User talk:Jrmccall

Prince Hamlet
I have redirected your article to Hamlet, which has a section that discusses the character of the Prince in detail. Perhaps you can add your referenced observations to the established section instead. (aeropagitica) 22:13, 13 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi. I'm right in the middle of transferring the material on "Hamlet the Character" from the "Hamlet" page to this new Prince Hamlet page. The reason for this is consistency: characters in Shakespeare's plays (some quite minor!) typically have their own page. Shouldn't Prince Hamlet, the most well-known of them? — Jrmccall 22:21, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Is that a Wikiproject or a personal project; is there a Talk page discussion about giving characters their own articles? You can use the tag to show that it is a work-in-progress and avoid accidental redirects/deletions, etc. Regards, (aeropagitica) 22:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
 * It's a personal project. Perhaps I should consider doing it under the auspices of the Elizabethan Theater project. But I will investigate the Shakespeare Character talk page, and the inuse tag. I'm pretty new, so didn't know about that. Thank you. — Jrmccall 22:40, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Blank verse
Thanks for the note on my talk page. I haven't had time to go back and look at the details of my revert yet (I will soon) but I wanted to say a quick apology for any roughness in my handling of the matter. Quite possibly your edit caught me at a bad wiki moment. I'll look into the history of the page and get back to you with my thoughts. Stumps 06:11, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I've had a chance to look back at the page history. Here are my comments ...

The main problem with the edit you made was that you - perhaps inadvertently - removed a long paragraph on the history of blank verse, starting with Christopher Marlowe, and mentioning figures such as Wordsworth, Shelley and Tennyson. The removal of a block of text such as this, without any explanation, is usually interpreted as vandalism. (I now see you noted in your edit summary that you were moving the info, unfortunately it didn't work out that way, and unfortunately I didn't pay enough attention to your edit summary).

Then in the resulting version of the article the way the footnotes appeared they seemed incomplete. The problem - for example with the English department reference was that the footnote made it look like the department itself, rather than some specific publication by the department, was being referenced. That is, the second footnote just referred to 'The Department of English, University of Victoria, 1995' ... no mention of a particular publication. The third footnote read "Milton, 1935, preface called "The Verse"' which didn't seem to properly refer to an identifiable publication. The fourth footnote read simply "Deutsch, p. 22." which also did not refer to an identifiable publication.

So in summary, the edit removed a lot of good information, and replaced it with a small amount of partly off-track information with footnotes that seemed to be missing much vital information. Rather than try to salvage something from the addition I decided (probably due to lack of time) to simply revert. Stumps 11:52, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I agree that the article in its current state needs a lot of work. Stumps 14:15, 17 October 2006 (UTC)


 * (I'm not sure where we should be carrying on this discussion -- here or on your talk page, so I'll put a note there pointing here.) OK, guilty again, and properly reverted. Somehow I lost the history instead of moving it. But let me explain about the notes...


 * I'm trying to use a kind of conventional-footnote/Harvard style citation hybrid. If you look past the "Notes" section, where all those terse footnotes reside, to the "References" section, you will see a fuller citation of the books or web pages being referred to. The advantage to this style is ease of use, I guess. Some references may never have a corresponding footnote — may be in there just for general use because they're good — and others may have a dozen. (You can look at the Ur-Hamlet page for an example. Also, the full references are still, I notice, in the Blank Verse piece; just the footnotes, of course, are gone.) Anyway, as to the "English Department" business, on the second line (because it was so long) of the full reference to it was the URL pointing to the exact text I wanted to cite. This is, of course, not obvious unless you spot the URL and follow it down. It was a dippy little reference in this case, but in general I would like to be able to use stable, authoritative on-line sources over hard-to-find or costly books. "Authoritative" is the trick, tho.


 * Anyway, if you mis-read the meaning of the footnotes so must have many others. Maybe this idea is not so hot. I could use full-blown Harvard (a parenthesized terse note in line with the text, referring to a "References" entry), but that seems even more intrusive than footnotes. Or, I could do what many others do, which is put the full reference within the citation the first time, abbreviated ones for later notes, and duplicate the full reference in a "References" or "Bibliography" section. (The problem with that is that someone inserting a note using an already-referenced source would like to use a terse note, since the previously-written first note has the full reference. But if the new note precedes the old first one in the text, you wind up with a terse note before a full note.) What are your preferences?


 * I'm not sure what to do about citing sources, but I certainly feel that sources must be cited, and that there is too little of that in general. I'm new to this problem (and Wikipedia) but am starting to become fascinated by the whole business of authority — what sort of object can be considered authoritative, and how can we know? Anyway, blah, blah, blah. Thanks for correcting my screw-up, and feel free to bring me up short as you feel it's necessary.


 * (I agree that the Blank Verse page needs work. Actually, of course, it's English blank verse, and something ought to emphasize that. Also, I mean, it is such a prevalent approach, that moderns like Frost should be highlighted. I suppose the iambic pentameter page could take care of the scansion technicalities, but something should be here, too.) — Jrmccall 23:33, 17 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree about the need for footnotes and sources ... two pages I've contributed to extensively are Vincent van Gogh and Alfred Kreymborg, which illustrate my general approach, although I haven't as yet thought through a well reasoned style. I'm sorry I missed the references section, and the point that the footnotes referred to it. In general I think that approach is fine. I think - in my defence - the inadvertent blanking of a good paragraph - led me to a hasty decision to revert.


 * I think the article should not restrict itself to English blank verse, but include references to - for example - Słowacki's and Norwid's 'wiersz biały' in Polish, the 'Белый стих' of Bobylev (Bobylyov) in Russian, the German adoption of the English style, particularly in the works of Schiller, Goethe, Grillparzer, Hebbel, Kleist etc... The article already makes a passing reference to the Slavic bylina genre. We should expand the discussion of origins to mention Trissino's Sofonisba and Rucellai's Le api and that it is believed Rucellai coined the term versi sciolti. Clearly the section on "English blank verse" will be the largest, and may in time grow large enough to have its own article.


 * (I'll paste this last paragraph into Talk:Blank verse so others can respond to these suggestions as well) Stumps 08:15, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Hamlet texts
Do you have any comments on this discussion?
 * Yep. — Jrmccall 22:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)