My friend sent me this, and because I am a huge English geek I thought it was awesome:

If Shakespeare Had Written the Three Little Pigs

My favourite part is when he runs around squealing like a pig.

I took a Shakespeare class last semester and I’m currently taking a class on Medieval Literature, so I can definitely relate to how many freaking words they have. I laughed when he said that Shakespeare had a vocabulary of fifty-four thousand and we have a vocabulary of about three thousand, because I honestly believe it. (Does that make us less smart, like John Branyan says? Or have we simply become more concise? I like to believe the latter – therefore Internet speak, which is very short, should sound the smartest of all. My theory is rapidly disintegrating.) But even though Shakespeare made me bang my head against a wall last semester, I have to admit that he has a way with words. All the extra “ithers” and “thees” and “thous” make it sound so much fancier than “Hey dude, what’s up?” Wouldn’t we all sound so much cooler if we spoke like Shakespeare?

Me: Pray tell, whither are thee going, dear friend?

Friend: …

Okay, so maybe not. However, they did have some pretty awesome insults back in the day. I’m reading a work called Piers Plowman for my Medieval Literature class, and one lady calls the narrator a “doting dolt.” That is totally what I’m calling the next person I get into an argument with.

Someone asked me the other day why I like that “old crap”, as they so eloquently put it. It was a fair question, since I was complaining bitterly about how I didn’t understand a word of what I was reading. I’ll admit, I used to be convinced that my only literary boyfriend was Modern Literature, and that we were destined to have a beautiful life together. But then in 2010 I took a class on medieval literature with a professor at SFU named David Coley. Simply put, he made me fall in love with another man (Stop that thinking right now. We’re still going with the metaphor here.). I thought it was going to be extremely boring, but he brought it to life for me – hence why I am now taking the 300 level class with him. But in all honesty, I think it’s really interesting to study where our modern day works come from. I mean, everything we have now has been built on this foundation of hundreds of old writers, and even though they speak absolutely atrocious English it’s still fascinating to see how they used to think about things.

That being said, medieval literature can still cause me to put my cheek on my desk and quietly wonder why I am pursuing this crazy fancy of majoring/minoring/something-ing in English. Then I remember that I also have to finish my coding homework, and I sit back up and resume reading. Speaking of which, I really should get back to deciphering their gibberish. Away!