+1210Nique I occasionally physically do this as an insult. People don't know whether to be insulted or not, and while figuring it out, I've shanked them in the kidney.
Nichole Sinclair Yep, he's known as a jokester. I think they wanted to go in depth about a few insults, and leave the viewer curious to look more up themselves. #Mercutio
I think people cringe at Shakespeare because they make us study it so young. It makes a lot more sense after you've had exposure to life outside a classroom. I find ironic that they teach Shakespeare as young as 12, but you can't watch a PG-13/R movie because of violence and sexual themes..... Shakespeare is all violence and sex themes 0_0 Funny that Tybalt's death got a spoiler alert but not Romeo and Juliet suicide together. All of those deaths are elemental to the story arc lol :)
+Terri Kim Well Shakespeare literally tells you that they are going to die in the first lines of the play, and everyone knows that they will, but not everyone knows Tybalt will.
+Terri Kim I'm pretty sure that everyone in the English speaking world knows that Romeo and Juliet die, but people don't usually know about Tybalt unless they have read or seen the play.
+Terri Kim In Denmark, we have to study at least one Shakespeare play in high school (in English, not translated). I personally found that to be a good time to be introduced to Shakespeare. Any earlier would have been too early.
+MeKsTeR330 I agree, I quote the first scene of this play, "From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of starcrossed lovers take their life."
I think a lot of people cringe because as children they're exposed to Shakespeare via reading his plays like a book and then hearing their classmates, who probably have no idea what they're saying, read it out loud. They should be introduced to Shakespeare as his original audience was, by seeing the play. It's amazing how much more you understand.
+Kira Suzuki Yeah, kind of my thoughts exactly - I came here because the video was about Shakespeare and yet the very first thing is about how cringe-worthy he is. What the hell?
+Kira Suzuki I cringe about Romeo and Juliette, which I think is his worst play and really is why so many people are turned off by Shakespeare But still, what sort of hack insults one of the greatest playwrights in history to start the video. And saying the Montagues and Capulets are /gangs/. What sort of twit is this. Seriously, this is a terrible TED-Ed video
What a terrible comment. There are literally millions--possibly billions of people who go their entire lives hating/never understanding Shakespeare. It's clearly targeted for those people.
I like "No Fear Shakespeare" and "Shakespeare Made Easy." In both cases, the original Shakespeare's lines are on one page and a modern translation on the other. It surprised me that the modern translation is very good literature too. Anyway, if you find Shakespeare difficult to understand, these books are a great help.
biting the thumb in those times were the equivalent of flipping off someone today. And also, the example of insults in Romeo And Juliet wasn't that of a good one. Clearly, Mercutio's ones should have been illustrated, those were the real scenes that made the audiences, both back then and now, laugh. A scene i really enjoyed would be the Nurse coming to find Romeo and meeting with Mercutio and Benvolio instead.
+Carmela Pedinni Personally, I don't like Shakespeare, but i definitely don't cringe at his name. Now I don't mean to start an argument with you so please note that I do respect Shakespeare for a brilliant writer of his time, but not in today's standards.
dinoshar! dinoshar! Don't worry, I don't come to RU-vid to hate on people's view of the world. I undersant that many don't like him, and that is OK. The world goes round because we like different things, and that's absolutely great. I just think it's wrong on the video's part to generalize people and assume (or lead us to believe) that they think everyone cringes at his mention. To which I said I know many don't, but of course that means that some do too - and that's fine by me, so long as those aren't classified as "everybody". (:
You make an interesting point about today's standards: how would memorably imaginative, clever, and unique exaltation of language ever compare with our rap lyrics or blockbuster dialogue.
so you're also gonna pronounce psyche "pxi-e"? I studied the classics myself but also literary criticism, and harmatia is one of many terms (like katharsis) that have been used in criticism so often it started developing a new meaning on its own, in particular, the tragic mistake. That particular meaning came straight from Poetics.
Elvin Meng No, and I can't even make sense out of your attempt at a phonetic spelling anyway. Psyche is a bit different from hamartia because psyche has made its way into daily usage and the mispronunciation is standardized. Hamartia is still a foreign word in English. If you check the pronunciation with an online dictionary it will tell you to pronounce it as an Ancient Greek word, precisely as I stated. www.google.com/#q=Hamartia+definition
I've never had a problem understanding Shakespeare's wording. I occasionally have to Google a definition if I can't determine a meaning from context, but otherwise it's pretty straightforward stuff. However, I was taught to read from the King James Bible and to understand that style of language from the time I was six, so Shakespeare was a walk in the park for me as a high schooler studying Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Much Ado About Nothing. Sometimes I get upset with myself because I think I am just a monolingual American; then I realize most Americans can't interpret English scripture, or Shakespeare, or the Founding Documents; and suddenly I don't so stupid and uneducated after all.
same! I've been reading the KJV for as long as i can remember so when we did Macbeth in class i fell asleep when the teacher was still explaining how to understand the english.
In Tybalt's very first sentence, he utters a threat, an insult, and a pun! Tybalt is trying to provoke Benvolio into fighting by calling the Montagues "heartless hinds." On the surface, "heartless hinds" simply means "timid servants" (an insult in itself); however, if one looks closer and discovers the etymology of the word "hart" and "hind," one discovers an even deeper grating comment in Tybalt's pun. The word "heart" is a play on the word "hart" which means "a male deer." The word "hind" in addition to meaning "servant" can also mean "a female deer." Therefore, Tybalt is basically throwing the ultimate insult at the Montagues in that Tybalt is insulting their manhood: "What, art thou drawn among these man-less women?
Yeah, I found this analysis of Shakespearian insults quite lacking, although the explanation behind the fishmonger insult was news to me (although I already knew what a fishmonger was). I mean, if you know what "war-monger" means you can put two and two together.
You've literally gone and *copy and pasted this whole comment* from *Bret Doc Culpepper's* comment that is two years older than your comment. So you copied someone and now you're getting credit for *his* comment. 😡 not cool
Hamlet-- Fishmonger makes even more sense when you realize that in Elizabethan times, a nunnery was a slang term for a brothel. So when Hamlet tells Ophelia to "Get the to a nunnery." he is not suggesting she become a nun. and then he turns around and calls her father a pimp.
Then you haven't smelled the horrible smell when you're cutting up a fish. It's like the smell of coins, blood and rust all combined, only much much stronger.
Shakespeare is not that uninteresting to today's youth. I would be happy if we got to read Shakespeare in my class even if I have read a great number of his works already for fun. I have never once cringed when reading Shakespeare and I would prefer his words to that of modern translations.
Life-long professional Shakespearean actor here, and I must say you chose a couple of the lamest examples of Shakespeare’s insults. He was an absolute savage!
How could you make a video about the richness of words, especially insults, so devoid of entertainment value??? You don't carry the spirit of Shakespeare in your presentation at all!
GET THEE TO A NUNNERY! ... In my AP English class we used this a lot after we went through that scene. I feel like you should have explained that one more... like the fact that nunnery could mean a convent OR a brothel, which makes it even greater.
I expected a video about shakespeare's best insults, not a video where we learn "people getting angry is a contextual clue for the fact that people are angry"
The Black Death peaked around 1350, but it reoccurred all throughout Europe and Asia with varying virulence until the late 18th century. In 1603, London had an outbreak that killed 38,000 Londoners. Shakespeare wrote some of his best tragedies in his later years like Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth. I really do think the plague influenced Shakespeare's writing.
My favourite part of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' so far is in act 1, scene 1. Demetrius: "Relent, sweet Hermia: and, Lysander, yield thy crazed title to my certain right." Lysander: "You have her father's love, Demetrius; let me have Hermia's: do you marry him."
+Agent1W How dare thou, adressing mine liege lord in such manner? Be gone foul caitiff, before hé sendeth his hounds, bursting with venom, through the night and to thine home. For mark my words, if the time cometh when mine patience is gone and by thine staying had been made all for naught, those beast animals were the smallest part of thine straits. Truly, such manners are only known to those which giveth not 2 ducats on thine mothers grave!
The vlogbrother's video titled "How nedfighters drop insults" is on the same subject, and, in my opinion, contains better insults. But I still love Ted Ed!
These suck but my favorite Shakespeare insult is when in Richard III Margaret starts casting a massive spell to curse Richard, and the dialogue keeps going on and on with stuff like "and may a plague visit your future generations forever". When shes about to finish and say "Thus I cast this curse on you, thou rag, thou detested-", Richard interrupts and says one word: "Margaret".
Forgot about the fishmonger innuendo. Makes me think about the "clean" version of Shake Rattle n Roll that somehow missed the line "I'm like a one-eyed cat peeking in a seafood store."
Shafwan Dito I think thy is the formal version of you and thee is the informal one or vice versa my mother language is Spanish but I'm sure it was something like that
I remember the line from "Much Ado About Nothing" where the character who is in charge of the night watch is called an "ass" and he wants it remembered in the charges against the man they arrested so he tells his men to remember that he is an ass.
