Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Shakespeare-Related Entries in The Onion Book of Known Knowledge

The Onion. The Onion Book of Known Knowledge: A Definitive Encyclopaedia Of Existing Information. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2012.

When encountering dictionaries, reference books, encyclopedias of all sorts, I tend to flip to entries related to Shakespeare. Naturally.

I can't quite remember the train of events that led to my requesting The Onion Book of Known Knowledge through inter-library loan, but I'm glad I did. I'd like to share with you its entries on Shakespeare, the Renaissance, and Bob Dylan. That last may seem like a non sequitor, but there are connections between Dylan and Shakespeare that are worth exploring. Click on the images below to enlarge the entries.

“Despite Shakespeare's many accomplishments, which included composing 154 sonnets and serving as head of the English Protestant church as Queen Elizabeth, scholars believe the legendary playwright died penniless, wealthy, at the age of 16, a woman, from rheumatic fever, and as the only writer ever to have rivaled William Shakespeare.”




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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest