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Portrait of Shakespeare – It might be him… yet it just might not…

Monday, March 9th, 2009

A lot of mystery still surrounds the life of William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616). No one can really say for certain… but this is now believed by some scholars to be the only portrait painted of Shakespeare that he actually sat for during his lifetime. It’s thought to have been painted in 1610, when he was 46 years old.

What some scholars find interesting about it is that if it is Shakespeare, he appears to be more affluent than previously thought.

Not all scholars are convinced that it is actually Shakespeare though.

You can see other “portraits” of Shakespeare online at the BBC – most thought to have been done posthumously.

You can read more about why this portrait is thought to be authentic and about its history at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and other points of view about it at Times Online – Is this the real Shakespeare at last?

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Posted in Arts and Crafts, Authors, Books, Shakespeare | No Comments »

The Three Witches Spell in Macbeth – Double, Double Toil and Trouble

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

The Three Witches Spell from Shakespeare’s Macbeth is great to read or listen to for Halloween.

Some of the lines in this speech are offensive to our twenty-first century ears, and I hesitated to print it here, on a site with significant family traffic. But rather than censor the greatest writer in the English language, I think it’s better to present his words honestly, and I encourage my readers with children to use the opportunity to discuss the changes in attitudes that society has gone through in the four hundred years since Shakespeare lived.

Below is The Witches Spell from Act 4, Scene 1, of Macbeth. I’ve added annotations in parentheses below any lines where I thought it’d be helpful for the meaning. I’ve also posted a couple of interesting renditions from YouTube of this scene. One is a “straight” rendition. The other is by David Solomons. He did a very Halloween-like singing rendition of it. At the end, I posted the whole spell as a poem, so you can read it all the way through without distractions.

Enjoy! -Mama Lisa

The Tragedy of Macbeth
Act 4, Scene 1

SCENE I. A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron.
Thunder. Enter the three Witches

First Witch
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
(Brinded means tawny or streaked.)

Second Witch
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.
(A hedge-pig is a hedgehog.)

Third Witch
Harpier cries ‘Tis time, ’tis time.
(A harpier is believed to be a harpy which is a Greek and Latin mythological monster – having a woman’s head and body, but with a bird’s wings and claws.)

First Witch
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch
Fillet of a fenny snake,
(Fenny means coming from a bog)
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
(An adder is a venomous snake)
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
(An owlet is a young owl)
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Third Witch
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
(Witches’ mummy was a medicinal substance)
(Maw is the stomach, gulf is the throat)
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
(Ravin’d means ravenous)
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
(Gall is bile, slip of yew means a cutting from a yew tree)
Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
(Sliver’d means to cut off a piece)
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
(Drab = whore – these lines mean the baby
was delivered in a ditch by a whore).
Make the gruel thick and slab:
(Slab means viscid/semi-liquid)
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
(Chaudron is a coppery color)
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

Witches Spell Poem

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.

Harpier cries ‘Tis time, ’tis time.
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

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Posted in Authors, Books, Countries & Cultures, England, English, Great Britain, Halloween, Halloween Songs, Holidays Around the World, Languages, Macbeth, Mama Lisa, Shakespeare, The Witches Spell, USA, Video, YouTube | 4 Comments »

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006

Today’s the first day of summer. In honor of the day, here’s one of the best known poems in the English language that refers to the summer. It’s Shakespeare’s Sonnet #18.

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Hope you enjoy reading this classic poem and that you have a nice summer!

Lisa

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Posted in Authors, Countries & Cultures, English, Great Britain, Languages, Poetry, Poetry about Summer, Poetry about the Seasons, Recommendations, Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 | 1 Comment »

“Beware the Ides of March” on March 15th!

Thursday, March 9th, 2006

The Ides of March is on March 15th every year.

The expression Beware the Ides of March can mean beware of impending danger.

If someone says Beware the Ides of March referring to March 15th itself, it can have the sense of March 15th being a bad luck day, just like Friday the 13th.

The word “ides” originally referred to the day of the full moon every month. Eventually, with the change in the calendar system, it referred to the 15th of the month in any month that has 31 days (March, May, July and October) and it referred to the 13th of the month in all other months of the year.

The origin of the sinister meaning of the Ides of March is the fact that this is the actual day that Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC by some Roman Senators.

The Romans had gotten rid of their kings hundreds of years earlier and they were proud of the fact that they were a Republic. (Although only the rich had a say in government and a large proportion of the population were slaves.) The Senators killed Caesar because they were worried that he was gaining too much power for any one man.

After Caesar was killed, the people of Rome were unhappy about his death. Those senators involved in his assassination had to leave the city.

The Senators’ plans to forestall despotic rule in Rome failed. After Caesar’s death, his adopted son Augustus became Emperor. The Republic was never restored.

Over 1500 years later, William Shakespeare wrote the play Julius Caesar. That’s where the phrase Beware the Ides of March comes from. In the play, a soothsayer said it to Julius Caesar on the day of his assassination.

So, if it’s March 15th… Beware!

Lisa

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Posted in Authors, Beware the Ides of March, Julius Caesar, Julius Caesar, People, Quotes, Shakespeare, The Ides of March | 3 Comments »

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Portrait of Shakespeare – It might be him… yet it just might not…

The Three Witches Spell in Macbeth – Double, Double Toil and Trouble

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

“Beware the Ides of March” on March 15th!