A blogger demonstrated that gzip, primed with a corpus of Shakespeare text, can 'continue' a prompt by finding byte sequences that compress most efficiently against its sliding window, producing text that is semi-coherent but clearly reflects patterns from the source material. The experiment was inspired by a paper arguing that prediction and compression are mathematically equivalent, since both rely on assigning probabilities to what comes next.
A literary essay examines the Tudor monarchy that followed Richard III, arguing that Henry VII's rise and the subsequent Tudor reign directly influenced Shakespeare's history plays, partly functioning as pro-Tudor propaganda. It recounts how Henry VII secured his throne by defeating Yorkist rebels at the Battle of Stoke Field after marrying Elizabeth of York, and frames the Tudors as arguably England's most consequential royal dynasty.
An essay examines why Shakespeare's Macbeth, despite its cultural notoriety and superstition-laden reputation, is uniquely difficult to produce well onstage. The piece argues that unlike 'actor-proof' scripts that survive weak performances or direction, Macbeth demands that every element—acting, design, pacing—align perfectly or the production collapses. Central to this difficulty is the play's embedded supernatural elements, starting with the witches, which set a challenging tone that productions must sustain throughout.
A language essay from The Dead Language Society examines how the everyday word 'weird' descends from Old English 'wyrd,' a term meaning fate or destiny that appears in poems like Beowulf and The Wanderer. The piece traces the shift from wyrd's grim, inexorable sense of 'that which happens' to its modern casual usage describing odd smells or strange coworkers.
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