[HN Gopher] Overuse of the word "the" in "Macbeth"
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Overuse of the word "the" in "Macbeth"
Author : rouli
Score : 17 points
Date : 2021-08-26 03:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (onezero.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (onezero.medium.com)
| Steve_Baker77 wrote:
| Paywall
| yesenadam wrote:
| I read this a few times, looking for evidence I missed that it's
| a joke. Apparently not, but I can't be sure. If it's serious,
| it's possibly the worst article I've ever read.
|
| > But fans of Macbeth often say its freaky qualities are deeper
| than just the plot devices and characters. For centuries, people
| been unsettled by the very language of the play.
|
| > Actors and critics have long remarked that when you read
| Macbeth out loud, it feels like your voice and mouth and brain
| are doing something ever so slightly wrong. There's something
| subconsciously off about the sound of the play, and it spooks
| people. It's as if Shakespeare somehow wove a tiny bit of
| creepiness into every single line. The literary scholar George
| Walton Williams described the "continuous sense of menace" and
| "horror" that pervades even seemingly innocuous scenes.
|
| > For centuries, Shakespeare fans and theater folk have wondered
| about this, but could never quite explain it.
|
| Um.. gee, in high school it was pointed out to me how constant
| themes in _Macbeth_ are how unnatural things have become, how
| everything is strange, qualities /values reversed from normal -
| _fair is foul and foul is fair_ etc, animals doing weird things,
| bad omens etc. It never stops, all the way through. I had to go
| through the play and list how many animals are mentioned, doing
| strange things. It 's constant. People meet in the play and it's
| not "Lovely day isn't it" but an anecdote about how so-and-so saw
| something incredibly weird and impossible happen. Over that
| background is the quickly escalating paranoia and madness of
| Macbeth & Lady Macbeth. Etc. Can't be bothered writing more, I
| didn't want to say just "This is total nonsense.", but it is.
| (Flagged.)
| andensande wrote:
| The conclusions of the article seem a bit far-fetched to me, and
| seem to ignore the rhetorical style of poetry and theatre at the
| time. One of the examples the author gives (where they missed a
| contracted instance of "the"):
|
| > [...] Look like th' innocent flower,/But be the serpent under
| 't.
|
| It is still acceptable in modern English to say something like
|
| > Seem like the innocent flower, but be as the serpent underneath
| it.
|
| Certainly not casual, everyday speech -- but using a rhetorical
| strategy of referring to an archetypal innocent flower, or an
| archetypal serpent. I think it's an enormous stretch to claim
| that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth had a specific innocent flower in
| mind when they were speaking.
| TillE wrote:
| There's a little too much amateurish analysis here which doesn't
| even attempt to distinguish between Early Modern English and 21st
| century English, but ultimately I think the conclusion is
| interesting and probably correct, that this helps set the tone of
| the play.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Didn't Shakespeare kind of use his own version of English; even
| by the standards of the day?
| allturtles wrote:
| I think this is just the way Shakespeare wrote, not anything
| specific to Macbeth's 'creepiness.' I was able to quickly find a
| similar example in Julius Caesar:
|
| "Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again; but,
| to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And
| then he offered it _the_ third time; he put it _the_ third time
| by; "
|
| Or Much Ado About Nothing:
|
| "I have _the_ toothache. "
|
| It is not surprising that the way (a way?) articles are used has
| changed in the last 400 years.
| abathur wrote:
| Use of "the" considered harmful. :)
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| That's a really interesting observation and fun analysis. I'm
| going to reread Macbeth with this in mind and whether or not I
| agree with all of the articles conclusions its a unique lens to
| examine the text with.
| [deleted]
| karolisd wrote:
| I'd wager the use of "the" is mostly about making the meter work
| and having the iambic pentameter sound the way he wanted it to.
|
| This isn't a data science question. Especially if the data
| science is blind to meter and to phonetics.
| lupire wrote:
| why "the" but not "a"? Same meter.
|
| But I agree it's silly that say "the" is what makes Macbeth
| creepy, and not, you know, the occult theme that permeates it.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Precisely. 'the' is an easy single-syllable choice to pad out
| your meter, so it makes perfect sense that it was abused here.
| retrac wrote:
| Shakespeare coined hundreds of neologisms presumably just to
| make the verses scan. His English was never the best, honestly.
| Like, in terms of being normal English. Much of his poetry was
| odd even by the standards of the time. Creative odd, but odd.
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