As I was reading through some of my classmates blogs tonight several thoughts bombarded me. First was Cassidy saying how she wanted to teach Shakespeare at a high school level. I remember how my classmates groaned every time we were told we were going to read a Shakespeare play. I wondered what was so terrible about it. Many of my classmates said it was hard to read, something I had never had trouble doing. I always loved reading Shakespeare. It was a hell of a lot better than any American literature we were giving to read. In fact, when I was in my junior year of high school my English class read Julius Caesar. This play is still one of my favorites, first, because I love the history of ancient Rome and two because my teacher made it fun. She assigned everyone a part (I was Brutus) and we essentially acted it out in class. She even gave us some Halloween knives to stab Julius with. I think that was the first time many of my classmates had enjoyed Shakespeare.
The second blog post that stood out to me was Tristan's. Tristan explained the importance of books for business, books that weren't text books. Most of our classmates are English majors of some sort. I myself am a Paleontology major as I have stated before. A literature minor is an odd combination with that. In another literature class I am currently in, we talked about a paper explaining the importance of liberal arts majors. The main point involved creativity. I couldn't help but think how effective that would be in the paleontological world. We spend much of our time trying to piece together an extinct world. What better way to be creative in the sciences? I can't help but think how creativity would help in explaining a world we have never seen. An example would be a Midnight Summer's Dream. None of us have been to Fairyland but Shakespeare has given us just a peek at what it might be like. This works with any literature and in my mind particularly well for fantasy and science fiction as most of the settings in those stories were entirely made up.
The third blog post that caught my interest was Sonja's comment about how physicists don't speak in the "language of commerce" or chaos. I think that's true for a lot of sciences. Paleontologists, like physicists, talk about how the earth and everything on it came to be. I agree with her that there is nothing more exciting and exhilarating than learning something new about the world around you. I feel that was part of Shakespeare's attraction to new words, just as it was for much of the nobility. This brings me to the other blog that caught my eye. I believe it was Jill who wrote this particular blog about how Shakespeare was a master of words and how he made up quite a few. This got me thinking of a conversation we had in my high school French class. My teacher had a poster explaining that the language we speak (English) is far harder to learn than any other. Well no wonder! If people like Shakespeare could just make up words at their own whim it's no wonder our language is so complicated and without much sense! Even today I see words being made up. Look at the internet, tumblr for a really good example. When someone is effected emotionally by something (usually upsetting) they exclaim "Right in the feels!" If a foreigner heard that they would be utterly perplexed. Hell, my mother was perplexed when I used it.
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