Graham Elsdon looks at ways literature students can usefully write about drama By the play’s final scene, Macbeth sees life as ‘a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage’. There is a metatheatrical quality to many of Shakespeare’s works, yet some students find it hard to write about plays as plays. […]
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Last month, I was lucky enough to speak at OUP’s For the Love of Reading: Passing on the Passion conference. It was a wonderful occasion that brought teachers, authors and researchers together to talk about reading. I left with my brain fizzing with ideas, inspired to try the raft of new things I’d learnt from […]
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baffle (verb) ‘defeat efforts, frustrate plans’ When people are baffled, these days, they are at a mental loss, unable to work out what is going on – a state of mind that applies as much to frustrated detectives as to crossword-puzzle solvers. It is a sense which developed in the 17th century. In Shakespeare’s time, […]
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gender (noun) ‘grammatical class; social notion of sex’ The grammatical sense of this word goes back to the early Middle Ages, but the sociological sense is a 20th-century development. The grammatical use is to be found in The Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.i.65), where Evans condemns Mistress Page for having no understanding of ‘the cases […]
Read morejet (verb) ‘spout forcefully; travel by jet’ The sense of speed associated with this word does not arrive in English until the mid-17th century. For Shakespeare, the verb had only one meaning: ‘strut, swagger’ – the original meaning that arrived from Latin, perhaps via French, in the 15th century. This is the sense required when […]
Read morepassport (n.) ‘document authorizing foreign travel’ This word came to be increasingly used in its present-day meanings during the 16th century, as people increasingly travelled abroad. But Shakespeare uses the word differently. When Cerimon opens a chest washed up on shore and discovers Thaisa’s body, he exclaims ‘A passport too!’ (Pericles, III.ii.64). As Thaisa was […]
Read moretimorous (adjective) ‘easily frightened, lacking in confidence’ When this word came into English, in the fifteenth century, it was immediately used in two diametrically opposed senses: ‘feeling fear’ and ‘causing fear’. Only the former sense is found today. Shakespeare uses the word half-a-dozen times, usually in the same way as we do now, as when […]
Read morequeasy (adjective) ‘unsettled, easily upset (especially of stomachs), uneasy, scrupulous (especially of consciences)’ We should think of Shakespeare whenever we feel nauseous, because Agrippa’s reference to Rome being ‘queasy’ with Antony’s insolence is the first recorded use of the modern sense (Antony and Cleopatra III.vi.20). There’s a similar use in Much Ado About Nothing, when […]
Read moremischief (n.) ‘petty annoyance, vexatious behaviour’ The modern use, since the late 17th century, suggests a minor kind of aberrant behaviour, often without intentional ill-will. But when the word first entered English, around 1300, it was quite the reverse. When Joan harangues her captors with ‘mischief and despair / Drive you to break your necks’ […]
Read morehope (verb) ‘entertain a desired expectation’ Today’s strongly positive meaning dates from Anglo-Saxon times, but in the 13th century an alternative usage emerged which lacked the sense of desire, and this was still present in Shakespeare’s day. This new sense was more matter-of-fact, meaning ‘expect’ or ‘envisage’. Without being aware of it, we cannot make […]
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