How has the experience of reading and watching Macbeth altered, for better or for worse, your impression of reading Shakespeare?

faith or loyalty when pledged in a solemn agreement or undertaking.

there are several different forms of presenting this; each has a very specific format. plays have a very simple format; teleplays, for television shows, or screenplays, for movies, have more complex and strict rules for formatting.

drama

the first of these to be written for the express purpose of being performed were created by the greeks. many of our modern terms derive from greek origins.

comedy

in the greek sense, a play that doesn't end in death. in modern usage, refers to a play that is humorous.

tragedy

in the greek sense, a play that ends with the death of at least one of the main characters. in modern usage, refers to a play that doesn't have a happy ending.

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serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.