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Feb. 28th, 2008 08:59 pmI spent most of today hacking-coughing my way through my classes, which was actually not as bad as it sounds - I feel much worse for the people who had to sit next to me and listen. The weather was fabulous and I got to wear a cute sundress, and since I am shallow this pretty much contented me despite illness.
Besides this, as I believe I have amply demonstrated in previous posts, there is nothing to put your own troubles in perspective like a spot of Jacobean Tragedy. Middleton's Women Beware Women has been described as a play that picks up where a romantic comedy ends, and that's pretty accurate, I think, at least for the half of the plot that deals with the Young Lovers who have Run Away Together to be Romantically Impoverished. This lasts for about an act before the Duke gets an eyeful of the girl and decides that she would make a fabulous royal mistress, and gets her alone in his house with the help of his friend Livia, who . . . basically just helps other people's seductions for fun. Everyone's got to have a hobby. Anyways, in the other half the plot, Livia's helping out her brother get the girl of his dreams, who happens to be their niece, who has a crush on the uncle, too, but won't sleep with him until Livia lies and tells her that her dad's not really her dad so her uncle's not really her uncle. So the niece decides to marry the local idiot so she can have an affair with the uncle, whom she thinks is not really her uncle, in peace and quiet. I have no doubt that someday someone will turn this into a Peter/Claire fic. HOWEVER. The truly awesome pieces of this play are, first of all, the scene where the newlywed girl is first lured into the Duke's clutches; the whole thing only happens very briefly onstage, and the rest of it is played out through a chess game between Livia and the girl's mother-in-law, and it's fabulous. This may in part be because I am a huge sucker for Metaphoric Chess. Shut up.
The other awesome thing is, as usual, the
( last act )
Besides this, as I believe I have amply demonstrated in previous posts, there is nothing to put your own troubles in perspective like a spot of Jacobean Tragedy. Middleton's Women Beware Women has been described as a play that picks up where a romantic comedy ends, and that's pretty accurate, I think, at least for the half of the plot that deals with the Young Lovers who have Run Away Together to be Romantically Impoverished. This lasts for about an act before the Duke gets an eyeful of the girl and decides that she would make a fabulous royal mistress, and gets her alone in his house with the help of his friend Livia, who . . . basically just helps other people's seductions for fun. Everyone's got to have a hobby. Anyways, in the other half the plot, Livia's helping out her brother get the girl of his dreams, who happens to be their niece, who has a crush on the uncle, too, but won't sleep with him until Livia lies and tells her that her dad's not really her dad so her uncle's not really her uncle. So the niece decides to marry the local idiot so she can have an affair with the uncle, whom she thinks is not really her uncle, in peace and quiet. I have no doubt that someday someone will turn this into a Peter/Claire fic. HOWEVER. The truly awesome pieces of this play are, first of all, the scene where the newlywed girl is first lured into the Duke's clutches; the whole thing only happens very briefly onstage, and the rest of it is played out through a chess game between Livia and the girl's mother-in-law, and it's fabulous. This may in part be because I am a huge sucker for Metaphoric Chess. Shut up.
The other awesome thing is, as usual, the
( last act )
