© Gunnar Tómasson 19 September 2016 I. Victor Hugo: Preface to Shakespeare (William Shakespeare, 1864) 526082 18798 = The true title of this work should be, 11010 = „Apropos to Shakespeare.“ 26428 = The desire of introducing, as they say in England, before the public, 16554 = the new translation of Shakespeare, 17364 = […]
© Gunnar Tómasson 18 September 2016 I. This Spirit dumbe to vs, will speake to him (Hamlet, Act I, Sc. I, First Folio, 1623) 2519142 Marcellus 5475 = Holla Barnardo. Barnardo 12499 = Say, what is Horatio there? Horatio 4177 = A peece of him. Barnardo 19792 = Welcome Horatio, welcome, good Marcellus. Marcellus 18533 […]
© Gunnar Tómasson 17 September 2016 Foreword The Shugborough Inscription (Wikipedia – extracts) The Shugborough Inscription is a sequence of letters – O U O S V A V V, between the letters D M – carved on the 18th-century Shepherd’s Monument in the grounds of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England, below a mirror image […]
© Gunnar Tómasson 16 September 2016 I. From the most able, to him that can but spell (First Folio 1623) 1089901 13561 = To the great Variety of Readers. 18892 = From the most able, to him that can but spell: 23910 = There you are number’d. We had rather you were weighd. 28951 […]
© Gunnar Tómasson 12 September 2016 First Review of Workes by Shakespeare (Wikipedia) Palladis Tamia, subtitled „Wits Treasury“, is a 1598 book written by the minister Francis Meres. It is important in English literary history as the first critical account of the poems and early plays of William Shakespeare. It was listed in the Stationers […]
© Gunnar Tómasson 11 September 2016 Introduction (Joyce Carol Oates) Troilus and Cressida, that most vexing and ambiguous of Shakespeare’s plays, strikes the modern reader as a contemporary document—its investigation of numerous infidelities, its criticism of tragic pretensions, above all, its implicit debate between what is essential in human life and what is only existential […]
© Gunnar Tómasson 11. september 2016 I. Hver var Ari Þorgilsson? 1964 = Gylfi 3270 = Gangleri 3310 = Fróðari Betur þekktur sem 7998 = Ari Þorgilsson og er sagður hafa dáið 909 = 9. nóvember – 9. mánuður árs 1148 = 1148 e. Kr. 18599 Annað heiti Ara er […]
© Gunnar Tómasson 10 September 2016. Part III – Hamlet Myth Introduction – Hamlet’s Mill (Giorgio Santillana) This is meant to be only an essay. It is a first reconnaissance of a realm well-nigh unexplored and uncharted. From whichever way one enters it, one is caught in the same bewildering circular complexity, as in a […]
© Gunnar Tómasson 10 September 2016. Part II – Höfuðlausn – Head-Ransom Translation http://www.odins-gift.com/pclass/hoefudlausn.htm (Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards. Penguin, 1976). This extract from an Icelandic saga tells how the hero Egil Skalla-Grimsson avoids extreme punishment from the last Viking king of York – the infamous Erik (or Eirik) Bloodaxe – by declaiming a poem dripping with […]
© Gunnar Tómasson 10 September 2016. Part I – Höfuðlausn – Head-Ransom Background (Wikipedia) Höfuðlausn or the „Head’s Ransom“ is a skaldic poem attributed to Egill Skalla-Grímsson in praise of king Eirik Bloodaxe. It is cited in Egils Saga (chapter 61), which claims that he created it in the span of one night. The events […]