Word: couldst
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Henry Plantagenet asks for the hand of Katherine of France, speaking partly in fractured French while she answers in broken English. In amused frustration Henry says: "I" faith, Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding. I am glad thou canst speak no better English, for, if thou couldst, thou wouldst find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy my crown...
...Everhart is splendid in his one comic cameo as the drunken Porter. Coleridge thought this scene spurious, but it is genuine Shakespeare and inspired dramaturgy. After murdering Duncan, Macbeth hears the chilling pounding at the gate and has second thoughts: "Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!" How follow such a climactic moment? Shakespeare's solution was perfect. The only comparable spot I can think of occurs in the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, when the full chorus climaxes thrillingly with words about "standing before God," and is followed by the ludicrously syncopated sounds of a distant...
Dalila, for example, asked Samson in stodgy Elizabethan English "Wherewith if thou wert bound thou couldst not break loose?" Now she says, "Tell me how you may be bound so as to be kept helpless." In the N.A.B.'s New Testament, the account of Paul's trip to Rome (Acts 27) turns out to be a brisk, realistic shipwreck saga. Too many Bible tales, Sloyan says, had become "sublime accounts more befitting gods than...