pg 3 PhD anachronism; use a contemporary title, there were plenty to choose from
pg 5 repeated ’what’s annoying; ‘oh god’ not ironic enough?
pg 10 a reference to pestilential airs might not be amiss (current phrasings too modern)
pg 11 cute would be quoting from Shakespeare’s own verse on this topic, eg. “What win I if I gain the thing I seek? / A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. / Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week? / Or sells eternity to get a toy? / For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? / Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, / Would with the sceptre straight be stricken / down?” ‘methods of rationality’ again is too modern—how would a classically educated Hamlet put it?
pg 12 perhaps I am missing a joke, but ‘new-forged shoe’? Other examples might be better—wine?
pg 16 speaking of classical texts, I’ve long liked this Iliad line—“O my friend, if we, leaving this war, could escape from age and death, I should not here be fighting in the van; but now, since many are the modes of death impending over us which no man can hope to shun, let us press on and give renown to other men, or win it for ourselves.”
pg 22 ‘If only I were King of Denmark, / I might be safer.’ strikes me as somehow too prosaic; he spoke riddlingly and not plainly to Gertrude, I recall
pg 23 ‘corse’?
pg 32 I love the red shirt bit (however, I can’t help but muse on how to pointedly modify Reynaldo’s speech preceding—perhaps ‘not stick at adding an ally to the crown so gained’?)
pg 34 lampshading gets a tad too obvious here
pg 37 eh… and neither remarks on the crossdressing of Ophelia?
pg 40 Death Note references amuse me; I like it, but I think you can do that passage better
pg 42 I liked the accede/acedia joke there; as for the self-slaughter, might borrow some lines from the Carvaka eg “If a beast slain as an offering to the dead will itself go to heaven, why does the sacrificer not straightaway offer his father?”
pg 55 Hamlet’s speech seems ill-written
pg 56 I commend the Watchmen allusion
Overall pretty good, but I didn’t get that much out of it and wouldn’t pay $3 for it as opposed to, say, re-reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
pg 3 PhD anachronism; use a contemporary title, there were plenty to choose from
European academics in Shakespeare’s day were debating the legitimacy of the Philosophiae Doctor degree (e.g. the 1571 Oratio de doctoratu Philosophico). It was apparently an important point because in Catholic countries, a Doctor had the legal right to not be tortured, while a Master did not. The first doctorates are said to have been awarded by the University of Paris in the 12th century, at the same time the original Hamlet was first written down. I can’t find the earliest use of the abbreviation PhD, but Reynaldo has a motive to choose that particular abbreviation.
Ah; I did not know that about the PhD. Maybe a clearer insult then from Claudius, or omit the PhD from the dramatis personae in favor of Philosophiae Doctor?
That might work too. Incidentally, good timing—I was pondering how to ping you to ensure that this was mentioned in the next Author’s note and perhaps directly in the original chapter. Guess I don’t have to, now...
That did bug me a little, but I couldn’t think of any alternative. Shakespeare did use minutes in some places, like Puck boasts of doing something in ‘forty minutes’. My current preferred alternative would be something like ‘I did it half a watch ago’ or perhaps ‘I did it a score of minutes ago’.
Doe the Bible ever use the 40 cliche for something other than days & nights? I don’t remember (but it’s not something I paid much attention to when I was reading the Bible).
Moses supposedly lived in Egypt for about 40 years and then fled for about 40 years before being in the Desert for about 40 years.
Leviticus 12:
1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Say to the Israelites: ’A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. 3 On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. 4 Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. 5 If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding.
6 “’When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering.[a] 7 He shall offer them before the LORD to make atonement for her, and then she will be ceremonially clean from her flow of blood.
“‘These are the regulations for the woman who gives birth to a boy or a girl. 8 But if she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean.’”
7+33=40 days, 14+66=80 days.
See also the spies (40 days), Noah waiting to open the Ark (40 days), and more here.
The “embalming” is an interesting inclusion because it tells of an Egyptian practice, which might stem from the same cultural idea of 40 days/years being a complete unit or is a projection onto them, or be a transcription of an idea directly into metaphor, (nearly) ignoring the literal truth of how long it took, or be erroneous projection. Genesis 50:
1 Joseph threw himself on his father and wept over him and kissed him. 2 Then Joseph directed the physicians in his service to embalm his father Israel. So the physicians embalmed him, 3 taking a full forty days, for that was the time required for embalming. And the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.
4 When the days of mourning had passed, Joseph said to Pharaoh’s court, “If I have found favor in your eyes, speak to Pharaoh for me. Tell him, 5 ‘My father made me swear an oath and said, “I am about to die; bury me in the tomb I dug for myself in the land of Canaan.” Now let me go up and bury my father; then I will return.’”
6 Pharaoh said, “Go up and bury your father, as he made you swear to do.”
7 So Joseph went up to bury his father. All Pharaoh’s officials accompanied him—the dignitaries of his court and all the dignitaries of Egypt— 8 besides all the members of Joseph’s household and his brothers and those belonging to his father’s household. Only their children and their flocks and herds were left in Goshen. 9 Chariots and horsemen[a] also went up with him. It was a very large company.
10 When they reached the threshing floor of Atad, near the Jordan, they lamented loudly and bitterly; and there Joseph observed a seven-day period of mourning for his father.
I included the full length of that so no one says “Aha! Apparently the writers were willing to say ’70 days’ when something took that long, so the 40 is not a metaphor.” Consider that the other mourning period is a multiple of 7.
In a word: yes, it uses it all over the place. I believe also in the original Hebrew for the OT; I don’t know anything about the NT. I was going to list some examples, but you can grep the Bible just as well as I can.
EDIT: Oh, I misread your question. Gimme forty seconds to go look.
Using Gutenberg’s KJV, I get 111 hits for ′ forty ‘; filtering ‘forty and’ (for numbers spelled out like ‘forty and two’) gets me 72. Filtering out ‘days’ and ‘years’, none of them seem to be the trope; so the Bible seems to use it solely for days and years, but not months, minutes, weeks, etc.
Well, yes, everyone gets the reference. That doesn’t bear on whether it is an anachronism for anything written as an Elizebethan work. ‘Anachronism’:
A thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists
If minutes were not commonly used in that period (as might make sense given the rarity of accurate mechanical clocks and limited accuracy of the ones that existed), then using minutes may be an anachronism.
I agree with gwern regarding the Death Note reference… of all your pop culture references, this one is definitely the most contrived, and thus it feels a bit out of place.
Strange, that’s the one reference that I only got on a reread—it seemed to flow decently enough by itself (I’ve taken the King, I’ll need Laerters, after K & L will there be some M & N further) that I didn’t realize it was referencing anything at first. So I don’t think it felt out of place.
Notes while reading:
MACOSX folder is annoying
pg 3 PhD anachronism; use a contemporary title, there were plenty to choose from
pg 5 repeated ’what’s annoying; ‘oh god’ not ironic enough?
pg 10 a reference to pestilential airs might not be amiss (current phrasings too modern)
pg 11 cute would be quoting from Shakespeare’s own verse on this topic, eg. “What win I if I gain the thing I seek? / A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. / Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week? / Or sells eternity to get a toy? / For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? / Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, / Would with the sceptre straight be stricken / down?” ‘methods of rationality’ again is too modern—how would a classically educated Hamlet put it?
pg 12 perhaps I am missing a joke, but ‘new-forged shoe’? Other examples might be better—wine?
pg 16 speaking of classical texts, I’ve long liked this Iliad line—“O my friend, if we, leaving this war, could escape from age and death, I should not here be fighting in the van; but now, since many are the modes of death impending over us which no man can hope to shun, let us press on and give renown to other men, or win it for ourselves.”
pg 22 ‘If only I were King of Denmark, / I might be safer.’ strikes me as somehow too prosaic; he spoke riddlingly and not plainly to Gertrude, I recall
pg 23 ‘corse’?
pg 32 I love the red shirt bit (however, I can’t help but muse on how to pointedly modify Reynaldo’s speech preceding—perhaps ‘not stick at adding an ally to the crown so gained’?)
pg 34 lampshading gets a tad too obvious here
pg 37 eh… and neither remarks on the crossdressing of Ophelia?
pg 40 Death Note references amuse me; I like it, but I think you can do that passage better
pg 42 I liked the accede/acedia joke there; as for the self-slaughter, might borrow some lines from the Carvaka eg “If a beast slain as an offering to the dead will itself go to heaven, why does the sacrificer not straightaway offer his father?”
pg 55 Hamlet’s speech seems ill-written
pg 56 I commend the Watchmen allusion
Overall pretty good, but I didn’t get that much out of it and wouldn’t pay $3 for it as opposed to, say, re-reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
Thanks for the many notes.
European academics in Shakespeare’s day were debating the legitimacy of the Philosophiae Doctor degree (e.g. the 1571 Oratio de doctoratu Philosophico). It was apparently an important point because in Catholic countries, a Doctor had the legal right to not be tortured, while a Master did not. The first doctorates are said to have been awarded by the University of Paris in the 12th century, at the same time the original Hamlet was first written down. I can’t find the earliest use of the abbreviation PhD, but Reynaldo has a motive to choose that particular abbreviation.
Archaic “corpse.”
Ah; I did not know that about the PhD. Maybe a clearer insult then from Claudius, or omit the PhD from the dramatis personae in favor of Philosophiae Doctor?
What I’d do: Use the phrase “Philosophiae Doctor” right up until the reveal.
I second this.
That might work too. Incidentally, good timing—I was pondering how to ping you to ensure that this was mentioned in the next Author’s note and perhaps directly in the original chapter. Guess I don’t have to, now...
Now that I think about it, could this also be an anachronism ?
That seems like an awfully precise number. Did people in ye olde Shakespearean times really measure time that precisely ?
That did bug me a little, but I couldn’t think of any alternative. Shakespeare did use minutes in some places, like Puck boasts of doing something in ‘forty minutes’. My current preferred alternative would be something like ‘I did it half a watch ago’ or perhaps ‘I did it a score of minutes ago’.
It may be the usual conceit of ‘forty’ being equivalent to ‘many’, c.f. Noah’s Ark and etc.
Doe the Bible ever use the 40 cliche for something other than days & nights? I don’t remember (but it’s not something I paid much attention to when I was reading the Bible).
Moses supposedly lived in Egypt for about 40 years and then fled for about 40 years before being in the Desert for about 40 years.
Leviticus 12:
7+33=40 days, 14+66=80 days.
See also the spies (40 days), Noah waiting to open the Ark (40 days), and more here.
The “embalming” is an interesting inclusion because it tells of an Egyptian practice, which might stem from the same cultural idea of 40 days/years being a complete unit or is a projection onto them, or be a transcription of an idea directly into metaphor, (nearly) ignoring the literal truth of how long it took, or be erroneous projection. Genesis 50:
I included the full length of that so no one says “Aha! Apparently the writers were willing to say ’70 days’ when something took that long, so the 40 is not a metaphor.” Consider that the other mourning period is a multiple of 7.
In a word: yes, it uses it all over the place. I believe also in the original Hebrew for the OT; I don’t know anything about the NT. I was going to list some examples, but you can grep the Bible just as well as I can.
EDIT: Oh, I misread your question. Gimme forty seconds to go look.
RE-EDIT: 40 years in the wilderness.
Using Gutenberg’s KJV, I get 111 hits for ′ forty ‘; filtering ‘forty and’ (for numbers spelled out like ‘forty and two’) gets me 72. Filtering out ‘days’ and ‘years’, none of them seem to be the trope; so the Bible seems to use it solely for days and years, but not months, minutes, weeks, etc.
Cool.
It was just a reference to Watchmen. Rot13 spoiler:
Bmlznaqvnf, va Jngpuzra.
Ur qrgnvyf uvf cynaf gb, onfvpnyyl, gevpx gur jbeyq vagb guvaxvat gurl ner haqre nyvra vainfvba gb pbrepr gur angvbaf bs gur jbeyq gb onaq gbtrgure va crnpr ntnvafg n pbzzba rarzl. Ur qbrf guvf ol perngvat n ynetr-fpnyr jrncba bs znff qrfgehpgvba cbjreshy rabhtu gb naavuvyngr Arj Lbex nyzbfg ragveryl. Bapr haqre gur oryvrs gung gur jbeyq vf haqre nggnpx ol rkgreany sbeprf, uhznavgl jvyy havsl va crnpr ntnvafg gurve creprvirq nggnpxref.
Jura gur urebrf nfx uvz, “Guvf vf znqarff! Jura jrer lbh rira cynaavat gb qb guvf?” gur ivyynva erfcbaqf jvgu bar bs zl snibevgr yvarf va nalguvat rire. “‘Qb vg?’ V nz abg fbzr genqr frevny ivyynva. Qb lbh ubarfgyl guvax V jbhyq tvir lbh gur vagvzngr qrgnvyf bs zl znfgrejbex vs lbh unq NAL punapr bs fgbccvat vg sebz unccravat? V nyernql qvq vg guvegl-svir zvahgrf ntb.”
Phg gb gur pvgl bs Arj Lbex orvat boyvgrengrq naq arneyl nyy bs vg’f pvgvmraf xvyyrq va bar fvatyr oynfg.
[/hadhbgr] V unccra gb unir ernq guvf whfg n srj zvahgrf ntb va n pbzcyrgryl haeryngrq sbehz, naq gubhtug bs gur eryngrq yvar va Engvbanyvfg Unzyrg, fb V pnzr urer, fnj guvf dhrfgvba, naq pbcvrq gur ragver fcbvyrerq nern bs gung cbfg.
Well, yes, everyone gets the reference. That doesn’t bear on whether it is an anachronism for anything written as an Elizebethan work. ‘Anachronism’:
If minutes were not commonly used in that period (as might make sense given the rarity of accurate mechanical clocks and limited accuracy of the ones that existed), then using minutes may be an anachronism.
I agree with gwern regarding the Death Note reference… of all your pop culture references, this one is definitely the most contrived, and thus it feels a bit out of place.
Strange, that’s the one reference that I only got on a reread—it seemed to flow decently enough by itself (I’ve taken the King, I’ll need Laerters, after K & L will there be some M & N further) that I didn’t realize it was referencing anything at first. So I don’t think it felt out of place.