By Laurel A. Rockefeller Henry V is one of the most beloved plays of all time. Though mostly about King Henry’s war with France and his victory at Agincourt on 25th October 1415, the play introduces us to Henry V’s future queen Catherine de Valois from Henry’s decidedly biased point of view. But was Shakespeare’s version … Read more
Quick, fun William Shakespeare facts As William Shakespeare is the most famous poet and playwright in the English language, we thought we’d share five curious facts about him. We’ve tried to steer clear of the very obvious, partly because we’ve already written about Shakespeare several times before (see, for one example, this post), but all … Read more
We came across a nice site that tests your vocabulary in a short ‘quiz’ (of sorts) that takes only a few minutes to complete. It’s an interesting little test, because it will calculate (by which we really mean ‘estimate’) your vocabulary, or total number of words which you could practically use in conversation or writing. … Read more
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
As Hesketh Pearson put it, ‘Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.’ To see if he’s right, we’ve compiled a Top Ten list containing what we think are the commonest expressions in English which are misquotes of their original literary idioms.
By Professor Stanley Wells, CBE It’s not often, when one publishes a book, that a parody of it appears shortly afterwards – or, indeed, ever – but this has happened with Shakespeare Beyond Doubt, the collection of essays that I edited along with Paul Edmondson and that was published by Cambridge University Press in April … Read more