Tarlton Transcription

imageAfter transcribing the life of Richard Tarlton, the text has allowed me to get a fuller understanding of how much different life was at that time. Simple things like spelling and grammar has changed dramatically since then. For example, in Tarlton’s time, an “e” was added to the end of a lot of words, but today the “e” has gotten cut off. At first, the text was difficult to translate, but once I was able to figure out certain letters I was able to make connections to form whole words. For example, I could not make the distinction between f’s and s’s, or u’s and v’s until after I got my revisions back. Once I knew what certain symbols or letters meant I was able to transcribe the text much quicker. The most difficult part of transcribing Tarlton’s jests was that some words back then are not even words today. Although I would know what the letters are I would have to look up the old definitions of the words to help me comprehend  the text. Another challenging part was the grammar and punctuation. It was tough to understand what were proper nouns and what weren’t. An example from the text is “Gentlewoman” being capitalized, however it is not a proper noun.

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If Tarlton were alive today, I would want to know what made him decide to be a comedian of his nature. Since he often personally attacked so many people, I would wonder if he has ever gotten any threats or attacks during his performances. It fascinates me how he thought of jokes attacking audience members, and the audience actually enjoyed it. Also, he dealt with different classes of people from the farmers to the queen, so I would want to ask him how he changed up his comedy strategy to accommodate different types of people.