this has nothing to do with my fields list.
But I can't help but read it anyway.
When we got our new office, I just moved all of my books in without shelving them, since we had to get them out of our previous office pretty quickly, to make room for the new inhabitants. Today I finally got around to putting the books on shelves, and figuring out which books I might as well just return to the library. In doing so, I happened across the copy of John Manningham's diary that I checked out on a whim the *last* time we did Twelfth Night, so I could find his anecdote about the Middle Temple performance and read it in the original. "I should really return this," I thought, flipping through it. "After all, I'm not really going to read it..."
But now I'm a bit hooked, I have to say. I've never read a commonplace book before, but it's kind of fun. And if you're bored easily, the subject will have changed in a paragraph or two anyway. It's just really... immediate, everything jumbled together, from the domestic, to the legal, to the medical, to the religious.
For some unknown reason, this is the bit that's amused me most so far:
It was ordered by our bencheres that wee should eate noe breade but of 2 dayes old. Mr. Curle said it was a binding lawe, for stale breade is a great binder; but the order held not 3 dayes, and soe it bound not.
...Because...jokes about bread are hilarious? But I like this one, too:
"I came rawe into the world, but I would not goe out rosted," said one that ment to be noe martyre.
It's no "Play the man, Master Ridley," but there you are.
And one mournful little picture of domestic life, just to round things out:
My Cosen shee told me that when shee was first married to hir husband Marche, as shee rode behinde him, shee slipt downe, and he left hir behinde--never lookt back to take hir up; soe shee went soe long afoote that shee tooke it soe unkindely that she thought never to have come againe to him, but to have sought a service in some unknowne place, but he tooke hir at last.
Perhaps these are the sorts of "trivial fond records" that Hamlet proposes to wipe from his brain...
When we got our new office, I just moved all of my books in without shelving them, since we had to get them out of our previous office pretty quickly, to make room for the new inhabitants. Today I finally got around to putting the books on shelves, and figuring out which books I might as well just return to the library. In doing so, I happened across the copy of John Manningham's diary that I checked out on a whim the *last* time we did Twelfth Night, so I could find his anecdote about the Middle Temple performance and read it in the original. "I should really return this," I thought, flipping through it. "After all, I'm not really going to read it..."
But now I'm a bit hooked, I have to say. I've never read a commonplace book before, but it's kind of fun. And if you're bored easily, the subject will have changed in a paragraph or two anyway. It's just really... immediate, everything jumbled together, from the domestic, to the legal, to the medical, to the religious.
For some unknown reason, this is the bit that's amused me most so far:
It was ordered by our bencheres that wee should eate noe breade but of 2 dayes old. Mr. Curle said it was a binding lawe, for stale breade is a great binder; but the order held not 3 dayes, and soe it bound not.
...Because...jokes about bread are hilarious? But I like this one, too:
"I came rawe into the world, but I would not goe out rosted," said one that ment to be noe martyre.
It's no "Play the man, Master Ridley," but there you are.
And one mournful little picture of domestic life, just to round things out:
My Cosen shee told me that when shee was first married to hir husband Marche, as shee rode behinde him, shee slipt downe, and he left hir behinde--never lookt back to take hir up; soe shee went soe long afoote that shee tooke it soe unkindely that she thought never to have come againe to him, but to have sought a service in some unknowne place, but he tooke hir at last.
Perhaps these are the sorts of "trivial fond records" that Hamlet proposes to wipe from his brain...