“To keep the drowsy corrector awake...”
"Teach & D-Lite" campaign continued...
Some of the most eye-(s)c(r)atching answers1 from the semester test.
Shakespeare and his Midsummer Night's Dream suffered the following abuses:
Shekspiere [a la French fashion]
Sheaksper
Sheakspaire [probably to rhyme it with “despair”]
Mit dream summer night
Misdemenour Dream
Ordon [instead of Oberon]
Bolkan [which, I presume, was meant to be Bottom]
dunkey [instead of ass, or donkey]
Metaphysical poets could have written the following (if they'd been metaphysical enough):
“A Valeditation Mourning”
“Vestitation Mourning” [I'm guessing that both of these refer to John Donne's “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”]
G. Hubert [i.e. George Herbert]
“The Goy of His Mistress” [most likely referring to Andrew Marvell's “To His Coy Mistress”]
Apparently, in Paradise Lost (Book IV) Satan turns himself into a heaven, but another student claims that in fact Satan turns himself into a Satan (a neat trick, don't you think?).
Alexander Pope should have considered writing “Rape of the Look”, but instead he was busy creating “Nature methodolized”. By the same token Swift should have been more careful in writing his titles -- “A Modern Proposal” was some student's modest proposal.
Talking of proposals and propositions – Pamela (Richardson's epistolary novel, not the "silly-cone" starlet) ends in a Hollywood-like fashion, that is the protagonists get merried, or rather Squire B. marriages Pamela.
Finally, a quote from a test question:
Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled, and others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs, and the fore parts of their legs and feet; but the rest of their bodies was bare, so that I might see their skins, which were of a brown buff colour.
The question was as follows: --> Who is being described here?
Some answers: Liliputs, Lillyputes, magic horses which were founded by Gulliver, Adam and Eve, Dinosaures, Titana and Oberon, Tezeus and Hypolita, Hermia, cavaliers, John Donne, Pamela.
An interesting composite picture, isn't it?
1Original spelling of the answers has been preserved.
