
William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52 - hvo
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/23/arts/shakespeare-obituary.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0
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themartorana
_" Shakespeare was the most commonly used spelling in his day, but by the 18th
century, the version most favored was Shakespear, and only in the 20th century
did Shakespeare become the standard. Interestingly, of the six surviving
signatures the great man himself left behind, not one is spelled
Shakespeare."_

He must have gotten it wrong. Thank goodness we've corrected it for him. Not
like he was particularly good at English.

~~~
icebraining
Of the six signatures, three are abbreviations, and the other three don't
coincide among themselves. Besides, he did use the modern form when he wrote
his name in print, just not in his signature.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_Shakespeare's_name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_Shakespeare's_name)

~~~
themartorana
Oh be quiet with your logic and evidence.

 _In the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling "Shakspere", as used in the
poet's own signature, became more widely adopted in the belief that this was
the most authentic version._

I guess I lean this way. (I do acknowledge what you said about the man himself
spelling his own name differently, makes me wonder why...) But I have always
been perplexed about different spellings and pronunciations of proper nouns.
My name is Dave in every language, I assure you. Sounds like the Elizabethans
were all kinds of lax with spelling!

~~~
mhurron
> My name is Dave in every language

No it most likely is not. For one it is a short form of the name David, so it
has already been mangled, and then like any other written word will change how
it is written to attempt to show the sounds in the written rules of that
language. This can lead to additions of letters or some very strange changes
to the spelling of the name.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_%28name%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_%28name%29)

"Hebrew: דָּוִד, Modern David, Tiberian Dāwîḏ ... In Christian tradition, the
name was adopted as Syriac: ܕܘܝܕ‎ Dawid, Greek Δαυίδ, Latin Davidus. The
Quranic spelling is داوُد Dāwūd."

So just around the Mediterranean, where the name originated, we have (in the
English alphabet) Dawid, David, Davidus, Dawud. All for the same name.

~~~
themartorana
I wouldn't respond to any of them. Do you understand my point? I am "Dave" (or
David to my mother). That's it. You can spell or pronounce it however you
want, but you're speaking of or to someone other than me.

~~~
dagw
_I wouldn 't respond to any of them._

I take it you haven't lived in a country where pronouncing "Dave" is tricky.
If I was to not respond to everybody who didn't pronounce my name correctly
when I lived in England it would have been some very lonely and infuriating
years. At the end of the day I accepted that the exact pronunciation of my
name wasn't that important as long as everybody understood who we where
talking about.

~~~
themartorana
I've travelled to plenty (I used to work for a large multinational and
travelled to all parts of the world) and people I interacted with across many
disparate cultures made the effort to pronounce my name as I was introduced
(or introduced myself) to them. I also made every effort to pronounce their
names as they pronounced them. Accents being what they are, it wasn't always
perfect, but they never decided to call me a local translation of "Dave."

But again, I think we should call Italy "Italia" because that's how Italians
spell and pronounce it. When I ask a local something about Padua and they look
at me confused until I ask them about Padova, we should all be making the
effort to call it "Padova."

~~~
dagw
_they never decided to call me a local translation of "Dave."_

I had a German friend in England called "Peter" and everyone always called him
the English pronunciation of "Peter" no matter how he introduced himself.
Maybe it's different with an English name in a non-english speaking country,
since the 'correct' pronunciation is often known thanks to TV and movies.

~~~
themartorana
That would have been considered disrespectful in my company, and to me
personally. That said, I spent some time in Germany working with Germans, but
we would only call someone "Peter" if he (or heck, she) asked to be directly.

I suppose this boils down to identity for me, having had hours to reflect on
this conversation now. My name is a huge part of my identity. How it can be
changed in any way without my consent is bizarre to me (respect to the untold
number of immigrants that had their names changed at Ellis Island and
elsewhere on a whim).

In any case, yeah, unless he asked to be called Peter, WTF?

~~~
dagw
_That would have been considered disrespectful in my company, and to me
personally_

Me, I quickly realized it was about picking my battles. I could fight every
day I lived in England to get people to pronounce it correctly or I could
accept a reasonable best effort approximation and move on with my life. I
found that most expats/immigrants with strange names took the same approach.
These days when I'm in England or North America I've even started to pronounce
my own name slightly wrong to speed up the whole process. Hell some people I
know even preemptively changed their names to something easier to save
everybody the effort.

Mispronunciations where (almost) never due to malice and my friends converged
on a good pronunciation fairly quickly, and that was good enough for me.
Spending a few years of your youth with most people getting you name wrong
quickly desensitizes you to such minor details.

------
icebraining
In an intersection of recent topics in HN, I highly recommend the Globe's 2012
rendition of _Twelfth Night_ , in which Stephen Fry plays Malvolio. I was
never so much a fan of his as most seem to be around here, but his performance
was frankly good, if somewhat similar to the character from _Blackadder II_.
As for the rest of the cast, they range from solid to excellent.

~~~
Brakenshire
Cheers for that. I stumbled across their online player recently, but was a bit
overwhelmed. Might give your suggestion a go:

[https://globeplayer.tv/videos/twelfth-
night](https://globeplayer.tv/videos/twelfth-night)

------
ams6110
Sadly (?) the only memories I have of Shakespeare are the forced readings in
my sophomore (Julius Caesar) and junior (King Lear) years in high school, both
of which I hated and for which Cliff's Notes were my crutch to get through.

~~~
whateveridunno
I thought it was illegal not to have read Hamlet by 21?

Seriously though, give it another try. Shakespeare's wide-ranging enough that
there's likely to be _something_ to your taste. And with his comedies,
especially, I'd recommend watching Shakespeare and not reading him- that's how
his plays were meant to be experienced. Although it's nice to read an
annotated version and discover all the (often dirty) jokes you didn't get.

Added benefit to reading Shakespeare: you'll understand about 40% more
literary allusions (read the Bible, Ovid, Homer, and Virgil to get the rest).

~~~
mewse
As someone new to Shakespeare, you should definitely start out by watching
performances, rather than reading scripts. Until you've absorbed the rhythm
and the literary style, it can be very difficult to follow their plots just
from a cold reading of the text; particularly for the histories. (And while
King Lear is classed as a tragedy, I've personally always felt that it reads
more like one of the histories)

If you do start reading the scripts for pleasure (which totally is not
required!), then it's probably a good idea to start with one which you've seen
performed, just to let your brain adapt itself to seeing the words in written
form, and to get used to looking back and forth between the text and the
annotations, without needing to worry about losing the plot.

~~~
jrapdx3
Over the years I've seen (heard) a lot of Shakespeare plays, and I mostly
agree with you. Yes, just reading the play is inadequate because the written
form is so bare. Attending a live performance is a much better experience. The
dialog is meant to be spoken and to be heard.

What I do recommend, and is my own practice, is reading the play _before_
going to the performance. We are especially blessed to read Shakespeare today,
the internet is so very helpful. So many versions of every Shakespeare play,
most have annotations about Elizabethan language that help the reader make
sense of it.

Reading AOT makes it much easier to follow what's happening on stage. Even
small local productions can be done well, Shakespearean plays were always
meant as entertainment, go and enjoy!

I think you are right about the classification of the plays, Comedy, Tragedy,
etc, don't necessarily fit our modern sensibilities. In Shakespeare's time,
"Merchant of Venice" was called a "comedy", but in our era we'd say it's more
tragic than not. I'd agree familiarity with the play is more important than
its categorization.

~~~
mewse
It's been a long time since I was in that position; almost none of the plays
are new to me at this stage. (I'll confess, though, that I've neither seen nor
read Coriolanus, Cymbaline, or Timon of Athens. Or, for that matter, any of
the Apocrypha) For me personally, I would absolutely do exactly the same as
you; if I was going to attend a production of any of those plays which I've
not yet experienced, I would read the script, first.

But for someone who isn't yet accustomed to the language, I expect that it
would be a hard slog, getting through the texts without an actor's
interpretation to help you along.

~~~
jrapdx3
> But for someone who isn't yet accustomed to the language, I expect that it
> would be a hard slog, getting through the texts without an actor's
> interpretation to help you along.

That's the beauty of the web. The online transcripts of the plays provide many
explanations of the language and its cultural context, which makes the dialog
so much more understandable to people coming to it the first time.

Without doing this it will be difficult for a beginner to understand what the
actors are saying or what's happening on stage. Frankly, I can have trouble
with plays I've seen only once before or haven't seen in a long time, I figure
it won't hurt to read it before seeing it again.

------
mirimir
> “To be or not to be,” said Hamlet, prince of Denmark, “that is the
> question.” Yesterday, Hamlet’s creator was; today, he is not. Of that there
> is no question.

OK, so I'm moved to quote Samuel Butler:

> To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he
> can never know that he is dead.

I got that (as I recall) from Peter Watts' _Echopraxia_.

It's rather comforting, because I can always imagine that I will awaken ;)

~~~
dclowd9901
When I wake up and my first thought is "I'm alive!" It's actually going to be
a good day.

~~~
mirimir
Right. And when my first thought is "WTF?", it helps to think "At least I'm
alive!" ;)

------
edko
On exactly the same date, Miguel de Cervantes, Novelist and Poet, is dead at
68.

------
chrisau
What a wretched year! Bowie, Rickman, Prince and now Shakespeare too?! Say it
ain't so. Taken too soon. RIP.

------
noobie
You know why I love Shakespeare? Because only thoughtful minds can understand
his writings. Ones that can bear to get out of their technology-infested
worlds and actually focus on a story that has and can keep your attention,
when words meant more than simple communication.

Promises were called oaths and there were such things as enduring love,
faithfulness, and trust, yet, there were still scandals and mistakes. But it
was all overcome in a story that few today would venture to understand in its
original context.

It takes little intelligence to comprehend what a text means, but in poetry
and stories we find beautiful manifestations of every moral and in these I
think we find the vulnerability of this plague we call humanity.

------
gavinpc

        Miss Hathaway had as a lover
        That infamous son of a glover
          Whatever Will said
          In their second-best bed
        She edited cover to cover
    

A sort of rambling article from NYT whose most notable feature was a beautiful
sidenote style and the lack of a scrollbar. For those interested in
Shakespeare and new media, here's a thing I've been working on
[http://gavinpc.com/project_willshake.pdf](http://gavinpc.com/project_willshake.pdf)

~~~
justinmk
Your PDF is thought-provoking, as was the NYT article.

~~~
gavinpc
Thank you. That means a lot to me.

I have worked on that project mostly in secret for over ten years, and I had
resolved that yesterday had to be a release date of some kind. So yeah, I
hadn't slept, and I needlessly (and foolishly) criticized the OP whose thread
I'd recklessly hijacked for self-promotional purposes, hoping that a topical
limerick from my college days would buy me a little good will.

I should have done a Show HN instead.

------
tiatia
Shakespeare

[https://cardiffshakespeare.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/william-...](https://cardiffshakespeare.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/william-
shakespeare-dramen-und-apokryphen/)

[http://www.shak-stat.engsem.uni-hannover.de/](http://www.shak-
stat.engsem.uni-hannover.de/)

------
userbinator
Am I the only one who finds the tense in the title a bit confusing? For a
moment I was wondering whether he was actually born in 1964...

~~~
tempestn
The entire article is written in present tense, as if it's a current news
event; makes for a more interesting read. I don't think they're too concerned
about people thinking William Shakespeare just now died.

~~~
petecox
Not necessarily. Anne Hathaway, Bill Shakespeare's wife and star of The Dark
Knight Rises, was born in 1982. :)

------
andrewclunn
First Prince now Shakespeare?!

------
davidvaughan
This is wonderfully sly and humorous.

------
DavidSJ
Moderators, can you append [1616] to the title? This is old news.

~~~
Mahn
On that note, it's pretty impressive that the NY Times already had online
presence back then. This was way before Geocities and Lycos.

~~~
arto
And way before New York, even. New Amsterdam was renamed to New York only
after 1664.

------
fullshark
I don't get it

~~~
honua
I agree in that I'm wondering if this is related to Prince dying?

~~~
tempestn
I'm guessing it's by chance, since it's the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's
death, so presumably this was planned.

