Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

one of the lessons i learned from captain america:

michaelblume:

runicbinary:

helah:

adeterminedloser:

jumpingjacktrash:

sometimes you fight, not because you think you can win, but because you need to be able to look back later and say, “i fought.”

“In King Lear (III:vii) there is a man who is such a minor character that Shakespeare has not given him even a name: he is merely “First Servant.” All the characters around him – Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund – have fine long-term plans. They think they know how the story is going to end, and they are quite wrong. The servant has no such delusions. He has no notion of how the play is going to go. But he understands the present scene. He sees an abomination (the blinding of old Gloucester) taking place. He will not stand it.

His sword is out and pointed at his master’s breast in a moment: then Regan stabs him dead from behind. That is his whole part: eight lines all told. But if it were real life and not a play, that is the part it would be best to have acted.”

– C.S. Lewis, “The World’s Last Night”

So Stanford professor Ken Taylor has a whole lecture on this in Hamlet, and the role of defiant resignation (citing Kierkegaard’s concept of resignation) where you are urged to act despite understanding that it won’t change anything, simply to demonstrate your dissatisfaction with the world as it stands, and your belief in what it should be. But Steve demonstrates a lot of this.

When nothing you do matters, all that matters is what you do.

Prince Geoffrey: My you chivalric fool… as if the way one fell down mattered.

Prince Richard: When the fall is all there is, it matters a great deal.

(via slyrider)

elphabruh:

im reading hamlet in english and yesterday my teacher walks in, slams his crap on the desk, and goes “SO who was expecting the pirates? no one right?”

(via patroclvss)

littlestartopaz:

friendlytroll:

scientia-rex:

sandovers:

prokopetz:

prokopetz:

I am 100% convinced that “exit, pursued by a bear” is a reference to some popular 1590s meme that we’ll never be able to understand because that one play is the only surviving example of it.

Seriously, we’ll never figure it out. I’ll wager trying to understand “exit, pursued by a bear” with the text of The Winter’s Tale as our primary source is like trying to understand loss.jpg when all you have access to is a single overcompressed JPEG of a third-generation memetic mutation that mashes it up with YMCA and “gun” - there’s this whole twitching Frankensteinian mass of cultural context we just don’t have any way of getting at.

no, but this is why people do the boring archival work! because we think we do know why “exit, pursued by a bear” exists, now, and we figured it out by looking at ships manifests of the era -

it’s also why there was a revival of the unattributed and at the time probably rather out of fashion mucedorus at the globe in 1610 (the same year as the winter’s tale), and why ben jonson wrote a chariot pulled by bears into his court masque oberon, performed on new year’s day of 1611.

we think the answer is polar bears.

no, seriously!  in late 1609 the explorer jonas poole captured two polar bear cubs in greenland and brought them home to england, where they were purchased by the beargarden, the go-to place in elizabethan london for bear-baiting and other ‘animal sports.’  it was at the time run by edward alleyn (yes, the actor) and his father-in-law philip henslowe (him of the admiral’s men and that diary we are all so very grateful for), and would have been very close, if not next to, the globe theatre.

of course, polar bear cubs are too little and adorable for baiting, even to the bloodthirsty tudor audience, aren’t they?  so, what to do with the little bundles of fur until they’re too big to be harmless?  well, if there’s anything we know about the playwrights and theatre professionals of the time, it’s that they knew how to make money and draw in audiences.  and the spectacle of a too-small-to-be-dangerous-yet-but-still-real-live-and-totally-WHITE-bear?  what good entertainment businessman is going to turn down that opportunity? 

and, voila, we have a death-by-bear for the unfortunate antigonus, thereby freeing up paulina to be coupled off with camillo in the final scene, just as the comedic conventions of the time would expect.

you’re telling me it was an ACTUAL BEAR

every time I think to myself “history can’t possibly get any more bananas” I realize or am made to realize that I am badly mistaken

It was an actual, TINY bear. Just. like a babbeh polar bear. 

God i love history. 

@fujoshi-kianna-leigh @words-writ-in-starlight

prokopetz:

I am 100% convinced that “exit, pursued by a bear” is a reference to some popular 1590s meme that we’ll never be able to understand because that one play is the only surviving example of it.

(via ifeelbetterer)

geeky-jez:

notthatkindofwolf:

grandenchanterfiona:

beautifultoastdream:

siawrites:

lokiloo:

grandenchanterfiona:

fuck-arl-eamon:

grandenchanterfiona:

Speaking of Shakespeare:

So, Shakespeare’s impact on modern culture is felt by basically everyone. 

Even if you’ve never seen ‘Romeo And Juliet’ performed, you’ve probably seen a tv episode using it’s general plot. 

Or seen West Side Story. 

So, how does that work for Thedas, where, as far as we know, Shakespeare doesn’t exist? 

Does he exist and we’ve just not heard of him? 

Or are his works just…not there?

Maybe he has a Thedosian equivalent? I wouldn’t really think that Shakespeare himself would be included in Thedas, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that there’s probably a really popular playwright somewhere around. Or maybe even…a popular author…who publishes several books…that are well known in many countries…oh my god.

HOLY SHIT.

Nah, because Shakespeare was a bit if a hack who wrote for money, his works were basically just dick jokes…that even royalty loved…whose works were given too much importance…After the fact….oh no

1000 years later:  “There is no way the Viscount of Kirkwall could have written the Tale of The Champion and The Tale of The Inquisition and everything else that’s been attributed to him as well as fought alongside all those people!  One person is not that talented!  Not to mention, where would he find the time?  And that crossbow?  Such technology was clearly not possible in 9:30 to 9:50 Dragon.  Simply preposterous!”

An excerpt from The Tethras Cipher, by Valmont Sinthorpe (Lowis & Blackmont, Year 35 Empire Age):

… which brings us at last to the body of evidence which is often overlooked by critics of this theory. I speak, of course, of the works themselves.

Consider the Tethras heroes. A ragged, worn-out guardsman. A romantic, valiant lady knight. A humorous, unsuitable rogue raised to Champion. And, perhaps most notorious of all, the Herald of Andraste–depicted by Tethras not as a religious reformer or a controversial political figure, but as a confused elf who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and once put a dead body in a box on trial.

What do these characters have in common? Little to nothing. If they were indeed the product of one author, as the Tethras purists insist, then Tethras himself would have evidenced a precocity and life-experience far removed from the biography we have already examined. It strains credulity to believe that the filthy, hard-bitten world of Donnan Brenkovic could have come from the imagination of a Merchant’s Guild princeling, or that the undying passion of Swords and Shields (recently voted the Dragon Age’s most influential work of literature by the prestigious Chanter University staff) was produced by a man who, according to contemporary accounts, considered phallic objects the height of humor.

However, the texts themselves do betray one unifying principle: the fallibility of authority. It is here that the true nature of the so-called “Tethras canon” becomes apparent.

Tethras was, no doubt, an author. As his best-authenticated work, The Tale of the Champion was very likely a product of his pen, and his presence in Kirkwall from 9:31-9:37 Dragon is attested by Merchant’s Guilt records. But his other works betray the stamp of different personalities, all united under the Tethras name by a single goal: to subvert the prevailing social order and undermine the existing political structure via exquisitely-calculated metaphorical deconstruction.

It is a fact that there was, indeed, at least one other rising author in Kirkwall during the crucial period. Someone whose works must have been immensely popular, judging by the number of fragments which have been found (see J. Lowry Hammertong, Cri de Coeur: A Philological Examination of Kirkwall Manuscript B, University of Orzammar Press, 27 Empire), and who abruptly vanishes from the historical record after 9:37 Dragon. Is the so-called “Mage for Justice” truly the voice of Varric Tethras? Or was he one of many? These are questions the academic establishment refuses to answer …

This is beautiful.

I am so glad that I have seen with my own eyes, a parody of anti-stratfordians with Varric Tethras as Shakespeare. 

@mythalll

*SLAMS REBLOG*

I get to enjoy my love of Shakespeare AND my obsession with Dragon Age?! I feel like this post was made for me. 

(via skymurdock)

Anonymous asked: my name is Ham, and wen its nite, or wen the moon is shiyning brite, and all the men haf gon to bed - i stay up late. i see the ded.

dukeofbookingham:

my name is Gert, and wen its nite, I shut my doors, put out the lyte; I’m sorry sonne, yor dad is ded–and now I bang his bro insted  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

theactorsjourney:

runecestershire:

exeunt-pursued-by-a-bear:

spacecaptainoftheforest:

concept: a retelling of hamlet with the frame story that it’s a tabletop rpg being played by a bunch of overzealous college kids and an increasingly frazzled dm trying to keep them all from rushing headlong into situations and dying immediately. horatio is the dm’s vaguely self-insert npc character. thanks

“AND THEN HE GETS KIDNAPPED BY PIRATES”

“um…dude…you can’t just–”

“PIRATES”

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are played by the same player, who keeps forgetting that he’s running two separate characters.

“The ghost awaits a response”

“Horatio, you went to college, you talk to it.”

—–

“You find the skull of the old court jester.”

“I’m going to talk to it until someone stops me.”

“Horatio, you went to college, you stop him.”

—–

“I stab the curtain!”

“Polonius, roll for fortitude.”

——

“I search for a nunnery in the moat”

*sigh* “Seaweed wraps around your leg. Roll for dexterity escape”

—–

“We all drink to Hamlet’s victory.”

“Everyone roll for fortitude.”

*groans amid the sound of rolling dice*

—–

“Sorry I’m late, everyone. Can my Prince of Finland character just show up?”

“Everyone’s already dead.”

“For fuck’s sake, guys!”

(Source: kentuckycorpsereviver, via the-hogfather)

penfairy:

“I would eat his heart in the marketplace” is legit the most savage line I have ever heard, I’d like to personally thank Shakespeare for putting into words that feeling of rage and protectiveness women get when some fuckboy hurts another woman

(via slyrider)

daimonie:

motherfuckingshakespeare:

runecestershire:

runecestershire:

persephonesidekick:

harmonicakind:

yknow if romeo had just Cried on juliets corpse for a couple hours instead of drinking poison Right Then they would have been Fine

The moral of the story is: always take time to cry for a few hours before making important decisions.

So I’m more or less being facetious here, but this is actually a thing.

Hamlet is genre savvy. Hamlet knows how Tragedies work, and he’s not going to rush in and get stabby without making absolutely certain he’s got all the facts.

Except once he thinks he has all the facts – once he’s certain that it really is the ghost of his father and Claudius really did kill him, he rushes in and stabs the wrong guy, which starts a domino line of deaths and gets Laertes embroiled in his own revenge tragedy and ultimately results in the deaths of nearly every character other than Horatio.

That’s the irony and the tragedy of the story. Hamlet knows his tropes and actively tries to avoid them, and the tropes get him anyway. It’s inevitable, the tropes are hungry.

I want a sticker that says the tropes are hungry so I can put it on my laptop

i met a scholar once who said that tragedies aren’t about a silly “flaw” or anything, it’s about having a hero who’s just in the wrong goddamn story

if hamlet swapped places with othello he wouldn’t be duped by any of iago’s shit, he’d sit down & have a good think & actually examine the facts before taking action. meanwhile in denmark, othello would have killed claudius before act 2 could even start. but instead nope, they’re both in situations where their greatest strengths are totally useless and now we’ve got all these bodies to bury.

(Source: selfiegoth, via patroclvss)