GLOUCESTER: 'Tis the time's plague, when madmen lead the blind.

— King Lear, IV, i

Commemorating the bicentenary of Henry Fuseli’s death: 1

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://eclecticlight.co/2025/04/15/commemorating-the-bicentenary-of-henry-fuselis-death-1/

Sonnet 063 - LXIII
Against my love shall be as I am now,
With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn;
When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night;
And all those beauties whereof now he's king
Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life:
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.

bot by @davidaugust

Sonnet 086 - LXXXVI
Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance filled up his line,
Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.

bot by @davidaugust

"Liberty plucks justice by the nose,
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum."
- William Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure" (Act 1, Scene 3)

I know Iago's refusal to give any reason for turning on Othello is supposed to be like the ultimate injustice or something, but I really can't help but feel that Shakespeare simply couldn't think up a satisfying explanation himself. #Shakespeare #Othello #Iago

Sonnet 011 - XI
As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this folly, age, and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
Look whom she best endow'd, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
She carv'd thee for her seal, and meant thereby,
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

bot by @davidaugust

Warning: Mixing Montague and Capulet - dramatic euphoria followed by impulsive behaviour, potential strong feeling of self-harm for adolescents.

#RXLikeWarningsForRelationships
#HashTagGames #Shakespeare #RomeoAndJuliet
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1777

I like to call dead authors fun names. Like William #Shakespeare gets to be Billy Shakes.
Watching people have little mental fits is fun.

Twelfth Night (Sapphic-Version)

#AudraMcDonald #LadyOlivia
#AnneHathaway #Viola
#Shakespeare (my version)

Sonnet 025 - XXV
Let those who are in favour with their stars
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars
Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most.
Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread
But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories once foiled,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:
Then happy I, that love and am beloved,
Where I may not remove nor be removed.

bot by @davidaugust

I finally completed my first version of a #diceware word list. This one is all words found in works by #Shakespeare. Took me about three months to create.
Guess only #nerds will like this.

I'll be writing a post about it later. In the meantime enjoy the word list goodness.

https://freeshell.de/rdfrkian/0005_pw_shakespeare_wordlist.txt

New (long) post: Commiserating With Mary

How fair Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, came to be the subject of some of my sonnets. It’s not the story you’ve heard. Plus: Tom Howard’s gruesome 1572 execution warrant, transcribed by yours truly.

https://edevere17.com/2025/04/12/commiserating-with-mary/

#Shakespeare #ShakespeareAuthorship
#Sonnets #VeroNihilVerius

Sonnet 014 - XIV
Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck;
And yet methinks I have Astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

bot by @davidaugust

Sonnet 058 - LVIII
That god forbid, that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!
O! let me suffer, being at your beck,
The imprison'd absence of your liberty;
And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check,
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will; to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.

bot by @davidaugust

Discovered via Calishat Snaps: Monkeys.zip. From the About page: “Monkeys.zip, aka The Monkey Project, is a live, crowdsourced experiment based on the Infinite Monkey Theorem. If you haven’t heard of the Infinite Monkey Theorem, it goes something like this: Infinite Monkeys on Infinite Typewriters will eventually write all the works of Shakespeare. It’s a thought experiment that’s been […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/04/09/discovered-via-calishat-snaps-monkeys-zip/

Francis Bacon, who died OTD in 1626, has been thought by some to have written some or all of the works of #Shakespeare https://toilet-guru.com/shakespeare.html?s=mb #history

#TheWarsOfTheRoses is on #BBC4 tonight at 22:10

It's #HenryVI tonight - I assume the subsequent parts will be aired on terrestrial in the near future, but are already on #iPlayer

#DavidWarner and (in later parts) #IanHolm are stand-out performances in a generally great cast.

#TheHenriad really benefits from being seen in its (near) entirety (as per #TheHollowCrown) -
#Shakespeare's Plantagenet Cinematic Universe.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001r3hg/the-wars-of-the-roses-henry-vi