Tom Rutter

@obscuredrama

Shakespeare/Marlowe/playing companies/science/early modern drama, University of Sheffield

290 Following710 Followers262 Posts

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Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· 9d

Early instance of the verb 'to google' (Lemnius, Touchstone of Complexions, 1576)

Neyther are they incited to these immoderate pleasures through reason or auy well stayed discretion, but by impotencie of mynde and wylfull affection, digressing and swaruyng from modestye, temperaunce and moderacion: y• lack wherof googleth theyr vnstayed heades, and caryeth them into many inordinate pranckes of childishe insolencie.

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· 25d

Cognitive dissonance on the front page

The Times: Net zero 'risks blackouts' above picture of France aflame

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· 26d

Spot the difference between (1) what I actually went to the library for, (2) what I got distracted by (it's summer, right?)

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· May 27

Google's response on Terence Hawkes, heroically failing to accept that there might be more than one place called Birmingham in the world

Born 13 May 1932, Birmingham, Alabama, United States

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· May 12

I can't believe I'm writing a gloss on this

Text reads 'Spending his manlie marrow in her armes'

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· May 8

Not, like, low level teasing

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· May 5

Absolute mic drop here:

LAFEW Go too sir, you were beaten in Italy for picking
a kernell out of a Pomgranat, you are a vagabond, and
no true traueller: you are more sawcie with Lordes and
honourable personages, then the Commission of your
birth and vertue giues you Heraldry. You are not worth
another word, else I’de call you knaue. I leaue you.
Exit

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Apr 10

I can't be the first one to play this game with the latest @lrb.co.uk

Reading the LRB, exposing the words 'Am I perhaps in Italy?', in front of the Arch of Titus

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Mar 20

Just when you think you're completely immune to clickbait

Text: BBC's Professor Hannah Fry gives chilling warning about Pringles

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Mar 4

Nice to be able to use this picture of a rolwagen (roll-wagon) in my _Country Wife_ seminar

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Feb 24

Unsolicited google translation

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Feb 10

Nice bit of editorial bitchiness from Lewis Theobald here

'This is a nonsensical Alteration of Mr. Pope's From the old Copies, in which, I doubt not, but he thought him self very wise and sagacious.'

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Feb 3

Well, he has been in the news I guess

LinkedIn: Tom, follow Bill Gates -- Co-chair at Gates Foundation

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Jan 12

My workflow planning model is getting increasingly sophisticated.

Word doc reads 'Do this shit today, idiot'.

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Jan 5

Some competition

Book title page: Bowels Opened, by Richard Sibbes

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Nov 14

Met office showing heavy rain, 14 November

A still from a video for the Guns & Roses song, November Rain. Slash shreds a Les Paul before a desert church.

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Nov 13

'legegs'

Dialogue from All’s Well That Ends Well in which the word ‘legs’ is amusingly (to me, anyway) spelled.

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Oct 29

Annual whiteboard sketch of invention, nature's child, fleeing stepdame study's blows

crude stick figures depict Astrophil and Stella 1

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Oct 14

Did a Triffid design this notebook?

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Oct 7

Remembering when, in the wake of a conversation in which I questionably proposed ideological overlap between Aphra Behn and Jilly Cooper, I produced this mashup:

APHRA BEHN: ROVERS. In the style of a Jilly Cooper cover, a woman (head out of shot) holds a lead on the end of which is a dog (only tail is visible)

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Jun 19

Dowden on Shakespeare gets a bad press these days but this jab at Coleridge hits home

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Jun 13

Acceptable coinages, Y/N?

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· May 24

Caught in the act: this is who keeps turning the movement-sensitive light switch under my bathroom mirror on and off.

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· May 9

With perfect timing for the new papacy, look what was waiting for me in the mail room when I came in today @malonesociety.bsky.social

Malone Society edition of The Devil's Charter by Barnabe Barnes

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Apr 10

Flyong the @srsrensoc.bsky.social flag at the Palazzo Pitti

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Mar 13

Pleasing timeline juxtaposition

Post including a picture of a 5000-year-old Iranian statuette of a mountain goat followed by post by The Mountain Goats

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Mar 3

I always enjoy my seminar in @uoscollections.bsky.social , especially when students find rude typos in the running headers of canonical texts:

In modern spelling: The first boob of The Fairy Queen

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Feb 17

No wonder AI's so clever, it lives in the future

Text reads: AI Overview: The 2025 National Student Survey (NSS) closed on Wednesday, April 30, 2025. [...]

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Jan 21

I felt unfettered & alive

Tom Rutter@obscuredrama· Jan 17

Thanks, Bloomsbury, for unleashing my afternoon earworm