Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Merry Xmas to all, including dread sovereigns
Woke up at 8:15 with the predictable hangover and hazy recollections of running around Don Quixote at nigh on 3 in the a.m. on some damn fool present challenge. Got stuck into the first of my literary stocking-fillers: Edward III: a new play by Shakespeare.
(For those scratching their heads and wondering if they have forgotten how to read: the play itself is NOT new. However, Shakespeare has only recently been confirmed as the author by learned beards of literature.)
The play itself seems Shakespearean enough: the French and Scottish take an absolute pounding.
The title character, King Edward, is everything one might expect of royalty: capricious, lecherous and, best of all, completely above the law.
The KING is having his secretary, LODOWICK, write a poem.
KING: Forget not to set down how passionate,
How heart-sick and full of languishment
Her beauty makes me.
LODOWICK: Write I to a woman?
KING: What beauty else could triumph on me?
Or who but women do our love-lays greet?
What, thinkst thou I did bid thee praise a horse?
***
It hardly needs to be said that the poem being composed is not to his wife: it's to someone else's wife.
(For those scratching their heads and wondering if they have forgotten how to read: the play itself is NOT new. However, Shakespeare has only recently been confirmed as the author by learned beards of literature.)
The play itself seems Shakespearean enough: the French and Scottish take an absolute pounding.
The title character, King Edward, is everything one might expect of royalty: capricious, lecherous and, best of all, completely above the law.
The KING is having his secretary, LODOWICK, write a poem.
KING: Forget not to set down how passionate,
How heart-sick and full of languishment
Her beauty makes me.
LODOWICK: Write I to a woman?
KING: What beauty else could triumph on me?
Or who but women do our love-lays greet?
What, thinkst thou I did bid thee praise a horse?
***
It hardly needs to be said that the poem being composed is not to his wife: it's to someone else's wife.
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"It hardly needs to be said that the poem being composed is not to his wife: it's to someone else's wife."
But of course.
I take back my hate of the Bard.
--vmm
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But of course.
I take back my hate of the Bard.
--vmm
# posted by 
: 1:05 AM
: 1:05 AM << Home
