Shakespeare
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I wrote the following long ago, republished it once. Here it is, relevant again. What Doesn't Dick Cheney Commit Suicide? Why doesn't Dick Cheney put a bullet in his brain? It would do him (and his reputation) a world of good. What could possibly stand in his way? Once he sprinkles the ratsbane on his porridge —…
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I'm marvelously fond of the Italian word "fango," which translates into English as "mud." "Fango" is expressive of the matter which it describes. To my ear, the word fango sounds slimy and disreputable, perhaps even repulsive, while its English counterpart "mud" is bland and lacks character. And "fangoso" is so much more dramatic than "muddy."…
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"Orts" is a rare but tasty word. Orts are the bits of bones, gristle, stems, skins, pits and other inedibles that are left on the plate after one finishes eating — the stuff that is scraped directly into the garbage can. Orts are to be distinguished from "leftovers" which are the uneaten remains of the…
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The granddaughter, Lola, age 6 and a bit, has been reading to me — a child's version of Romeo and Juliet. The feud between the Montagues and the Capulets distresses her. "Why do they have to fight. Why can't they just talk about it? Why don't they use their words?"
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When I was a boy, the word boob denoted a simpleton, a nincompoop– what Shakespeare calls a mooncalf and what in an earlier life I might have called a schmuck or a schmendrick. "Boobs" was an everyday expression; so common and pervasive that The Three Stooges might just as easily have been called the The…
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My daughter's nephew-in-law, Zach Appelman, is a talented actor setting out on what might very well turn out to be a terrific career. (His ascent would be more rapid if he would take his aunt-in-law's father's advice and change his stage name to Zach Barrymore or Zach Zellweger, but the young man has too much integrity to comply with aged…
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There's a brief sentence in The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth that continues to move me no matter how frequently I return to it. I's a passage that resonates in my latter-day soul. Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet (whose name, obviously, indicates her profession) are old acquaintances and old rivals who are evermore at odds. "They never meet but they fall…
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I tried the first three installments – a netflix diskful of episodes — of House of Cards. I plan to watch a few more, but I'm deep into negative enthusiasm, not at all sure that I'm going to continue. Cards certainly grabs you, and it's startling and theatrical, but it's also far too cynical and depraved for my rose-colored tastes. I just don't…
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The new Much Ado is a charming, understated success. The actors are not trained Shakespeareans; they're tv series folk, and they say the lines conversationally and casually, paying scant attention to the verse or to the mannered prose rhythms. It works, on the whole, although some of the great lines are delivered so unemphatically that…