It’s worth stopping to consider what the Doc Martin creators did next. One thing we know they did not do, for whatever reasons, was go back to Simon Mayle. They needed a writer who could think in terms of serial television storytelling by creating a world that could hold a supporting cast of regular characters causing trouble for the protagonist yet also sparking off their own stories. The stories had to be involving and promise change without actually delivering it (if the castaways leave Gilligan's Island, the show is over). And the show had to have a “voice” to go with its “look,” as everyone knew from the start that Port Isaac would be the show’s chief visual asset.
A Facelift for Shakespeare
A new translation effort aims to make all of Shakespeare’s plays comprehensible to today’s audiences
Source: A Facelift for Shakespeare
I once interviewed an actor playing Hamlet who preferred using Shakespeare's language in a production where the rest of the cast played a revised text. He felt the text was perfectly understandable if it was capably played, and that removing Shakespeare's language constrained him from fully inhabiting the character.
I sympathize with McWhorter's points insofar as reading the plays; but if I'm watching a performance, then I think the music of the words, and the actors' skill (movement, intonation, characterization) will convey the meaning.
But the question remains: who would fardels bear??
The Price We Pay for Sitting Too Much
For every half-hour working in an office, people should sit for 20 minutes, stand for eight minutes and then move around and stretch for two minutes, Dr. Hedge recommends, based on a review of studies that he has presented at corporate seminars and expects to publish. He says standing for more than 10 minutes tends to cause people to lean, which can lead to back problems and other musculoskeletal issues.
The Price We Pay for Sitting Too Much
Pre-Med: The Doc Martin Movies
Telling the story of Doc Martin is a complicated business from the start: do we begin with the first movie, Saving Grace (2000), and then watch the two movies that followed-- Doc Martin (2001) and Legend of the Cloutie (2003)?
Or should we instead watch them as part of the character's chronology -- that is, start with the prequel Doc Martin and its sequel, Legend of the Cloutie, that lead in, kinda sorta, to Saving Grace?
In a way, it doesn't really matter since the movies have no narrative overlap with the TV series. Yes, there's a Doc Martin. Yes, there's a Cornish fishing village. Yes, there are a few key creative people behind the scenes who remain constant. But after that, the similarities stop dead. If you're coming to the movies after bingeing on the TV show, it's like glimpsing the face of a long-ago friend from a long way off, then realizing when you get closer they look nothing like you remembered.
But put the TV show to one side for now -- there's even a marked difference between Saving Grace and the two Doc Martin movies that followed. The Doc Martin idea that created an international television hit went through lots of changes from his first appearances onscreen.
Entitled
From Elisa Gabbert's Title TK:
Another quality I dislike in titles: a rhythmic sing-songiness, as in Then We Came to the End. All the Light We Cannot See. I Know This Much Is True. (Wally Lamb used the exact same three-foot iamb pattern twice: The Hour I First Believed.) These titles are suspiciously regular in their meter. I distrust them. As far as meter goes I think spondees make for the best, snappiest titles: White Noise. Jane Eyre. Bleak House.
Gabbert is talking of book titles here and then moves on to titling poems. When I wrote fiction and poetry, I always preferred lifting a line or word or group of words from within the work itself. I wanted the titles to arouse a little curiosity in the potential reader, who might then hear the click of the box when they read those words again in context. I also wanted something that sounded a little elevated without being too pretentious.
Though I adore Chekhov's work, so many of his stories' titles struck me as flat: The Duel, The Student, The Wife. I was perfectly happy for his stories to be written plainly; but I craved more memorable titles. Of which, to be fair, there are many: Ward 6, The Lady with the Dog, The Black Monk. His plays' titles adhere to Gabbert's terse preferences and I think cannot be improved on: Uncle Vanya. Three Sisters. The Cherry Orchard. All you need to know about those plays are in their titles.
My friend, the playwright Karyn Traut (for whom I have worn a bra and a muumuu-type thing onstage, though thankfully not in the same production), shared this tip from a class I took with her many years ago: The title is the poem of the play. I like that idea -- not only a summing-up, more than a declarative description. Connotation, not denotation.
Another quality I dislike in titles: a rhythmic sing-songiness, as in Then We Came to the End. All the Light We Cannot See. I Know This Much Is True. (Wally Lamb used the exact same three-foot iamb pattern twice: The Hour I First Believed.) These titles are suspiciously regular in their meter. I distrust them. As far as meter goes I think spondees make for the best, snappiest titles: White Noise. Jane Eyre. Bleak House.
Weasel syntax
Uncertain Terms | The Smart Set
The British technology journalist Ian Betteridge is credited with the adage “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” I want to make a similar claim: Any question at the end of an essay can be answered with the word yes. (Same goes, most likely, for poems, short stories, etc.) The question is a kind of weasel syntax that lets the author have it both ways: make a gesture toward profundity without having to commit to it.
Jonathan Williams on brevity
Around the time of QUANTULUMCUMQUE, he summed it up to me thus: ‘Francis Bacon the painter said, “What I really want very, very much to do is the thing that Paul Valéry said, ‘To give the sensation without the boredom of its conveyance.’” And I think that’s why the things I do are usually so abbreviated and quick.’