Wednesday, 25 May 2016

Shakespeare and Frogs

I've recently been dabbling in human literature and came across someone called Shakespeare. He seems to have been pretty prolific and must have made a bit of an impact because recently the anniversary of his death made headlines all around the world. What I didn't understand is why the media didn't make more of a deal about his birthday rather than the day he sadly passed away?

From the selection of articles I read (from old newspapers dumped near our pond by lazy passersby), Shakespeare really captured the essentials of the human condition (whatever that is). More, importantly, what does he say about the frog condition?


Looking through the sites I found, the main quote featuring us is from some play called MacBeth and I didn't find it very flattering:

Eye of newt, and toe of frog...

...not a great start is it?

...Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing... 

and so on..and on...

So great, I find out that this is all to do with witches - as if we didn't have enough to contend with in those days we got lumped along with some of the most unpopular people in society!

I'm still looking through his other works but I'm hoping I'll find something a bit better than this. Plus I've been referred to a book called The Animal-Lore of Shakespeare's Time. Let's hope there were some people around at that time who had something good to say about frogs.

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