Dot is very exercised by Shakespeare..
Every time I see a Shakespeare play, I wonder how many of the words the audience is picking up. It is all very well their getting the drift from the behaviour of the actors, but that makes it like a mime accompanied by unknown utterances.
Matters are not helped for the poor children who must study Shakespeare by internet glossaries that mislead. So, in Hamlet, the word gall in the line ‘Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung’, is explained on a commonly used website as ‘Bitterness, anything bitter’. The meaning here, though, is not ‘embittered’ but ‘afflicted with a swelling’. The consequence is tenderness to pain.
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