by David Tollen | Sep 6, 2022 | The Early Modern Age, Linguistics & Philology
It’s a sad reality, but English-speakers understand Shakespeare less than anyone else. That’s because foreigners regularly translate the bard’s plays — into German, Spanish, Mandarin, etc. — so they’re free to use language they...
by David Tollen | Oct 5, 2021 | The Postclassical Age (Medieval History), The Early Modern Age, Linguistics & Philology
Here’s a crazy idea that might work. “They” has become the English language’s preferred third person singular pronoun, for gender-neutral use. But of course, we use the same pronoun for the third person plural. That creates confusion. Why not...
by David Tollen | Sep 4, 2013 | The Postclassical Age (Medieval History)
This is cool. King Richard III has been a subject of mystery for more than 500 years. Did he really murder his little nephews, “the Princes in the Tower”? Did he really have a hunchback? Was he as evil as the lead character in Shakespeare’s Richard...
by David Tollen | Oct 30, 2011 | The Early Modern Age
Don’t let lukewarm reviews fool you: Anonymous is a really good movie. It includes some far-fetched plot-twists, but overall it builds a compelling drama out of the theory that William Shakespeare did not write Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, and the other...
