Shakespeare’s hysterectomies

I always wonder whether these are for real — some of them are just a bit too good. After the next election cycle in Britain I look forward to revivals of Shakespeare’s political comedy, “Love, Labour’s Lost.”

But the article says that Baz Luhrman’s film of Romeo and Juliet was set in Los Angeles, which is a bit of a howler itself — the setting was a fictional but clearly Latin American city, a pastiche of Mexico City and Rio.

“He wrote tragedies, comedies and hysterectomies – all in Islamic pentameter.”

Has got to be either made up by a teacher or an intentional joke by a very clever student.

I’m surprised we haven’t seen an article lamenting the declining quality of student (formerly “schoolboy”) howlers. Nothing in this year’s crop matches Islamic pentameter or Milton’s timing for Paradise Lost and Regained.

Of course, it’s unfair to pit one year against the selected best of the past (including possible fabrications as ae notes), but that’s a standard trick in “decline of the English …” articles.

“Wot goes around comes around” is a folk expression of the idea of nemesis, reciprocity, retribution, etc. I agree with Rea.

My sister* once, at the Univ of Michigan, in a women’s studies course, accidentally wrote about “colored women” instead of “women of color” in a paper, and received, on that basis alone, an F from the TA (who was a woman of color.) Actually, this is a good crowd to ask: do you think that was fair? I’ve always thought that I would have protested vigorously over receiving an F for what was essentially a typo, but she just shrugged it off. Any opinions?

[*For ethnic comparison, note that my sister, her husband, and their friends were once referred to by a Latino youth as resembling “the cast of Dawson’s Creek.”]

Re #11: Yes, getting an “F” was bullshit, and she should have protested it. Over many years of teaching (including a number at Michigan, as it happens) I have sometimes had occasion to reprimand students for careless and offensive use of language, But I never failed an entire assignment for this – in fact I rarely even reduced the grade, figuring that being told something to the effect that “civilized people don’t say that sort of thing” was lesson enough for one day.

The article (and apparently the site on which it’s based) is confusing a lot of different things – errors of fact or failure to read the text; simple slips of the pen under the stress and haste of exam conditions; and perfectly good ideas that happen to be couched in non-academic, idiomatic language. I agree with 8 and 9. Those teenagers are using their own experiences and words and interpreting the plays for themselves. It’s called, you know, cultural appropriation.

I do wince at the text-message spellings, but whose spelling and grammar is perfect in exam scripts? Same goes for making fun of a student writing of Lady M’s “desire to have Macbeth on the throne”. It’s not wrong, is it? So what if s/he wrote ‘have’ instead of (say) ‘put’? It’s the teacher putting the innuendo there, not the student.

This is one reason why too many schoolkids end up hating ‘proper’ literature. When they do attempt to engage with it and understand it, they’re ridiculed for not doing it in the ‘correct’ teacher-approved way.

‘Donkey Hote’ – now that’s funny. Well, either that or it’s dyslexia.

It was reported that a recycling bin on campus in Berkeley had “colored paper” corrected to “paper of color”, and someone responsible was quoted saying “that isn’t funny”.

brendon – that is an old joke. It made the eMail circuit a year or so ago. BTW I can’t follow your link.

anyone who says that Macbeth goes into “full-on soliloquy mode” deserves an A+, and a recommendation to favorite institute of Higher Education.

My favorite one of these was from an American article a few years back like today’s: “Plato invented reality. His teacher was Mr. Harry Tottle.” Only that article concerned actual exam answers by college freshmen…

I’m with andrew/#5. Especially that “hysterectomies” has got to be a made-up blooper. Think about it – it’s a substitution of a much more obscure word for a very common word (“histories”). That’s the reverse of the malapropisms usually done by people grasping at unfamiliar terms.