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Xah Lee
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| Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 6:39 am
Post subject: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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Here's a quote from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus:
SATURNINUS. Noble patricians, patrons of my right,
Defend the justice of my cause with arms;
And, countrymen, my loving followers,
Plead my successive title with your swords.
I am his first born son that was the last
That wore the imperial diadem of Rome;
Then let my father's honours live in me,
Nor wrong mine age with this indignity.
my question is, why does the play break the sentence into lines, and
cap the first letter in each line?
is this intentional from Shakespeare? a convention in plays? or is it
just the way it happens to be print formatted?
full text here:
http://xahlee.org/p/titus/act1.html
Xah
xah@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/ |
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Don Phillipson
Guest
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| Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 6:50 am
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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"Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> wrote in message
news:1115685572.071558.32720@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
<<Here's a quote from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus:
<<
SATURNINUS. Noble patricians, patrons of my right,
Defend the justice of my cause with arms;
And, countrymen, my loving followers,
Plead my successive title with your swords.
<<
my question is, why does the play break the sentence into lines, and
cap the first letter in each line? >>
Most of Shakespeare's plays are written in
"blank verse," i.e. non-rhyming iambic pentameters
(five stresses per line) and this way of printing it
(line breaks and initial capitals) is a convention
dating from Shakespeare's day and used for all verse, e.g.
Oh dear,
Nobody cares
Christopher Robin
Has fallen down stairs.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada) |
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J. W. Love
Guest
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| Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 7:02 am
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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Xah Lee wrote:
| Quote: | Here's a quote from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus:
SATURNINUS. Noble patricians, patrons of my right,
Defend the justice of my cause with arms;
And, countrymen, my loving followers,
Plead my successive title with your swords.
I am his first born son that was the last
That wore the imperial diadem of Rome;
Then let my father's honours live in me,
Nor wrong mine age with this indignity.
my question is, why does the play break the sentence into lines
|
Here, all you need to do is count to five:
Reflect on this, and see your fancies thrive. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 7:08 am
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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On 9 May 2005 18:02:29 -0700, "J. W. Love" <Lovejw@aol.com> wrote:
[-]
| Quote: | Here, all you need to do is count to five:
Reflect on this, and see your fancies thrive.
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Chortle. Where'd you get that? |
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ray o'hara
Guest
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| Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 7:08 am
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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"Don Phillipson" <d.phillipson@ttrryytteell.com> wrote in message
news:PXTfe.1614$pi1.9638@newscontent-01.sprint.ca...
| Quote: | "Xah Lee" <xah, e.g.
Oh dear,
Nobody cares
Christopher Robin
Has fallen down stairs.
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he was pushed by piglet. |
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Lars Eighner
Guest
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| Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 7:08 am
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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In our last episode,
<1115685572.071558.32720@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>, the
lovely and talented Xah Lee broadcast on alt.usage.english:
| Quote: | Here's a quote from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus:
SATURNINUS. Noble patricians, patrons of my right,
Defend the justice of my cause with arms;
And, countrymen, my loving followers,
Plead my successive title with your swords.
I am his first born son that was the last
That wore the imperial diadem of Rome;
Then let my father's honours live in me,
Nor wrong mine age with this indignity.
my question is, why does the play break the sentence into lines, and
cap the first letter in each line?
|
Please read this follow-up in a monospace font.
The plays are in verse (mostly), and this is the convention for
English verse. You may also notice that when a single line is
broken between speakers, some printings have extra space at the
beginning of the second speech so that it lines up with the
previous speech:
SATURNINUS: Surpris'd! by whom?
BASSIANUS: By him that justly may
Bear his betroth'd from all the world away.
{Thus indicating the parts of the speech belong to the same
line of iambic pentameter.}
- / - / - / - / - /
Surpris'd! by whom? By him that justly may
Notice the contraction in "surprised." I guess that "surprised"
might have been pronounced with three syllables in Shakespeare's
day, and the contraction was then necessary to make it fit the
meter. ("Surprised" is pronounced as two syllables today, so the
contraction is not necessary for present-day readers).
If a line is too long to fit the page or column (depending on the
printing) the last part of the line is indented, as in verse.
<---if the width of the line is only ----->
TITUS: The hunt is up, the morn is bright|
and gay, |
The fields are fragrant, and the woods are|
green. |
Uncouple here, and let us make a bay, |
And wake the emperor and his lovely bride,|
And rouse the prince, and ring a hunter's |
peal, |
That all the court may echo with the |
noise. |
Some speeches in some of Shakespeare's plays are prose and
they are printed as prose:
SLY: What! would you make me mad? Am not I Christopher Sly, old
Sly's son of Burton-heath; by birth a pedlar, by education a
card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present
profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of
Wincot, if she know me not: if she say I am not fourteen pence
on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave
in Christendom. What! I am not bestraught. Here's--
(Taming of the Shrew)
and so, of course, are stage direction which also are prose.
| Quote: | is this intentional from Shakespeare? a convention in plays?
or is it just the way it happens to be print formatted?
|
The conventions are those of verse and prose. The parts of
Shakespeare that are verse are set as verse and the parts that
are prose are set as prose - if the printer is careful.
Shakespeare is in the public domain, so there are many inferior
editions.
HTML is not well-suited for verse. Your source has done the
proper thing, which is to put the properly formated text in
PRE elements. Some very bad sites use DD elements and other
hacks for verse.
I would be remiss not to mention, since Titus Andronicus seems
to be your first experience with Shakespeare, that it is not
universally regarded as one of his better plays.
--
Lars Eighner eighner@io.com http://www.larseighner.com/
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
--Samuel Johnson |
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J. W. Love
Guest
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| Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 7:01 pm
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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rbanis...@shaw.ca wrote:
| Quote: | On 9 May 2005 18:02:29 -0700, "J. W. Love" <Lovejw@aol.com> wrote:
[-]
Here, all you need to do is count to five:
Reflect on this, and see your fancies thrive.
Chortle. Where'd you get that?
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I made it up, as a way of spilling the beans without turning them into
pedantic flatulence.
Was the OP a troll? |
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Guest
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| Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 8:06 pm
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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On 10 May 2005 06:01:09 -0700, "J. W. Love" <Lovejw@aol.com> wrote:
| Quote: | rbanis...@shaw.ca wrote:
On 9 May 2005 18:02:29 -0700, "J. W. Love" <Lovejw@aol.com> wrote:
[-]
Here, all you need to do is count to five:
Reflect on this, and see your fancies thrive.
Chortle. Where'd you get that?
I made it up, as a way of spilling the beans without turning them into
pedantic flatulence.
Was the OP a troll?
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Trolls are not often so well-digested, but I think so. |
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Xah Lee
Guest
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| Posted: Wed May 11, 2005 4:06 am
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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ahh... it's a verse!
Thanks all.
The concept of English Metrics often escapes me. I find the whole meter
thing a bit far fetched in English. Making it worse is the bunch of
inane jargons. (sponsored and loved by the poesy community) I think,
like jargons in all other fields and languages, it serves as a class
identity purpose, more than communication.
Xah
xah@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/ |
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Xah Lee
Guest
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| Posted: Thu May 12, 2005 12:22 pm
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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it's quite tough trying to read the whole thing and trying to
understand every word, sentences, allusions, even though i've watched
one movie of it.
do you guys read with a annotated version and try to understand
everything?
is there a annotated version online somewhere?
Xah
xah@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/ |
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Pat Durkin
Guest
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| Posted: Thu May 12, 2005 12:29 pm
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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"Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> wrote in message
news:1115878944.192720.102590@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
it's quite tough trying to read the whole thing and trying to
understand every word, sentences, allusions, even though i've watched
one movie of it.
do you guys read with a annotated version and try to understand
everything?
=========
I don't find reading to know every detail is very relaxing, and to relax is
the reason I read. Your way sounds like work. I will occasional take out a
dictionary, but don't have other references around.
Sometimes I want to do puzzle solving, so that would be when I would read
to find every clue. But we all read for different purposes.
I will admit that cultural differences may turn reading for pleasure into
hard work.
Pat
==========
is there a annotated version online somewhere?
Xah
xah@xahlee.org
? http://xahlee.org/ |
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Lars Eighner
Guest
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| Posted: Thu May 12, 2005 1:30 pm
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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In our last episode,
<1115878944.192720.102590@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
the lovely and talented Xah Lee
broadcast on alt.usage.english:
| Quote: | it's quite tough trying to read the whole thing and trying to
understand every word, sentences, allusions, even though i've watched
one movie of it.
do you guys read with a annotated version and try to understand
everything?
is there a annotated version online somewhere?
|
I doubt it. In case you do quite understand understatement what
I meant by "not universally regarded as one of Shakespeare's
better plays" was that it is generally considered very inferior,
is rarely assigned to English-speaking student and hardly ever
is performed.
--
Lars Eighner eighner@io.com http://www.larseighner.com/
If you want to say it with flowers, a single rose says : "I'm cheap!"
--Delta Burke |
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Xah Lee
Guest
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| Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 1:52 pm
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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i have read sentiments largely on wikipedia.org about how this play is
considered worst and first and some dignitaries deemed it bloody
worthless.
I have read just one Shakespeare's play over a decade ago in a college
settings: “much ado about nothing”, so i can't say for sure but,
ever since i saw Julie Taymor's 1999 film adaption of Titus, i have
came to love this play. And, of all Shakespeare's plays, i don't think
there will ever be one that expresses human hatred and revenge more
consummate than this, with such stark cruelty, agony, vengence.
This play suites me.
are you sure there's no annotated versions? isn't all Shakespeare's
works are annotated to death....
Xah
xah@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/ |
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Donna Richoux
Guest
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| Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 3:24 pm
Post subject: Re: line breaks in Titus Andronicus,misc.writing |
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Xah Lee <xah@xahlee.org> wrote:
| Quote: | i have read sentiments largely on wikipedia.org about how this play is
considered worst and first and some dignitaries deemed it bloody
worthless.
I have read just one Shakespeare's play over a decade ago in a college
settings: "much ado about nothing", so i can't say for sure but,
ever since i saw Julie Taymor's 1999 film adaption of Titus, i have
came to love this play. And, of all Shakespeare's plays, i don't think
there will ever be one that expresses human hatred and revenge more
consummate than this, with such stark cruelty, agony, vengence.
This play suites me.
|
There's something for everyone, I guess.
| Quote: |
are you sure there's no annotated versions? isn't all Shakespeare's
works are annotated to death....
|
Putting <titus andronicus annotated> into Google leads to this result:
TheatreBooks: Theatre: Shakespeare's Texts
... a grotesque comedy, Titus Andronicus has always defied easy
definition. ... Now the most extensively annotated edition of the
play to date makes it ...
www.theatrebooks.com/theatre/shakespeare.html - 34k - 11 May 2005 -
Cached - Similar pages
--
Best wishes -- Donna Richoux |
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