BOATSWAIN FTLN 0016When the sea is. Hence! What cares these 7 9The TempestACT 1. SC. 1 FTLN 0017 roarers for the name of king? To cabin! Silence! FTLN 0018 Trouble us not.
The waves caused by the storm pay no attention to societal conventions--that is, the face that the boatwain is talking back to the King of Naples.
So the play begins with subversion of hierarchies playing on the subversion of Prospero in the pre-history if the drama and the sub-plot of usurpation.
Folger Shakespeare Library
Hello, #moocspeare!
This is an annotatable version of The Tempest using the hypothes.is app.
If you sign up for an hypothes.is account, you can annotate the text at this special link.
Signior Mountanto
Upward thrust. Bad swordsman and/or a playa.
This learned constable is too cunning to be FTLN 2388 understood
"Too clever b y half!" Most days this is among my top five favorite lines in this play.
Marry, sir, they have committed false FTLN 2375 report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; FTLN 2376 secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they FTLN 2377 have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust FTLN 2378 things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.
So in place of R&J's misdirected messenger, our play rides on to its comedic salvation with the aid of the amazing Dogberry and his associates.
And let my counsel sway you in this case. FTLN 1923 Your daughter here the princes left for dead. FTLN 1924 Let her awhile be secretly kept in, FTLN 1925215 And publish it that she is dead indeed
How wickedly delightful that again a friar poses a solution involving feigned death, but unlike R&J's Friar Lawrence, puts us not on a path to tragedy but to comedy.
Folger Shakespeare Library
Hello, #moocspeare!
This is an annotatable version of Much Ado About Nothing using the hypothes.is app.
If you sign up for an hypothes.is account, you can annotate the text at this special link.
Folger Shakespeare Library
Hello, #moocspeare!
This is an annotatable version of A Midsummer Night's Dream using the hypothes.is app.
If you sign up for an hypothes.is account, you can annotate the text at this special link.
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies
This scene with its talk of insects conjures up some words from King Lear, "as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods." But that play is a tragedy and here we have a comedy, and so, I must think, as butterflies to wanton fairies...
The course of true love never did run smooth.
The following lines (up to line 151) provide a great catalog of all the obstacles writers have used over the centuries to serve the same function as Wall in the play-within-a-play of Act V. Notice, though, that the obstacle between Hermia and Lysander is not listed in the catalog. That obstacle, of course, is simply Egeus's quite arbitrary objection to Lysander, and in the end it amounts to nothing.
At any point in the text, you can hover your cursor over a bracket for more information.
How so? When I hover my cursor over the very first brackets I come to (around the word "wanes" in the opening lines), the 'explanation' merely says, "editorial emendation"--which tells us absolutely nothing, since the brackets themselves so indicate, and have for the past one hundred or more years. Am I doing something wrong?
Thrice-blessèd they that master so their blood
I am not sure I understand what "thrice-blessed" refers to, can someone help with this?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
This is one of those famous lines that gets excerpted enough that often people who haven't seen or read the play before know it. How does reading it in context inform our understanding of the line? It's not just mortals who appear foolish in the play, and given how the fairies tamper with the humans, how should "foolishness" be assigned? Are mortals foolish for their actions or for their belief that they have control over their feelings/actions?
I do wander everywhere,
Thanks, Puck! Could be a tagline for hypothes.is's (mouthful) ability to annotate the web!!
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
So begins one of the great poems in the play.
A certain aim he took FTLN 0528 At a fair vestal thronèd by the west,
A reference to Elizabeth I?
The editors of the Moby™ Shakespeare produced their text long before scholars fully understood the proper grounds on which to make the thousands of decisions that Shakespeare editors face.
Isn't this a tad arrogant? Isn't the implication that we know best and those that came before us were ignorant?
When the Moby™ Text was created, for example, it was deemed “improper” and “indecent” for Miranda to chastise Caliban for having attempted to rape her. (See The Tempest, 1.2: “Abhorred slave,/Which any print of goodness wilt not take,/Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee…”). All Shakespeare editors at the time took the speech away from her and gave it to her father, Prospero.
It would be interesting to know what changes contemporary editors make on the grounds the original might be offensive to a contemporary audience.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, FTLN 0456 As in revenge have sucked up from the sea
All the following metaphors of natural disaster--storms, floods, etc.--are to say that Oberon's jealous rages are literally intemperate.
The spring, the summer, FTLN 0479115 The childing autumn, angry winter, change FTLN 0480 Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world 43A Midsummer Night’s DreamACT 2. SC. 1 FTLN 0481 By their increase now knows not which is which.
The confusion of the seasons here is later mirrored in the confusion of the lovers.
What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?
I took a picture of LEGO Shakespeare's production of MNDream with Galadriel as Titania and Bottom as a Brony.
have overborne their continents
I love the juxtapositions of words here. I love the notion that a river could forcefully move a continent. And that this "movement" could have both emotional and physical registers. Reminds me of the Carole King lyrics:
I feel the earth move under my feet<br> I feel the sky tumbling down, tumbling down<br> I feel my heart start to trembling<br> Whenever you're around
Why should not I then prosecute my right?
Interesting legal language in the third line here, especially considering Lysander's claim on Hermia's love is clearly not sanctioned by the law. Perhaps he is purposefully using the legal language to suggest a new conception of law in this case, one based on true love rather than societal norms.
the great collection put together by his colleagues in 1623, called the First Folio (F).
About 800 copies were originally printed and over two hundred are known to remain.
Here's a digitized edition you can explore.
Come, my Hippolyta. What cheer, my love?
This seems a hint of Hippolyta's response to Theseus's strict ruling in the case of the lovers. It's likely she is not pleased.
examine well your blood,
A play on "blood" as in family--listen to your father--and blood--as in sexual desire, passion. Theseus's hint here seems to be that Hermia should consider her choice between celibacy (no sex) and marriage to Demetrius (sex with a partner that is not her most desired).
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes
Given he himself is a poet, it seems likely that Shakespeare would sympathize with Lysander's wooing of Hermia with "rhymes" (poetry).
Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword
This seems a central line setting up the drama of the play: Hippolyta was forced to marry Lysander ("by sword") much like Hermia is being forced to marry Demetrius (by law: the "ancient privilege" that her father Egeus evokes in the speech that follows).