Edith Wharton - Stories/Novellas

Two Gentlemen of Verona

The Verona connection - what is it exactly?

Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus:
Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.
Were't not affection chains thy tender days
To the sweet glances of thy honour'd love,
I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad,
Than, living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.
But since thou lovest, love still and thrive therein,
Even as I would when I to love begin. - 
Act I, Scene 1, Lines 1-10

Doth it not seem more than a little strange, fellow conspiracy theorists, that Romeo and Juliet - another of early Shakespeare's plays - was also set in Verona....Do you see where I'm going with this? Who was the real Shakespeare and what did he see while in Italy! 

Shakespeare Scholars Unite!

Look closely at this portrait. Is this really the man who wrote all those great plays? C'mon.  Isn't it  more than strange that what we supposedly "know" about Shakespeare's life contributes very little to our understanding of his work - in fact, only complicates the mystery. I could go for a grand old  "royal conspiracy" on this one. Would anyone care to venture a theory on one of the usual suspects: Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Edward de Vere (the 17th Earl of Oxford), Amelia Bassano Lanier (a.k.a. the Dark Lady) - or  perhaps someone new and overlooked? I'm game...

Teaching Romeo and Juliet

Every time I teach R&J, the first thing that always hits me is that these two kids, R and J, are way too young to be having any kind of serious romance. I mean Juliet is not even 14 and Romeo has barely 16, 17 (?) years of moodiness under his belt. How ironic that he's the immature one! What Romeo needs, besides medication, a swift kick in the pants, and a new spiritual advisor, is something resembling boot camp, continuous physical activity, a sport, a hobby. Juliet, meanwhile,  could use a new set of parents,  a reliable sibling (forget nurse-maids) and an extended stay at a nice Italian boarding school. But in lieu of such changes, that, as Fate ordains, will never occur to this, arguably ill-matched, "pair of star-crossed lovers," don't you think the play also has a lot to tell us about those other characters who AREN'T paired off with anyone and who seem to resist the notion of "romantic love" as such. I refer of course to:  Mercutio, Tybalt, the Nurse, Friar Lawrence, Benvolio...  Makes me wonder what Shakespeare really had in mind....

Helen Graham and Gilbert Markham

     "Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking," pursued she, "and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves, or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse."

     "Very likely they do," said I, "their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight." The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Chapter 9

Pierre Bayle - Le Premiere Blogger ?

Blaise Pascal - The First Blogger ?

Pensee # 198/693: "When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its silence and man left to himself with no light,  as though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him at death, and incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man who should be carried in his sleep to a dreadful desert island and should awake without knowing where he is and without means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. I see other persons around me made like myself. I ask them if they are any better informed than I am and they say they are not.  Then these lost and wretched creatures look around and find some attractive objects to which they have become addicted and attached. For my part, I have never been able to form such attachments and, considering how very likely it is that there exists something besides what I can see, I have tried to find out whether God has left any traces of himself.  I see a number of religions in conflict, and therefore all false except one. Each of them wishes to be believed on their own authority and makes threats to non-believers. I do not believe them on that account. Anyone can say that...this is where unaided knowledge brings us..."