What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

J. M. Pressley of the Shakespeare Resource Center describes a common reading/staging of this line:

Keep in mind that Romeo, until this point, has merely been addressing a light in a window. This is the point in the speech at which Juliet actually enters the scene. Romeo is both surprised and besotted when young Juliet appears. Rhetorically, Shakespeare is using parallel repetition and alliteration to reinforce Romeo’s emotion.

https://youtu.be/CDa5dLDEQio?t=20s

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

“Carnival” in this context suggests the festival that precedes Lent, celebrated especially in areas that are predominantly Catholic. This is the festival season that includes Mardi Gras. It traditionally includes elements such as masks, costumes, street parties, and circus-like events–presumably the reason the Good Samaritan is “dressing” for “the show.”

Carnival is an occasion for drinking and cutting loose, a riotous overturning of the normal order of life. Here in Desolation Row it seems particularly colorful and fantastical, but also seedy and ominous: notice it’s the virtuous Good Samaritan getting ready to indulge his wildest urges.

Carnival, Rome, c. 1650

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

Courtesy of J. M. Pressley and the Shakespeare Resource Center:

This is a strange line on many levels. In all early editions (except the First Quarto, in which the line and “It is my lady…” are omitted entirely), “It is my lady…” and this line are written together. It makes a certain amount of sense to split the line, as most editors have done, from the obvious pentameter of its predecessor, but that leaves it as a six-syllable, dangling bit of verse. As noted in the Macbeth analysis, Shakespeare doesn’t generally break the pentameter in mid-speech like this, so that leaves us wondering if something happened in the transcription. An interesting hypothesis is that perhaps Shakespeare originally had Juliet complete the line as if to herself, which might have prompted Romeo to speak his next line.

(This hypothesis is slightly undermined, though, by Romeo’s delighted exclamation “She speaks” below.)

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

As Laertes’s speech continues, the “it” she’s supposed to fear seems to shade from Hamlet’s advances in particular into the “danger of desire” in general. (Her own desire as well as men’s?)

Ellen Terry as Ophelia, 1878. Via FolgerFinds

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

First published in 1904 as part of the collection In the Seven Woods, “Adam’s Curse” is a meditation on the difficult labors of love, poetry, and “be[ing] beautiful” in a fallen world.

George Inness, Moonrise, 1897

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

“The Barycenter” is collected in Rowan Ricardo Phillips' book of poems Heaven (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015).

Heaven at FSG / Macmillan

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

In an alternative version of the poem, these lines read:

My guests besmear my new-penned line,
Or bang at the lamp and fall supine.

It is generally accepted that the revised, later version printed here is better. Note the concise compound adjective ‘new-penned’ and compound noun ‘lamp-glass’, characteristic Thomas Hardy. The fourth line has an appropriately fast rhythm, conveying the movement of the insects.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

One of the most significant lines in the play.

The word “done” and its variants (e.g. “undone”) appear 34 times in the play, often at crucial turning points in the plot–for example, when Macbeth is pondering the murder of Duncan:

If it were done when ‘tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly…

There is even an echo of “done” in “Duncan” and “Dunsinane” (the forest that later becomes integral to the plot), as well as in “dun” (see “pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell”).

These repetitions toll like bells, giving the impression of a series of fated actions–actions which, as Lady Macbeth despairingly says, are irreversible (“cannot be undone”).

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

This is the second use of “done” in the play (the Witches used it first). The word and its variants (e.g. “undone”) appear 34 times in the play, often at crucial turning points. There is also an echo of “done” in “Duncan” and “Dunsinane” (the forest that later becomes integral to the plot), as well as in “dun” (brown; see “pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell”).

These repetitions reinforce our impression of a series of fated and irrevocable acts–our sense that, as Lady Macbeth later says, “What’s done cannot be undone.”

Here is the first of those acts: the promotion of Macbeth to Thane of Cawdor, which sets the whole plot in motion.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

Composed around 1829, this is “one of several acrostics Poe wrote for the amusement of female admirers,” according to the Poe Society of Baltimore.

“Fancy an acrostic? Ladies? Any takers?”

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.