Pavlos

Hallo, Quanon. Hope you're feeling better! Best wishes.

I thought you might like this. It's more from Purcell's King Arthur, to be more specific a rather peculiar production of it by a French company. The singing's good, though.

That's just not nice...

It occurs to me that

ipsae lacte domum referent distenta capellae

ubera [...]

is begging to be misread as 'the breasts shall return home, their goats swollen with milk'; just sayin'.

Whig! WHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG!

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Hey Spamuel! Haven't talked to you in a long time. How are things going?

Stop speaking Welsh!

Watched There Will Be Blood, yet? Oh, and since our recent exchanges seem to demand it, a quotation:

O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts;

Possess them not with fear; take from them now

The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers

Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,

O, not to-day, think not upon the fault

My father made in compassing the crown!

I Richard's body have interred anew;

And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears

Than from it issued forced drops of blood:

Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,

Who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up

Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built

Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests

Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do;

Though all that I can do is nothing worth,

Since that my penitence comes after all,

Imploring pardon. My brother Gloucester's voice? Ay;

I know thy errand, I will go with thee:

The day, my friends and all things stay for me.

Spam, if you were an handbag, what colour would you be?

"Beatus ille qui procul negotiis,

ut prisca gens mortalium,

paterna rura bubus exercet suis

solutus omni faenore

neque excitatur classico miles truci

neque horret iratum mare

forumque vitat et superba civium

potentiorum limina."

To that your question I pose another:

Does this thrice blasted, thrice twisted tail

Exist at Hecate's whim or will? Ought or naught?

Feminine the line creeps; so must I too.

Cats may mew but the dog will have his due.

*Thunder and lightning*

Oh I'd rather be at Oxford than St. John's; who are Hatfield College? Why should we point the cannon northwards against the Scot? Norway begs command of Denmark's oilerous gold.

The portents are clear.

*Ravel Puzzlewell theme plays*

Let this acceptance take, Sabre!

Along with the Lion King it's always been mine too .

So merrily, forever apart.

fracti bello [...]

Laocoon ardens [...]

quidquid id est; timeo Danaos et dona ferentis [...]

o lux Dardaniae! [...]

There, I quoted the entirety of Aeneid II.

Spam, 'tis the state of negative capability; that awareness that not everything can be resolved into a unity, that not all can be known. Therefore, we content ourselves by studying the (to borrow a phrase from Hazlitt) "perfect eyebrows" of existence's body. Yeah... I'm deep... 'n'... stuff

Things are British Romantic Age 1776-1832, Spam. How are you? Philosophising? Living? Loving? Searching? Are you better, wiser, stronger for it?

If you're interested in the other playwrights of the period then you'd want to look at the Oxford English Plays series. It's surely one of the finest in world literature; I don't really know why there's such a concentration of brilliance in the late 16th early 17th century, there just is. I suppose that I should know but there's not enough time to learn everything, now, is there?

Worth a look at are Marlowe (Edward II is terrific), Middleton, and Jonson from the same period. I'm actually of the opinion that Shakespeare is overrated. That's not to say the majority of his works aren't brilliant works of literature (the Hamlet-Macbeth-King Lear-Othello combo is impossible to beat) but rather than I dislike the culture of bardolatry.

You may want to take a look at Venus and Adonis (an awesome poem), Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Though the last one might be far too curiously English: lots of cross-dressing jokes and pushy wives.

Good editions are always found in the Arden 3rd edition, New Cambridge, and Oxford Shakespeare. Check the publication dates and go for the most recent one out of the three publishers. Shakespeare criticism moves so quickly that it's fairly important to be abreast of the current thought.

Which play/poem?