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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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For me, anyway, it's the beauty of the language. I first tackled a Shakespeare play, "Hamlet", when I was about fourteen-fifteen expecting it to be a hard slog because it was Great Literature and more than that, Great Poetry, and all the Great Poetry I had encountered up till then was difficult to understand because of what seemed to be deliberate obscurantism and excessive verbiage.

So I gritted my teeth and girded my loins and expected to have to hack my way through the undergrowth. But it wasn't like that at all. First, I suspect, because I was reading a schools edition of the play which was in modern English and meant for idiot school kids to be able to follow. Second, because a lot of the terminology was recognisable to me as idioms still current in Hiberno-English (e.g. the bit about "walking abroad", I didn't need a note telling me this meant 'outside' because this was how it was used in my locale as well).

I ended up with bells ringing in my head because the words all struck against one another and chimed. When I finished, I understood why Shakespeare was considered a great.

Maybe you're not as susceptible to the mere sound-music of words, but yeah. The plays are meant to be performed and not just read, but even Iago's little speech here is just so hypnotising because of the slurring, murmurous repetition of the syllables if you read it aloud:

Look where he comes. Not poppy nor mandragora
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.