stops some critics from making the attempt).
There are a number of legends and stories about Shakespeare which have persisted, like the tale that he had a bastard son (Sir William Davenant) or the amusing story about his visiting at night a lady who had made a rendezvous with Richard Burbage (the chief actor in the company, famous for his Richard III), making love to the woman in the dark, and then, when Burbage appeared, leaping up with the words "William the Conqueror came before Richard the third!" These and other stories, however much we might like to believe them, are quite unreliable. Many can be traced back only to a period many years after Shakespeare's death.
Curs Japoneza
時すでに初頭 動かぬニッポン列島 どこいったハルマゲドン
待てど暮らせど どーにも変わらない現状 終わりそうに無い戦況
首つりだとか親殺しだとか TVつけたら朝からそんなんばっか
一体どうなってんだか まだ世は末なのかね(やっぱバカばっか)
他人の事故や不幸がそんなにも美味いか?
本当バカばっか 世界中 偉い奴が
マジ嫌になるよ
平和なんてほど遠いじゃん まだまだ
あーやだやだ こんな世の中でLIFE
子供だけぢゃなく大人だって参る
だいぶ増えた死へとダイブする連中
今 タイプする命への THANK U !!
「未来、希望、夢」なんて今じゃ文字化け
世間はパケットまみれの名無しだらけ
ガチンコ本音さえ仮想現実の上だけ
..隣人が監禁されてよーが死んでよーが関係ないねだって。
非道いね。あー。
1999年 誰かさんの予言
騒然。で何もなくて呆然
君はあの夜どこで何を夢みてた?or 期待してた?
予言通りいっそ世界は無くなって欲しかった?
期待外れの 世紀末 夢や希望なんてないミレニアム
中東近隣じゃ毎日テロ 友好国でも対日デモ
まぁいいでしょ 今自分がここで息している事を幸せと思え
どこで何が起こるかそんな事 わからない時代 起こせさあ行動
サビれたGUITARに しゃがれたMELODY 乾いたMESSAGE 唄うよ君に
荒んだこの世に染まってしまわない様に
PLZ BE URSELF HONEY.
皆 死んだように生きてる 21st Century Blues.