Before singing some nice songs which offer a chance to improve pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, click here to read an interesting blog post about music and language learning.
Friday 28 February 2014
Sunday 9 February 2014
AS YOU LIKE IT
As You Like It is
a pastoral comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1599. Shakespeare
drew the story from a story called Rosalynde written by Thomas Lodge and
published in 1590.
The plot is
very simple: dramatic troubles caused by two evil brothers toward good brothers, and related obstacles to marriage
for several couples in the play (most notably Rosalind and Orlando) are easily
overcome, and a happy ending is never in doubt. On one level, the play was
clearly intended by Shakespeare as a simple amusement; several scenes in As You Like It are
essentially sketches made up of songs and joking banter. But on a somewhat
deeper level, the play provides opportunities for its main characters to
discuss subjects such as love, aging, the natural world, and
death from their particular points of view. At its center, As You Like It presents
us with the respective worldviews of Jaques, a chronically melancholy pessimist
preoccupied with the negative aspects of life, and Rosalind, the play's heroine,
who recognizes life's difficulties but shows a positive attitude that
is kind, playful, and, above all, wise.
Labels:
4^C Linguistico,
As You Like It,
Drama,
Literature,
Shakespeare,
The Renaissance
Thursday 6 February 2014
SHOULD, MUST OR HAVE TO?
Here you can download a PDF presentation of these verbs which refer to obligation. Click here to read about their differences.
Now you can do the following exercises:
Must or Have to
Must, Mustn’t or Have to
Should
Mustn't or Don't have to
Wednesday 5 February 2014
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
Shakespeare
is argued to have produced a large collection of work, including 38
plays and 154 sonnets. His plays are divided into four main sections: the
Histories, the Tragedies, the Comedies, and the Romances.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a Comedy, even though it does have some elements of the magical
Romance genre. His work has been produced since the Renaissance in all artistic
mediums from the original theatre to opera, symphony, film, and ballet. It has
also been revisited countless times by the same artistic medium
because it is said to be timeless. Shakespeare's topics are about love, hate, murder,
jealousy, miscommunication, chastity, history, and even magic.
A
Midsummer Night's Dream includes the classic elements of
Shakespeare's comedies. It has a framing structure, with the Athenian world
opening and closing the play, has a complex plot using magic and fantasy, has a happy
ending, and uses a major character as comic relief, so to speak. Most of
Shakespeare's plays use this character of the clown, jester, or commoner to
spark slapstick laughter. Bottom and his
players qualify to this kind of
character in the play. Also, these lower-class
characters speak in prose, not in poetry (iambic pentameter), like the rest of
Shakespeare's characters.
This
play is a combination of various plots: the
Athenian lovers Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius; the king of the fairies, Oberon who is at odds with his
wife, Titania, because she refuses to relinquish control of a young Indian
prince whom he wants for a knight and the band of Athenian craftsmen rehearsing
the play Pyramus
and Thisbe that they hope to perform for Theseus,
duke of Athens, who is preparing for his marriage to Hippolyta, queen of the
Amazons. Through these three plots,
the common thread is the illustration of the
ridiculous behaviour of lovers of every sort, every creature,
and every class - it seems love is a wholly irrational
passion, the slave of whim and fancy. On the contrary, the duke of Athens, engaged to Hippolyta, represents
power and order throughout the play; he appears only at the beginning and end
of the story, removed from the dreamlike events of the forest.
A
Midsummer Night's Dream was written in
1595 and performed most likely for Queen Elizabeth I and her court.
Here you can find the full text of the play.
Here you can find the full text of the play.
Saturday 1 February 2014
FEBRUARY
"Why, what's the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?"
William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
Labels:
February,
Much Ado About Nothing,
Poetry,
Shakespeare
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