these are not tears! we are vomiting from our eyes!

[angevin2]

So I've been reading this eighteenth-century Milton criticism -- those of you who know a lot about this sort of thing, it's Joseph Addison's remarks from The Spectator (dated December 1711-January 1712). It's very boring and reminds me (as if I needed it) of why I can't abide neoclassicism: it feels rather like carving perhaps the greatest epic

Comments

[westerly]

I actually quite enjoy Julius Caesar and am very much looking forward to the upcoming production starring Denzel Washington as Brutus and Colm Feore as Cassius. Mmmm...

[angevin2]

Ooh, that does sound good. Who's putting it on?

Caesar is one of those plays that I really ought to like better than I do, since it's full of things that appeal to me. I don't know, though -- it's just always sort of left me cold. But I'm willing to give it another chance. (Particularly as I know it deserves better than the treatment I saw on Sunday...)

[westerly]

As far as I can tell, it's no specific company, but producers saying "Wow, Denzel Washington wants to do Shakespeare. Let's cash in!" And I, for one, am happy with that.

[macmauve]

mmn, Colm Feore!!! I don't know why he didn't sing in Chicago, he's done musicals! I saw him as the most fantastic "Pirate King" in the Pirates of Penzance at the Stratford Festival in 1992 or something like that! Very attractive and very good actor - would love to see him in Shakespeare - when is the Julius Caesar?

[jidimus]

I have all these great quotes I forget that I've said. I suppose I ought to start writing these things down ;)

[angevin2]

I used that one as an EI sig for a while. It really does describe neoclassicism very well. ;)

Hehehehe

[wattie]

I remember that night. It was, as I recall, three am when we tried to do the D&D thing. Unless of course you've done it before and I am merely one of those who have aided and abetted your Bard-Geek existence.

Re: Hehehehe

[angevin2]

No, you thought aright. (Well, I did ask rov for input later, but we started it. ;) )

[cheshyre]

This is not as geeky as the time I tried to discern D&D alignments for the characters, either. I am a sad, sad individual. But I gave that one up pretty quickly as they're all far too multifaceted for it.

No criticism on that pursuit from me. I once assigned Elizabethan historical and literary figures to Hogwarts houses!

[angevin2]

Oh, fun!

I don't know about Dudley either. He seems like a mix of Hufflepuff and Slytherin traits -- i.e. loyalty and ambition.

Sorting is easier than D&D alignment, so I went ahead and tried my hand at sorting the major figures in Shakespeare's histories, because I am that big a geek:

Gryffindor: John of Gaunt (in the play; the historical Gaunt was totally Slytherin), Henry V (though Harry Monmouth, like Harry Potter, has strong Slytherin tendencies as well), Hotspur, Edward IV, Sir John Talbot, Henry of Richmond (also Slytherin historically)
Ravenclaw: Richard II, Henry VI
Hufflepuff: Edmund of York, Humphrey of Gloucester
Slytherin: Henry IV, Northumberland, Margaret of Anjou (hrm, does Beauxbatons have a devious house?), Richard of York, Warwick, and of course Richard III

(Pretty much everybody in the first tetralogy would be in Slytherin, tbh.)

I'm sure I'm missing some important people. I tried to sort Falstaff but couldn't figure out where to put him. He's got the aforementioned Slytherin/Hufflepuff thing going... ;)

[roxulasbride]

I loath "Paradise Lost"

[angevin2]

Oh, I love PL! But it took about four times through it before it really started to click for me...

[roxulasbride]

I've only read it once and now the copy is way at the back of all my piles of books!

PL / Addison

[jeremy_m_c]

First off. "LOATHE". With an "e