Romeo and Juliet

They did what? They thought doing that would be a good idea? He figured that would be a good way to handle that situation? She is how old? For how long have they known each other again? Her behaviour was not the least bit suspicious to you people?

Some of the questions I was asking myself while reading it. The play is stock full of fools and morons.

It’s easy to read; much, much easier than King Lear. And it was quite fun to read, probably at least in part because the actions of and decisions made by most of the people involved (not just the title characters) are so completely outrageous to a (…well, ‘this’…) ‘modern mind’. If you don’t want to read it and/or don’t want to read a longish (featured) wikipedia-article about it, tvtropes has a very neat plot description and trope collection here – it’s quite easy to summarize… Arguably one could add love makes you dumb and love makes you crazy to the trope list. Regarding my ‘the play is stock full of fools and morons’-comment, this is not just my opinion – on tvtropes they put it like this: “It’s probably easier to list the characters who don’t act like idiots…”

The wikiquote article is here.

King Lear

“Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” (Mark Twain)

Well, I read it today. Plenty of quotes here, no need for me to repeat them here. I liked the last half better than the first half, but it was tough to get through. I started reading it a few years ago, but back then I gave up on it pretty quickly. I’m pretty sure I think All’s Well That Ends Well for me was an easier read (though it is also quite a bit shorter, which helps…).

Actually it was right there in the Wikipedia article all along, but I didn’t know this: “The first Blackadder is named after the treacherous Edmond from Shakespeare’s King Lear.” Makes sense now. Though his name is Edmund.

I plan on reading Romeo and Juliet tomorrow, mostly just to see what all the fuss is about.

All’s Well That Ends Well

From this book. No, not exactly that one – but the image of the book in question looks very much like it. Let’s just say that my version is not in German (..who reads a translation of a work like this, that seems to me to defeat the whole purpose of reading it?), and according to this link it was printed some years earlier, in 1958 – but the image looks identical. I think that when you read a play written more than 400 years ago, it somehow adds to the experience to read an older print version – I don’t know, maybe I’m just weird. I remember having a not too dissimilar feeling back when I read Tolstoy’s collected works in a 1928-edition some years ago.

According to wikipedia it’s one of Shakespeare’s ‘lesser-known plays’, and in Hodek’s introduction he calls it a ‘very difficult – though rewarding – play’. I was surprised how long it took me to read it; in the version I have it is but 26 pages long, but I think it took me more than two hours to read it (3? I don’t know, I wasn’t paying attention to the time). A few quotes from the play:

i. “Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead; excessive grief the enemy of the living.”

ii. “Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able thine enemy
Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life’s key: be check’d for silence,
But never tax’d for speech.”

iii. “There’s little can be said in’t; ’tis
against the rule of nature. To speak on the
part of virginity is to accuse your mothers;
which is most infallible disobedience. He that
hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders
itself; and should be buried in highways, out
of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress
against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much
like a cheese; consumes itself to the very par-
ing, and so dies with feeding his own stomach.
Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made
of self-love; which is the most inhibited sin in
the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose
but lose by’t: out with’t!”

iv. “her father bequeathed
her to me; and she herself, without other ad-
vantage, may lawfully make title to as much
love as she finds: there is more owing her than
is paid; and more shall be paid her than she’ll
demand.”

v. “war is no strife
To the dark house and the detested wife.”

vi. “you have answered to his re-
putation with the duke, and to his valour: what
is his honesty?
Par. He will steal, sir, an egg out of a
cloister; for rapes and ravishments he parallels
Nessus. He professes not keeping of oaths;
in breaking them he is stronger than Hercules.
He will lie, sir, with such volubility that you
would think truth were a fool: drunkenness is
his best virtue, for he will be swine-drunk; and
in his sleep he does little harm, save to his bed-
clothes about him; but they know his conditions
and lay him in straw.”

vii. “All’s well that ends well: still the fine’s the
crown:
Whate’er the course, the end is the renown.”