Wednesday, June 01, 2011

The Proper Way to do a Memorable Quotes List

So, Stylist Magazine wrote me today with a link to their Shakespeare's Most Memorable Quotes article. I get lots of similar requests and often brush them off as linkbait. But this one is actually quite good, and worth a link, and I'll tell you why.


First, there's 40 of them, not just 10. So even those most of them are the same old classics we've heard a million times, there's plenty in there that you're not used to seeing make the cut - including selections from Merry Wives and Measure for Measure.


Each quote is cited - play, act and scene. I can't tell you how much it bothers me when I cruise through the various quote databases online and find quotes mistakenly attributed to Shakespeare, because people just blindly copy something from one place to another with no research or concern for quality.


There's a picture for just about all of them of an actual stage (or film) production. So part of the fun is recognizing which productions you've seen, and which actors you can spot. For a small handful they went with a drawing or book cover - I wonder why? And, having said that, does anybody know where that Lear image comes from? It's quite jarring.


Note as well, if it doesn't become obvious, that there's both rollover text as well as a slide show. So you can either hover your mouse over each image to check out the quote, or just click on one to zoom in, and then page through all of them. The user interface engineer in me appreciates that very much.


So, something for everybody. Even if you know all the quotes you can still have fun checking out the images. Somebody over there didn't just try to drum up some traffic by sticking Shakespeare's name on a bullet list. They actually put some research into it. Well done, Stylist!



2 comments:

Alexi said...

The King Lear photo is from the Greg Hicks production the RSC is doing currently.

I found it a little disconcerting that so few pictures actually matched the characters or situation described in the quote. Still, multiple pictures of David Tennant is a win in my book.

Also, they have a picture of David Oyelowo as Henry VI next to their quote from Henry IV, Part 2. I guess learning how to read Roman numerals is overrated. :)

Duane Morin said...

Yeah, the whole "That picture is from the play but that is not the character who is speaking" thing threw me as well, but I appreciated that they had the photos at all. I did not get the Henry mistake. :)