Teaching English: The Keepers

Colin Stokes imagines a modern encounter between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy:

It had circulated around the club that Mr. Darcy’s own startup had just received a hundred million dollars from an investor, dwarfing Mr. Bingley’s now paltry-seeming fifty-million-dollar valuation. Everyone there was also quite impressed when he ordered a bottle of Dom Perignon with multiple sparklers spraying sparkles into the crowd. This time, no sparks landed on Kitty, which was something of an improvement.

Elizabeth was dancing a dance known as the Dougie, because the d.j. had selected a song called “Teach Me How to Dougie.” (It was throwback night.) Mr. Darcy went up to Elizabeth and said, “Would you be so kind as to teach me how to Dougie?” It was a bad joke, but kind of not too bad, as far as bad jokes go.

THIS. WAS A BONUS. ON AN ENGLISH TEST IN HIGH SCHOOL.

And we thought our teacher was like the weirdest ever for giving it to us.

There are plenty of superstitions blanketing over the Shakespearean play Macbeth. Many consider the play “bad luck.” The rule of thumb is not to mention the play per se when inside a theater, but to refer to it as “The Scottish Play”. Another thing is not to mention the character “Macbeth,” instead refer to him as the “Scottish King.” Mentioning Shakespeare’s You-Know-Who and You-Know-What will result to extreme bad luck.

Encounter with the Witches (via publicradio)

One possible origin of these myths was believed to have come from witches. Shakespeare himself was suspected to have been inspired to get some lines from the coven of witches, so that no one other than him could be better at directing the play. Another possible origin was when witches saw the play, they became unimpressed and rather cursed the play.