Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Madame Speaker, I yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from Stratford-upon-Avon

It is too early in the morning to think straight, my mind is not yet fully alert and running on all cylinders, and Graham Edwards who lives on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in the remotest part of Scotland called my last post arcane.

ARCANE.


Therefore, today I am letting another aspiring writer have the floor. From the site Mental Floss, here is a delightfully informative article:

21 Phrases You Use Without Realizing You're Quoting Shakespeare

Enjoy!

I shall be resting in the drawing room all day so that the healing virtue of silence can renew my befuddled and frenzied mind, because I am of the wrong gender to get me to a nunnery.


12 comments:

  1. Well I understood it. I was hoping for that prize myself.

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    1. Tasker, if I knew you better I would call us kindred souls.

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  2. No nunnery for me. I live in a nice quiet part of the world. But if I need some excitement I can go to where it is.

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  3. In "Romeo and Juliet", Mercutio of course exclaims "A plague on both your houses!" but that is an error. In the first folio edition of the play, Shakespeare actually wrote "A brague on both your houses!" - "brague" being an arcane term for excessive jollity.

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    1. Yorkshire Pudding, I like it! Alert the OED people....

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  4. Did you think that the description of "arcane" could actually be a compliment? The definition I find is: "understood by few; mysterious or secret." At least the way I see the world, that is a compliment.

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    1. Bonnie, it never occurred to me. I suppose it depends on whether one is trying to communicate to the many or to the few. I'm just trying to communicate, period, and my readership will either grow or shrink. You (they) know who you (they) are....

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  5. Well, well, wee (as the Texan said as he came to a hole in the ground) I only knew that two were Shakespeare quotes: 12 and 13. I've seen/heard Hamlet so many times that I should (but, of course, do not always) know all the quotable parts off by heart. I think I'm going to enter a 'Shakespeare quoting' phase. By the way if you wany a really arcane fact did you know that in Shakespeare's time there was no "is.....ing" or "are.....ing" in the English language.

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    1. Graham, I did not know that bit of arcane linguistic information but I know it must be true, otherwise Lady Macbeth would have said, "Is this a dagger that I am seeing before me?"....

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...