iWorth's Blog:

In Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck is an interesting character. He is the servant fairy, but he is a different kind of fairy from fairy King and Queen Oberon and Titania. Although he plays the part of Oberon's servant and messenger, he is more like the goblins that appeared in fairy stories. In the play he also called Robin Goodfellow and Hobgoblin and this character was a mischievous fellow, well known in many fairy tales for the pranks he played. Puck plays jokes on ordinary village folk. Sometimes he upsets the dairymaids by skimming the cream from the milk or by getting in the dairy churn so that they cannot turn the cream into butter. On other occasions, he spoils beer which is being brewed, just for fun. Another favorite trick is to transform himself into a crab-apple hidden inside a jug of ale. Then when an old grandmother sips the ale, he bobs against her lips so that she spills it. His best 'joke', however, is to whip away a stool from...

The Crusader Shortly after being crowned, King Richard (1189 - 1199) decided to become a crusader.  Not much good came out of the Crusades except the English learnt about luxury goods such as silks, spices and rice and how to build bigger boats in which to carry them.  On his way home from Palestine, King Richard was captured by the Duke of Austria and thrown into prison. No one in England knew where he was. A legend says that a close friend of Richard’s, a minstrel called Blondel, toured round the castles of Europe looking for him. One day, high up in his prison tower, the king heard Blondel below singing a song the minstrel had once written for him. Richard bawled out the chorus, and Blondel knew he'd found the right place. He rushed home to tell the English nobles, who happily paid a huge ransom to get their king back. The Magna Carta King John (ruled 1199 - 1216) was Richard the Lionheart's youngest brother. He was cruel, greedy monarch, and his barons got so fed up ...

Juliet is a young girl, only 14 years of age. Romeo is a person who rushes into things without thinkings. Lord Capulet is a stubborn old man. And he can also be short-tempered. Lady Capulet is much younger than her husband. She is an aristocratic lady, and not very warm-hearted. Friar Laurence is a priest, he should not have married the lovers in secret. Is it wrong to deceive the parents of Romeo and Juliet? Mercutio is always talking and joking. He is also Loyal and honourable. Tybalt is a quarrelsome young man. He is a troublemaker who loves fighting. He is the person who keeps the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets alive. The Nurse is a down-to-earth, rather stupid woman. Paris is a handsome young man, pleasant and courteous. Because he is a cousin of the Prince of Verona, he is a most eligible suitor for Juliet.

Elizabeth I is the second daughter of King Henry VIII. As a princess, she doesn't think woman is a weaker sex, she said: "I know that I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, bu I have the heart and stomach of a king..." After she succeeded Queen Marry, who is her elder sister, the successor of King Edward VI, the son of King Henry VIII, Elizabeth always maintained high standards at her court. She even refused to employ anybody who was ugly - a young man was once denied employment because he had a front tooth missing. Elizabeth hated being disobeyed. Her ladies-in-waiting were expected to ask her permission before they married. Nobody was allowed to sit while she stood, and anyone addressing the Queen had to do so on bend knee. Even though England was not a rich country, Elizabeth insisted that her coronation appear grand and extravagant. She wanted to show people that she was the rightful heir to the throne. Elizabeth never married. When Elizabeth was a teenag...

In Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, one interesting character is Hyppolyta, who married the Duke of Athens at the end of the play. Hyppolyta was the queen of a tribe of female warriors called the Amazons. According to ancient stories, the Duke Theseus went to war with the Amazons and after he had defeated them in battle he fell in love with their queen. Although this has never been proved even in the myths, but it has been widely believed that Amazon warriors cut their right breasts off to make shooting a bow and arrow easier. But it seemed that this horrible practice might not applied to their queen, I wonder how could a woman won the love of the Duke of Athens with only one breast?

William Shakespeare's family had been humble farmers in Warwickshire since the Middle Ages. The William's father decided to better himself and move to the town of Stratford, only a few miles from the family's home. John Shakespear set up business as a glove maker, his works prospered and he was soon able to buy two houses in Henley Street, Stratford - and it was in one of these that Shakespeare was born in 1564. William Shakespearmarried Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a Stratford neighbour, who was eight years older than him . In 1583, his daughter Susanna was born and in 1585 the twins Hamnet and Judith. So by the age of 21, William had not only a wife but three children support. Shakespeare went to London and becomes and actor. The reason why he went to London and when in not certain. One story relates that it was because he was caught poaching deer and rabbits on Sir Thomas Lucy's estate, Charlecote Park, near Stratford and forced to flee to the city. He met and f...

These paragraphs are excerpted from a cyclist's diary who lived in Derby in the end of 19th Century not long after the bicycle had just been invented, the poetic seasonal message, which, after Shakespearean flights, required a come-down of pure bathos: It will be some time before the leaves of the forest trees begin to unroll, but the hedgerows are already green, and the floral procession has begun.  The scented violet and the pallid primrose have made their appearance, and the wayside bank is an index of coming beauty. Spotted and shiny arums, deeply indented wild parsley, purple-veined dock, soft-grey foxgloves, leaves of ground ivies, of celandine, wood-violets, dandelion, jack-by-the-hedge, herb-robert all foretell the return of  the wild flowers to their accustomed quarters. Springtime has come, and now is the time for cyclists to put a girdle round as much of the earth as they possibly can. By May the call to the narrow saddle had obviously been heard abundantly: A...