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Talk Like Shakespeare Day (image created by C. L. Washbrook) |
By Jove! It’s all a bit much isn’t it folks? We’re all happily reciting Hamlet in the shower when all of a sudden there’s a big bad wolf sliding down the chimney bellowing about imposters. Anonymous? Zounds! He’s not the historically invisible man and nor is he a fork-tongued gibberer whom nowt but the boffins can comprehend.
Shakespeare’s language has always been an issue for
many people and expressions like “struggle one’s way through Shakespeare” are
often heard. His language has been overstated as “difficult”, “incomprehensible”
and “impenetrable”. This has resulted in modernisation, abridgement and
translation of Shakespeare’s plays and poems with a goal to make him accessible
to a wider audience.
The bias some people have about Shakespeare’s language
being too “highbrow” and “upper class” to be up an “ordinary” reader’s street
has had a part in the rising of the so-called “authorship controversy”. You
will more than once have heard ignorant pronouncements like “How could a glover’s son
with a mere grammar schooling use such elaborate language or be aware of foreign
politics, of court and the literary traditions of the classics?!”
Talk Like Shakespeare was born from the belief that we could put away the
notion that Shakespeare is “difficult” if we could convey how much of it every
Englishman from child to Professor already knows and uses in their everyday
mundane kitchen table discourse. Shakespeare’s
language was brewed in the same cauldron that gave rise to our modern English
and we, with our hearts ablaze with passion for the twisting tongue that gave
us words like “bedroom” and “alligator” believe that we can all come together
to make this happen. Understanding of and reading his works in *his English* is
vital for appreciating the plays and poems and as relevant to the dramatic meanings
Shakespeare intended, as is the obvious truth that none but he could have
written his works.
Talk
Like Shakespeare Day is a project to introduce Shakespearean as a Facebook “language”. To
get permission from the Facebook administration to work with their settings, we
need to have at least 1000 fans to support our cause (that is how large the
Pirate English page was when they launched the venture).
The quest certainly will not cause further alienation
from Shakespearean as a “language” on its own as some people might confusedly
assume. People will in fact see how very familiar and applicable Shakespeare’s
language is; and the more we engage with Shakespeare’s tongue, the more we
become endeared to it. And what else if not a populated social networking site,
like Facebook, could be an opportunity to spread and familiarise the Bard’s
tongue!
We are impatient to “translate” – bardise is, mayhap, a better word – the many phrases and words for
Facebook. The quest targets educational goals as well as aims to give a firm presence
to Shakespeare within a social communication medium that should be fun for
academics, students, newcomers in Shakespeare and for everyone who loves the
Bard alike. Pray ye, lovers, LIKE the Talk Like
Shakespeare Day FB page and spread the word about our Bardic quest.
…We are used to encountering Shakespeare, on page or
on stage, sung or recited – the 21st century technology now avails
us an opportunity to engage in an even more intimate interaction with a
language so simple and complex to have shuffled the canon we love through 400
years!
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