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dijwelch.bsky.social
@dijwelch.bsky.social
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dijwelch.bsky.social
Congratulations my girl!
May 28, 2025 at 10:51 AM
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brianbilston.bsky.social
To celebrate Shakespeare Day, here’s a poem about being in an exam and panicking that you can’t remember any Shakespeare quotations.
Thoughts Written upon Turning Over My Exam Paper on Shakespeare Question 1: ‘If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare.’ 
Do you share Hazlitt’s view of Shakespeare? Illustrate your answer with examples from his writing. Me:       For goodness’ sake, what a way to break the ice. This is all Greek to me. It may sound like treason but I cannot make rhyme nor reason of his words. I knew I should have paid more attention, but at the merest mention of the bard, I fear the game is up. Shakespeare sets my teeth on edge. It is all too hard. I have been hoisted by my own petard. Question 2: Answer either a. or b. Using quotations from his work, show how Shakespeare’s language still resonates with us today. b. In what ways is Shakespeare still relevant in the twenty-first century? Me:       I am still in shock. For this is the long and short of it; I shall be the laughing stock of the class. A sorry sight. A foregone conclusion. I am under no delusion. I should have worn quotations on my sleeve, not my heart. Perhaps I should try the second part – or will that, too, give me indigestion? 2b or not 2b, that is the question.   Question 3: ‘A fool thinks himself to be wise but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.’ Consider Touchstone’s observation in As You Like It in relation to the current predicament in which you find yourself. Me:       I wonder whether others can hear in the midsummer madness of this examination room, this brave new world’s crack of doom as my thoughts thunder and race on their wild goose chase for Shakespeare’s words. No sooner do they stop to linger there, then they vanish into thin air. I could more easily catch a cold than manage to keep hold of one of his phrases. I have reached stasis and realise now this naked truth; my head is as dead as a doornail. I know that I am going to fail — thereby hangs this tale.   [Exit me, pursued by despair]    Brian Bilston
April 23, 2025 at 8:48 AM