Things I learned from Shakespeare pt 1

The end of this semester marks the end of many things. Now, I am not here to get philosophical on you. No, the reason why I opened this entry with that is because this ending semester marks a very important moment of my life. This past semester I took what is and will forever be my last Shakespeare class ever! Now, while I might be busting out the party poppers over this, I do carry with me many fond memories. I learned a great deal in this class, and I hope to share some of it with you. So without further ado, although there is Much Ado About Nothing, I give you my “List of things learned from Shakespeare”.

First one the list: Malapropisms.

This isn’t exactly the first thing I learned, but it does stand out. How many times have you had a friend try and use fancy words, and you caught him using some word that just didn’t belong in the context of the conversation. It is clearly not right to say it. Malopropisms are words that clearly sound alike, and are meant to make you sound oh so smart…but it doesn’t quite work out the way you envisioned it. I first encountered malapropisms in the speeches of Dogberry and co. While theirs is harder to catch, since they use Ye Olde English, you can enjoy calling your friends out when they try to be smartasses anytime you want, with a little proper education on your part.

Now, of course, you can put up a smart pants disguise up and use fancy words all the time, and then, purposefully use a malapropism just to get them to jump on you with self-righteous attitudes, only to later explain you meant it this way. From this point on, what is a malapropism, becomes an inside joke, one which only you get. Take me for example. Working hard on finishes my class assignment, I got online into a chatroom of sorts, and made the (intentional) mistake of saying repertoire when repartee would have gone better. Now, repartee would have fitted in with the quick witty replies we were making, but given the fact that I was working on a soliloquy analysis, repertoire becomes my own little inside joke, as the assignment required us to choose one soliloquy from Shakespeare’s vast catalogue and write a brief (3 to 5 pages) essay about it. In this way, I was able to derive just a little bit of joy from what I thought to be a useless little piece of trivia I wouldn’t be able to make use of ever in my daily life!