Free Republic

0:00 Introduction 0:36 Old English 1:25 Norman conquest 3:23 Medieval to Renaissance 4:18 Shakespeare and company 5:08 Modern borrowings 5:48 Spelling 6:33 Grammar 7:03 Too much Latin? 7:40 Gifts of a dual heritage The Latin Roots of English | 10:29toldinstone | 583K subscribers | 28,937 views | June 6, 2025

In his new memoir, Sonny Boy, Al Pacino describes how Shakespeare was central to his early development as a young actor. “I would bellow out monologues as I rambled through the streets of Manhattan,” Pacino writes. “If the hour was late and you heard someone in your alleyway with a bombastic voice shouting iambic pentameter into the night, that was probably me, training myself on the famous Shakespeare soliloquies.”... Pacino “always felt at home on a stage,” and an early performance in a school play literally brought his divorced parents “back together again,” if only for a post-show ice cream....

In 1953, Solomon Pottesman held what appeared to be an ordinary, albeit very old, manuscript in his hands. As he carefully undid the wrappings on "Certaine sermons", which was published in 1637, two leaves of tattered parchment fell out.Pottesman, an eccentric and prolific book collector known in the trade as "Inky", immediately knew that something exciting was afoot. The yellowed pages were scribbled from edge to edge with florid, archaic handwriting – rows of book titles, with crossings out and lines drawn across whole sections, as though the writer were making an informal list. On closer inspection, that is exactly...

William Shakespeare’s birthplace is being “decolonised” following concerns about the playwright being used to promote “white supremacy”. Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust owns buildings linked to the Bard in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. The trust also owns archival material including parish records of the playwright’s birth and baptism. It is now “decolonising” its vast collection to “create a more inclusive museum experience”.

William Shakespeare's birthplace will be de-colonised over fears that portraying his success as the 'greatest' playwright 'benefits the ideology of white European supremacy'. Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust owns buildings in the playwright's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. It wants to 'create a more inclusive museum experience' and announced it will move away from Western perspectives after concerns were raised that Shakespeare's ideas were used to advance 'white supremacy' ideas. The trust also said that some of its items could contain language or depictions that are racist, sexist, or homophobic. It comes amid an ongoing backlash against the writer. Some productions of his works...

A hidden face recently uncovered in a 1789 Joshua Reynolds painting proves the devil is in the details. In "The Death of Cardinal Beaufort," Reynolds included a demon-like face lurking behind the dying cardinal. But the controversial and chilling demon appeared to fade out of the painting over the years, as multiple conservationists worked on it. Now, the painting has been restored to include the original fiend...Reynolds created the painting for the Shakespeare Gallery in London's Pall Mall at the end of his career and the inclusion of the lurking figure over the deathbed was not well received, said John...

(I set the time index to skip RJ Talks pointless commentary; shows that most of what she said was her usual crap)WITNESS The Brutal ROASTING of CNN by Whitney Cummings! | 16:18RJ Talks | 401K subscribers | 188,129 views | January 1, 2025

The archway was uncovered during archaeological investigations and is believed to date back to the time when Shakespeare and his company performed there.A remarkable 600-year-old doorway, potentially leading to legendary English playwright William Shakespeare's dressing room, has been uncovered in the UK's oldest working theatre.The archway was discovered at St George's Guildhall in King's Lynn, Norfolk, during archaeological investigations sparked by curiosity about a "weird shape" in a wall.When two noticeboards were taken down, an 18th-century wall was exposed. As bricks from this wall were removed, an even older archway came into view...St George's Guildhall, which hosted its first recorded...

A study by the University of Pittsburgh reveals that AI-generated poetry has been rated higher than poems written by humans. In the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon lies the burial site of William Shakespeare. And right now, you can bet the Bard is spinning in grave like a rotisserie chicken. Similarly, in Heptonstall graveyard, Sylvia Plath is most probably swivelling, repeating her line “If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed” from "The Bell Jar". What’s behind the unwarranted gyrating from the beyond? Well, a new study in the US has found that readers can’t tell the difference...

If all the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players, where does that leave non-human figures, like artificial intelligence chatbots? As it turns out, A.I. can hold its own against humans—even the Bard himself—when it comes to writing poetry. A.I. chatbots can imitate famous poets like William Shakespeare well enough to fool many human readers, according to a new paper published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. In addition, many study participants actually preferred the chatbot’s poetry over the works of renowned writers. Researchers asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3.5 to generate poems in the style of well-known authors,...

Two Australian mathematicians have called into question an old adage, that if given an infinite amount of time, a monkey pressing keys on a typewriter would eventually write the complete works of William Shakespeare. Known as the "infinite monkey theorem", the thought-experiment has long been used to explain the principles of probability and randomness. However, a new peer-reviewed study led by Sydney-based researchers Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta has found that the time it would take for a typing monkey to replicate Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and poems would be longer than the lifespan of our universe. Which means that while...

There is a tide in the affairs of men, as Shakespeare said, and now, two weeks before election day, that tide has swung decisively toward Donald Trump. Forget the establishment polls. The betting sites show him leading by nearly thirty points. He’s ahead in every last battleground state, according to RCP. Embattled Democrat senatorial candidates, including Bob Casey, Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, and Tammy Baldwin have abandoned Harris and allied themselves with Trump. Both the LA Times and WaPo have refused to endorse Harris. There are more registered GOP voters today than at any previous point in history. As for...

Two faculty members condemned “white ownership” of Shakespeare and the state’s manipulation of black history during an “Appropriation Series” at Arizona State University last week. The scholars are pushing for changes in curriculum and leadership that reflect more “diverse” voices. During the panel, they spoke to eleven ASU students in the audience and other faculty members via Zoom. English Professor Ruben Espinosa argued that Shakespeare’s legacy has been manipulated for purposes of exclusion and viewed through a lens of “white superiority.” He said that for the Jan. 6 “insurrectionists” at the U.S. capitol, Shakespeare represents a symbol of “white exceptionalism”...

A lot of history’s famous quotes are either misattributed or were never spoken in the first place. In addition to the fact that Gandhi never said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” and no one aboard Apollo 13 ever uttered the phrase, “Houston, we have a problem,” Julius Caesar didn’t say, “Et tu, Brute?” (“You too, Brutus?”) as he was stabbed to death by a group of Roman senators that included his supposed bestie. The line comes from Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar and is followed by its protagonist’s last words, “Then fall, Caesar”...

"Sonnet 18" by William ShakespeareShall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and...

Shakespeare's Sonnet 98 - "From you have I been absent in the spring," | 1:06The Insane Artist | 24K subscribers | 2,472 views | March 15, 2020

A South African anthropologist has asked permission to open the graves of William Shakespeare and his family to determine, among other things, what killed the Bard and whether his poems and plays may have been composed under the influence of marijuana. But while Shakespeare's skeleton could reveal clues about his health and death, the question of the man's drug use depends on the presence of hair, fingernails or toenails in the grave, said Francis Thackeray, the director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, who floated the proposal to the Church of England. Thackeray...

Actors don’t need to share the ‘lived experience’ of their characters.The Globe Theatre in London has come under fire for a supposedly controversial casting choice. Last week, it was announced that Michelle Terry, who is also the Globe’s artistic director, would be taking on the titular role in Shakespeare’s Richard III later this summer. Outrage immediately ensued. Because according to identitarian activists, Terry doesn’t have the ‘lived experience’ needed to play the scheming king.Certainly, there are some pretty glaring differences between Michelle Terry and Richard III. For one thing, Terry is a woman and Richard, obviously, was a man. But...

Randy Meisner - Take It To The Limit | 4:19CaliforniaMusic Dream | 289 subscribers | 37,896 views | February 18, 2018

Origin of Et Tu, Brute “Et Tu, Brute?” are perhaps the most popular three words ever written, uttered in literature, and then quoted in different contexts. This phrase also comes from the genius of Shakespeare. It occurs in his play, Julius Caesar, (Act-III, Scene-I, Lines, 77). Julius Caesar utters this phrase as his last words, addressing his close friend, Brutus, in the play. However, the history does not seem to support this, as it is a widely debated subject among historians and dramatists alike. Like so many other countless phrases, Shakespeare vouchsafed this phrase an everlasting life after using it...