#poets war

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The Passionate Pilgrim 1.5: Touchstone and "Le Recknynge"

The Passionate Pilgrim 1.5: Touchstone and “Le Recknynge”

There is one other very curious correspondence between As You Like It and Every Man Out of His Humor. In As You Like It, Touchstone remarks to Audrey: “When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.” III. 3. 10-13. Under the best of circumstances, this would have to…

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The Passionate Pilgrim 1.4: Will, Audrey and Touchstone

The Passionate Pilgrim 1.4: Will, Audrey and Touchstone

It is difficult to say whether or not Shakespeare actually intended to respond to Ben Jonson’s ridicule of him via the role of Sogliardo. In fact, he appears not to have acknowledged it at all. What happened instead is that As You Like It took Jonson’s mockery to a new level. Rosalind as Ganymede in The Forest of Arden. By Robert Walker Macbeth (artist), Sampson Low, Marston & Co. (publisher),…

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The Passionate Pilgrim 1.3: Sogliardo Revisted

The Passionate Pilgrim 1.3: Sogliardo Revisted

Ben Jonson, if he was anything like a normal person, would clearly have understood that the opportunity to re-establish himself as a playwright with the leading company in London, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, was not to be squandered. Regardless, as soon as he had made a hit with Every Man In His Humor, he immediately attacked Shakespeare, the company’s leading playwright, in Every Man Out of his…

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The Passionate Pilgrim Begins

In celebration of Shakespeare's 400 year legacy, we launch this Passionate Pilgrim blog.

Welcome to “The Passionate Pilgrim”, the blog dedicated to all matters dealing with the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage.  As this blog is sponsored by Island Shakespeare Festival, it will focus initially on the plays being offered by them during their current season. Unlike the standard academic introductions to As You Like It, which discuss plot, character, theme and so forth, I want to start…

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