Today I'll be taking a detour from my usual theme,
Shakespeare as a product, to pursue Shakespeare in a more creative direction. The purpose of this post will be to explore another side of Shakespeare and complete one of the requirements for my
Learning Outcomes.
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| Alice Anne |
Since my wife and I just had our first child, names have been on my mind a lot recently. In fact, the name we chose, Alice Anne (first and middle names, respectively), happens to have a close connection to Shakespeare.
I don't think that
Alice has too much to do with Shakespeare, aside from a character in
Henry IV, but
Anne certainly meant a lot to him. Many people recall that
Anne was also the first name of Shakespeare's wife. I can't say that we intentionally chose the same name for our daughter, but I'm pleased with the coincidence and the opportunity to blog about it. The name
Anne appeared in one of Shakespeare's plays,
Merry Wives of Windsor. Although I have not read the play, I understand that Anne was a beautiful young mistress that is sought after by several suitors throughout the play. It makes sense that based on his personal interests, Shakespeare would depict Anne as the desirable, sought-after woman. I can't say yet whether my Alice Anne will have the same effect on men.
For fun, I found a list of all of the names that appeared in Shakespeare's plays. I don't have any grand intentions of researching the names and understanding the significance or symbolism of them, but I thought it would be fun to scan through and see the variety that Shakespeare incorporated. I created a Word Cloud from the names, which you can view by clicking on the miniature below:
