We’ve been busy here at NoSweatShakespeare over the bank holiday weekend! The past few days we’ve been beavering away to translate many of Shakespeare’s soliloquies into modern English, and have now launched a new soliloquys section of the website to accommodate them. (This is of course a supplement to the ever growing Shakespeare quotes section!) [...]
At a time when all of Shakespeare’s plays are being staged in different places on different kinds of stage in thirty-seven different languages I’m thinking about how different the staging of Shakespeare’s plays are from when Shakespeare wrote them to be staged in his own Globe Theatre. Very often, these days, when you attend the [...]
“Infographics” have been all the rage online for some time, so we thought we’d put together a Shakespeare infographic detailing lots of juicy Shakespeare statistics and information. And without further ado, here’s our shameless bandwagon-jumping “Shakespeare in statistics” infographic: If you want to embed the above Shakespeare infographic to your website simply copy and paste [...]
It’s endlessly fascinating to read Elizabethan practices and customs in the plays of the time. If one shuts one’s eyes to the plots, action and characters of Shakespeare’s plays and looks for other things one can build an understanding of many aspects of Elizabethan life. The conventions of warfare, court life, relationships between the sexes, [...]
A common mistake we’re to make when trying to transpose any Shakespearean expression from Renaissance English to contemporary modern English is to ignore its context and see it in the context of our own time. This often gives rise to charge against Shakespeare of such modern concepts as ‘racism,’ ‘anti-semitism’ or ‘sexism.’ Another complication is [...]
There are various rumors as to whether Shakespeare suffered from writers block or not. Some sources claim Shakespeare wrote quickly with ease – his contemporary Ben Jonson said “Whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line.” However, there is evidence of Shakespeare revising and crossing out his work in one scene he wrote for Sir Thomas More, a [...]
shakespeare’s macbeth. by phineas, made at DoInk.com
Happy New Year to all our readers. This is a big year for Shakespeare. It’s not a very well known fact, but Shakespeare played a role in winning the Olympic Games for London. Not only is he the most famous London resident of turn of sixteenth/seventeenth century London but also, according to the results of [...]
As we open our eyes to 2012 and the new year, custom dictates we make the odd new year’s resolution to try and keep (at least until the end of January!). We at No Sweat Shakespeare are going with the traditional drinking less and exercising more…but what new year’s resolutions do you think Shakespeare’s characters [...]
I often come across the question ‘Why is there so little of Christmas in the works of Shakespeare?’. In all of his works, Shakespeare uses the word ‘Christmas’ only three times. Well the answer is simple, really. The way we celebrate that jolly season is effusive, full and sumptuous, but its roots are in the [...]