“Oh” in Shakespeare

2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond F. Person

The use of “oh” in conversation has been widely studied. These studies demonstrate various uses of “oh” in different sequences. For example, John Heritage (1984) has identified six different sequences in which “oh” is used as a “change-of-state token”. Ian Hutchby (2001) has demonstrated how “oh” can be used ironically in disputations. This study compares the observations concerning “oh” in spoken modern English with “oh”/“O” in The First Folio and Early Quartos of William Shakespeare. This comparison demonstrates that all of the identified contemporary uses of “oh” were also used in the Elizabethan English of Shakespeare. Furthermore, the Shakespeare corpus includes some previously unidentified uses of “oh” (for example, “oh” prefacing a refusal to a request) that augment our understanding of “oh”.

Author(s):  
Marlene Soares dos Santos

No auge da popularidade e prestígio do teatro elisabetano-jaimesco, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) era um autor como muitos outros. Depois que ele se aposentou em 1611, outros dramaturgos continuaram produzindo peças que asseguravam a merecida fama de excelência desse teatro. Em 1623, a publicação do chamado First Folio, que reunia todas as peças shakespearianas, reacendeu o interesse pelo dramaturgo. Entretanto, o fechamento dos teatros pelo governo puritano em 1642 causou um enorme dano à arte teatral, que só se recuperou em 1660, com a volta de Charles II ao poder. Entretanto, as peças shakespearianas não eram as preferidas na Restauração. Paulatinamente, a partir de 1769, com as famosas comemorações do Jubileu do aniversário de Shakespeare em Stratford promovidas pelo ator David Garrick se inicia a ascensão de Shakespeare como poeta nacional e, com o passar do tempo, como poeta global. Ele é aclamado como um excepcional criador de personagens que marcaram indelevelmente as literaturas e as culturas anglo-saxônicas e mundiais. O próprio Shakespeare passa de criador a criatura na literatura popular, anunciante dos mais diversos produtos e vendedor de outros como os vários tipos de souvenirs.  Este ensaio propõe traçar a mudança de status de Shakespeare como autor, do seu relativo esquecimento no período da Restauração para o seu atual prestígio nacional e global devido à sua excepcional capacidade criativa, e apontar para a outra fase da sua trajetória – a de criador de várias obras à criatura de vários criadores.


1907 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 358
Author(s):  
G. Gregory Smith ◽  
Charlotte Porter ◽  
H. A. Clarke ◽  
William Shakespeare

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Miola

Throughout their careers both Jonson and Shakespeare often encountered Homer, who left a deep impress on their works. Jonson read Homer directly in Greek but Shakespeare did not, or if he did, he left no evidence of that reading in extant works. Both Jonson and Shakespeare encountered Homer indirectly in Latin recollections by Vergil, Horace, Ovid and others, in English translations, in handbooks and mythographies, in derivative poems and plays, in descendant traditions, and in plentiful allusions. Though their appropriations differ significantly, Jonson and Shakespeare both present comedic impersonations of Homeric scenes and figures – the parodic replay of the council of the gods (Iliad 1) in Poetaster (1601) 4.5 and the appearance of “sweet warman” Hector (5.2.659) in the Masque of the Nine Worthies (Love's Labor's Lost, 1588–97). Homer's Vulcan and Venus furnish positive depictions of love and marriage in The Haddington Masque (1608) as do his Hector and Andromache in Julius Caesar (1599), which features other significant recollections. Both Jonson and Shakespeare recall Homer to explore the dark side of honor and fame: Circe and Ate supply the anti-masque in the Masque of Queens (1609), and scenes from Chapman's Iliad supply the comical or tragical satire, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1601). Both poets put Homer to abstract and philosophical uses: Zeus's chain and Venus's ceston (girdle), allegorized, appears throughout Jonson's work and function as central symbols in Hymenaei (1606); Homer's depiction of the tension between fate and free will, between the omnipotent gods and willing humans, though mediated, inflects the language and action of Coriolanus (c. 1608). Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare practice a kind of inventive imitatio which, according to classical and neo-classical precept, re-reads classical texts in order to make them into something new.


2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Heyward Brock
Keyword(s):  

Moreana ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 45 (Number 173) (1) ◽  
pp. 167-174
Author(s):  
Peter Milward

In conjunction with the current “revisionism” of English history from a Catholic viewpoint, it is time to undertake a corresponding revision of the plays and personality of William Shakespeare. For this purpose it is not enough to rest content with the meagre historical record, but we have to go ahead in the light of recusant history with a reinterpretation of the plays, considering the extent to which they lend themselves to the Catholic viewpoint. This is not merely a matter of nostalgia for the mediaeval past, but it looks above all to the present sufferings of the “disinherited” English Catholics — in the light of the continued presence of Christ who is suffering, as Pascal famously noted, in his faithful even till the end of the world.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gema Chocano Díaz ◽  
Noelia Hernando Real

On Literature and Grammar gives students and instructors a carefully thought experience to combine their learning of Middle and Early Modern English and Medieval and Renaissance English Literature. The selection of texts, which include the most commonly taught works in university curricula, allows readers to understand and enjoy the evolution of the English language and the main writers and works of these periods, from William Langland to Geoffrey Chaucer, from Sir Philip Sidney to Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and from Christopher Marlowe to William Shakespeare. Fully annotated and written to answer the real needs of current Spanish university students, these teachable texts include word-by-word translations into Present Day English and precise introductions to their linguistic and literary contexts.


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