I learned something interesting in my linguistics class today. We were talking about the evolution of the English language, Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English and Late Modern English and some of the famous works that correlated with these time periods and Shakespeare came up. Not to take away from Shakespeare in the least, because I truly do believe that he was a literary genius, but Dr. Coffey brought up an interesting point that the printing press had just been released right around the same time that Shakespeare started writing so many of his plays. This may explain a little bit of why Shakespeare is so famous, because he was one of the first talented authors to actually be able to present his work to the public without having to manually right out every script. Another interesting fact is that even at this time only about 5% of the public was literate, so even when the printing press was invented only a fraction of the population could actually read what was being printed. AND also just as interesting was the information that he told us about the Old English texts, like Beowulf. Because there was no printing press every copy of that text was hand written! Holy crap! That is a lot of writing and to think that when that was written only about 1% of people were literate and those were the priests and the heads of the church. To think that something that was only originally written down survived all these years in its full form is pretty amazing, I mean that was around 1300 years ago! I think that this stuff is so interesting, and I find it funny that this information is being expressed the way that it is in a Linguistics class and was not presented in any survey class that I have taken, Brit Lit I or II, World Lit I or II… It would have been nice to know when I was reading Beowulf that it was originally just a written manuscript and every copy that was made had to been rewritten. Dr. Sexton, that is why I really appreciate you because you come with a database of extended knowledge that overall adds to the effectiveness of what we are reading. So thank you.
Some of my favorite Shakespeare quote:
"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages."
"Ambition should be made of sterner stuff."
"And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse."
"As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words."
"Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery."