Hello and welcome back to your regularly scheduled blogging at its spiffy new home, Daniprose.com!
After a hiatus during which my previously mentioned threat to pretend to be illiterate took full effect, I am back on the blogging wagon. I hope that the new site, in all of its glory, makes up for a least some of the lonely moments spent wandering the web searching fruitlessly for readable and amusing academicisms. The MA really burnt me out and I’m still re-fortifying for September, but I think I’m ready to swing back into gear and flex the writing muscles so that they don’t atrophy during my precious free-as-a-bird summer break.
Taking the leap to a real grown-up blog via domain name is something that I’ve been wanting to do for some time now. The impetus to hold my breath and jump came from a dear friend who (bless her heart) got excited at the idea of giving me wordpress tips. I figured that if someone else could get excited about my work, then I sure as heck could muster the force to push myself to the next level. I’m still working on tidying house, so you’ll see some little tweaks here and there for a few weeks yet, but on the whole I believe the site will remain pretty much as it is now.
A note on previous formatting: when I migrated the old stuff to the new site, there were a few formatting glitches (as you can see). While I do care about the presentation of my carefully-chosen prose, there are over one hundred entries on this site. Short of hand-editing each of them, I have not found a way to address these formatting issues. As such, I apologize in advance for them, but they will remain (unless someone can figure out how to effectively batch-change them).
So why “Daniprose”, you may ask?
“Prose – noun. 1a) Language in the form in which it is typically written (or spoken), usually characterized as having no deliberate metrical structure (in contrast with verse or poetry). 1b) That which is plain, simple, or matter-of-fact” (OED 3rd ed.)
Prose is language without meter or poetry. Prose is simple, colloquial. When Shakespeare wrote prose, it was generally for his rustic characters; the clowns, the mechanicals, the shepherds. Prose is language that breaks the rules of form. For an actor, prose is oftentimes deceptively difficult to work with since your regular Shakespeare tricks are useful only for the metered poetry. A passage of prose is riddled with wit, jokes, and nudges at the groundlings. It is to the point and cuts to the deep heart of any matter.
Some famous passages/monologues in prose:
Hamlet; Hamlet; III.i; “Get thee to a Nunnerie. Why would’st thou be a breeder of Sinners?…”
Henry IV ii; Mistress Quickly; II.iii; “Nay, sure, he’s not in hell: he’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom…”
Macbeth; Lady MacBeth; V.i: “Out, damned spot! out, I say!…”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: pretty much anything the mechanicals say, but famously Bottom IV.i: “When my cue comes, call mee, and I will answere. My next is, most faire Pyramus….”
Much Ado About Nothing; Benedick; II.i : “O she misusde me past the indurance of a block…”
Romeo and Juliet; Mercutio; II.iv; “More than prince of cats, I can tell you…”
Prose. The other white meat. And so, continuing on in the spirit with which we were founded, bending to Philip Henslowe’s frantic advice to a lovelorn Billy Shakes (“No, no, we haven’t the time… talk prose!”), with pen in hand we return to our hero’s saga and begin the prequel to Higher Education (Part 3): The Quest for the PhD.
