if i was born as a blackthorn tree i’d wanna be felled by you held by you fuel the pyre of your enemies

-nfwmb

Ladies and gents, the Capital Wasteland’s power couple.

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I’d love to share my thoughts and feelings about Kaysanova, but it’s less controversial to claim you’re a Booker apologist these days

Don’t @ me with pics of “Chaucer” in The Knights Tale.

Sir Geoff wasn’t mugged 2x times in the service of His Majesty just to be immortalized by sweaty Paul Bettany rolling naked in the mud

Squid game better than stranger things? 🤨

Cave of Forgotten Dreams, 2010, dir. Werner Herzog

Chaucer, the OG Lancastrian shitposter

“Lollard? Prove it. LMAO Pope, come at me bro”

Geoffrey Chaucer

included “don’t like don’t read” disclaimers in The Canterbury Tales

spends like 80% of the verse telling us that these are shameful sin stories and he can’t believe that he must subject us to them, he’s so ashamed, conflicted, etc.

has his self-insert narrator figure constantly insist that he’s only repeating what he hears these filthy-minded pilgrims say, because of course he, sweet, gentle, Pure Geoffrey, would Never

is the Father of English Poetry but didn’t like English speakers enough to spell things with any kind of consistency or common sense

was a middle-class boy who hobnobbed with rich people long enough to mimic their mannerisms and hide amongst them so he could document their weirdness and share it with everybody good old Geoff, doing the Lord’s work

basically was like “don’t tell me what to do” to everybody who said that books were to be written in ~fancy languages like French and Italian only and went on to write everything in English so that (theoretically) any old English person could read it

definitely spent the whole time he was writing TCT snickering to himself about how naughty he was being 

was desperately in need of a dictionary. seriously, reading greek is easier than reading this

One reason we know Shakespeare wrote his plays and nobody else did is that they're rather poorly researched and full of basic facial errors. Shakespeare was clearly and poorly educated idiot, and well-educated people like Francis Bacon were significantly smarter than him. In fact, Shakespeare wasn't even smart enough to come up with original ideas for most of his plays. So why is his work so popular and not anyone else's from the same time period?

I’m not really sure what to say to this. Though I don't think it ultimately matters who wrote the plays, Shakespeare was the author of his plays because there’s no convincing evidence or lack of evidence to think the contrary.

As to the rest... I am a Shakespeare scholar. I dedicate a significant part of my life to studying and teaching Shakespeare. You can probably tell from this that it’s very unlikely I’d agree with you. Of course, you’re free to think what you like, but I would like to point out that your assumptions are based on a number of misconceptions.

The first is the assumption that factual errors and poor research means bad writing. This might be more or less the case for modern writing, where one expects writing to be as realistic as possible, but in a time where realism is not being expected in plays or literature, it’s less relevant. Even in more recent times, a good book or play or TV script need not be accurate for it to be thought-provoking or worthwhile. Who cares if Bohemia has no coast? Does that fact negate what’s interesting about The Winter’s Tale and its story of jealousy, madness, rejuvenation and forgiveness? Plays explore themes, tell stories and provide entertainment, and there might be something wrong in looking for fact and accuracy in fiction if it’s to the detriment of good storytelling. Other dramatists can equally be accused of misunderstandings and ‘errors’ if you put it that way.

The second is that poor education makes one an idiot. Education gives people opportunities to learn, but intelligence isn’t the same as educatedness. One can be extremely well-educated but stupid, and one can be extremely intelligent with no education. I think Shakespeare is one of the most brilliant minds I’ve encountered in writing. I’m always blown away by his ability to see what he sees and to put it into words and action the way he does with such imaginative empathy. Francis Bacon has a different kind of intelligence, but comparing intelligence is a futile and possibly even pointless task.

The third is the assumption that Shakespeare was ill-educated. He didn’t go to university, but a grammar school education in a town like Stratford would have provided a pretty robust education in the arts especially. In fact, it’s very likely that Shakespeare had a better classical education than most people receive now (there are lots of other subjects to learn now, like science). Part of such education would have been in rhetoric, debate, Latin and classical theatre, all skills Shakespeare puts to use. Besides which, the key thing with education is what one does with it, not how much one has.

The final point is about originality. Originality wasn’t always a valued part of writing. In fact, concepts such as genius and originality are much later, largely eighteenth-century ideas. In Shakespeare’s time, people appreciated the ability to copy masters of rhetoric (the university-educated humanists were very interested in mimicking great classical rhetoricians, for instance), and were more interested in hearing a well-known story being retold masterfully than to see something original. The key thing is how well one tells a known story, and this is the case not just for Shakespeare but for other (even aristocratic and educated) writers of the time. To take your example of Francis Bacon, for instance, his New Atlantis is a self-conscious copy of the style of More’s Utopia and Plato’s Republic. Poets like Wyatt or Spenser copied, sometimes even directly ‘plagiarised’ or loosely translated the works of writers like Petrarch and Chaucer. This wasn’t looked down on, but seen as a mark of skill and intelligence. Other dramatists like (the university-educated) Marlowe based their works on known stories like Doctor Faustus or Tamburlaine. In fact, you’ll find most early modern plays are based on direct sources or are variations of a marriage comedy featuring stock characters commedia dell’arte style (the city comedies are like this). To take some non-dramatic examples, Sidney’s Arcadia is full of retellings, and Milton’s Paradise Lost? What even to say? You can’t accuse Milton of being ill-educated, stupid or lacking in skill, but that’s hardly ‘original’. Original works like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream or The Tempest are extremely rare.

There’s no straightforward answer to why his works are more popular than others from the period. It’s not that the others aren’t popular, but it is true that Shakespeare is more popular by far. Part of it is no doubt reputation. Shakespeare is popular and draws in audiences, so he stays popular. I personally think it’s because his plays are not entirely period-specific and still have a lot that speaks to many people. It’s fine if they don’t speak to you; I make no claims about universal appeal. Still, whatever the reason, I’m certain that lack of accuracy, intelligence, education and originality are not acceptable reasons to disparage his work.

The Chauvet cave, France, the art of prehistory.

In 1994, three friends discovered in the south of France a cave with magnificent cave paintings, more than 30,000 years old.

Under the ground of the Ardèche region, an invaluable treasure is hidden for its antiquity, its conservation and the pictorial quality of the representations; one of the oldest and most splendid examples of Arieñaciense parietal art, dating approx. between 40,000 and 30,000 B.C.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWfRerMFMCO/?igshid=yqzbqgvny71t

no i don’t accept criticism

Based on Klimts ‘The kiss’  (my favorite!!) I like the meaning that has been put into this picture and I think these two fit in perfectly here

LOOK AT HIM!!!!! LOOK AT THEM!!!!!

Auto shop was for boys. Home Ec was for girls.

Adulting is for everyone.

“Why can’t the people writing fucked up fiction just go somewhere else?”

They did. They did, about 10 years ago, and they called it an Archive Of Our Own.

Sometimes classics can be improved upon.

The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries : an alternate ending for Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree by Topher Payne 💯🌳❤️

https://www.topherpayne.com/giving-tree?

nn930310 on twitter

What’s it going to take to see Mark Strong and Rufus Sewell as brother baddies in something