Re: The Alphabet and the Goddess

[Marjorie Hermansen-Eldard <meldard -at- ZZSOFT -dot- COM>]

Just a quick note of thanks to those who've contributed to this thread. I'm teaching two composition courses at our local state college. . . I plan to "fold in" the notion of Shakespeare as a technical writer and all the groovy stuff about printing processes, movable type, etc.

I love this list. . . thanks so much for sharing this great stuff!

Marj Hermansen-Eldard
Senior Technical Writer
ZZSoft, Inc.

>>> Andy Dugas <adugas -at- NAVIS -dot- COM> 10/08 11:12 AM >>>
Write PLAYS he did, and their popularity was the motivating factor behind
their contemporaneous PUBLICATION and marketing. You'll hear Shakespearean
scholars refering to Folios and Quartos, the original printed versions and
naturally, important sources for the study of the Bard. Shakespeare wasn't
passed down to us by word of mouth or extant actors' scripts.

If it weren't for movable type, who knows how many plays would have been
lost. Such was the fate of many works by the Greeks. More was lost than
retained.

I like thinking of Shakespeare as a technical writer. What a great subject
for an Intercom article.

==================================
At 9:04 AM +0000 10/7/98, Layna Andersen wrote:

> > You wonder how Shakespeare fits in. In a way, Shakespeare was the one of
> > the first "modern" writers to be widely published and disseminated, thanks
> > to that new fangled invention, movable type.
>
> It occurs to me that Shakespeare did use images, in a way.  What he was
> writing was PLAYS, very much visual spectacles, often viewed by illiterate
> people who couldn't have read the story (remember, he was his generation's
> Spielberg, popular with the masses).  Stage directions (such as the classic
> "exit, chased by a bear" which I'm sure I'm misquoting) were certainly
>there to
> tell the director how do it:  technical writing?
>
> Layna Andersen


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=