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Feb. 28th, 2008 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI 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 where everyone dies. In this one, it all goes down during a performance for the wedding of the Duke and his new girlfriend. All the other characters are acting in the play, and they have all separately decided that fake 'theatrical accidents' are the perfect way to kill whoever it is among the rest of the cast that they want to get rid of, and then there is a fabulous sequence where it's all SEKRIT TRAPDOORS WITH SPIKES AT THE BOTTOM and POISONED INCENSE and POISONED PROP ARROWS and FLAMING PROJECTILE MOLTEN GOLD (my personal favorite), and meanwhile the Duke and everyone not involved in the carnage are watching the other characters go down one by one and ruffling through their programs and going, "Wait, that's not in the summary! Is anyone else confused by the plot of this play?" And then the Duke's girlfriend accidentally poisons him, but whatever, as far as deaths go, it's really all about the flaming projectile molten gold.
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 where everyone dies. In this one, it all goes down during a performance for the wedding of the Duke and his new girlfriend. All the other characters are acting in the play, and they have all separately decided that fake 'theatrical accidents' are the perfect way to kill whoever it is among the rest of the cast that they want to get rid of, and then there is a fabulous sequence where it's all SEKRIT TRAPDOORS WITH SPIKES AT THE BOTTOM and POISONED INCENSE and POISONED PROP ARROWS and FLAMING PROJECTILE MOLTEN GOLD (my personal favorite), and meanwhile the Duke and everyone not involved in the carnage are watching the other characters go down one by one and ruffling through their programs and going, "Wait, that's not in the summary! Is anyone else confused by the plot of this play?" And then the Duke's girlfriend accidentally poisons him, but whatever, as far as deaths go, it's really all about the flaming projectile molten gold.
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Date: 2008-02-29 05:53 am (UTC)You have Platonic Rhetoric-spewing incest that ends up with the brother bringing in his sister's heart on his symbolic phallic dagger, in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Great fun.
I can't wait for the poisoned incense! And death inna play! Is like The Spanish Tragedy!
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Date: 2008-02-29 06:04 am (UTC)*beams* They are same author, aren't they? I think Spanish Tragedy is also Middleton, at least, but I could be wrong. I also want to read the play of his that is apparently just entirely a GIANT CHESS METAPHOR, because . . . again, see, sucker for that. *sheepish giggle*
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Date: 2008-02-29 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-29 06:21 am (UTC)I love the Iago-types! Flamineo is a great one in The White Devil, too.
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Date: 2008-02-29 08:20 pm (UTC)Was there just crack in the water supply back in those days, or what?
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Date: 2008-02-29 09:43 pm (UTC)We actually had the "um . . . so why were the Jacobeans so obsessed with incest?" conversation in class yesterday. There was no definitive answer, but I had to work extra hard not to bring up Kaori Yuki.