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John Gray: Shakespeare’s As You Like It, A Play on Genre
This lecture moves backwards through the text of As You Like It. Beginning with the Epilogue, it demonstrates that Shakespeare’s most loved comedy is a witty parody of medieval romance and other genres: song, dance, masque, the greenwood adventure, and courtly love.
References are to Alan Brissenden’s Oxford World’s Classics edition of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Oxford University Press, 2008. (more…)
John Gray: Shakespeare’s Henry V: The Persons of the Play
All the characters in Shakespeare’s Henry V are discussed here in the order of the cast list in Gary Taylor, ed. Henry V (Oxford: The University Press, 1982): 89-90. Some characters that an audience may consider to be minor turn out to reward close study, not only because they illuminate the protagonist King Henry from their different perspectives, but also for their intrinsic interest. Although some minor characters have few lines–one has none!–they exemplify the infinite variety of human nature. (more…)
John Gray: Using Dictionaries and Why You Need to
Students of my friend and colleague, John Gray, much enjoyed his lectures on English Dictionaries. Reprinted below, these lectures show how you can test your current Dictionary and how you can choose the right Dictionary. They talk about how Dictionaries are made, and describe the evolution of English Dictionaries over the centuries. John’s lectures end with sketches of some famous Dictionary makers: all of them were brilliant scholars; some were great teachers; some were eccentric; some (most?) were cranky; and one was a murderer. (more…)