wednesday books have a death toll

[landofnowhere]

The Revenger's Tragedy by Anonymous (likely Thomas Middleton). Play readaloud. It was an effective and fun readaloud, but a few days later it feels a bit... forgettable? This play was one that I actually read for Shakespearean Genres in college -- I had just read Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and was very excited to see it on the reading list, but I don't remember that much about it from then either, college me having been much more into romance than revenge. I do see that I did some underlining of various forms of the word "grace", and some marking of land management metaphors for womens' chastity, and something about Hamlet -- which yeah, Vindice is kind of like Hamlet except he actually gets stuff done). This may be one of the plays where a lot of it is in the staging. That said, the plotting is very clever.

Dune, Frank Herbert. I guess I hadn't finished it when I wrote up my post last week? I don't have much to say about the ending, though I found the appendices mildly interesting. (Also there's a map, and it's in polar coordinates! Which makes sense, because the settlement of the planet is based around the pole, but I thought was an interesting contrast to the standard north-south/east-west generic fantasy map.)

Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert. Too much family drama, not enough sandworms / ecological worldbuilding? I watched the first episode of the Children of Dune miniseries after this, it was a faithful adaptation (and it helped that the book wasn't trying to do too much). Also I was disappointed that the character who was interviewed in the prologue disappeared and was never seen from again. (I kind of want to see these books adapted as a mockumentary, as the best way of dealing with all the epigraph material.)

Children of Dune, Frank Herbert. About 2/3 of the way in; still good that the story keeps on taking its female characters seriously, even if the sexism/gender essentialism does show. More sandworms/ecology stuff going on, along with exploration of what it's like to be a kid who has had generations of ancestors living in one's memory since one was born -- which makes one come off as preternaturally wise, but not mature in the same way as an adult. The plot is thickening, and I have some idea of where it ends up, but not of the details -- looking forward to getting back to this.

Comments

[oursin]

There's an intriguing movie version of The Revenger's Tragedy: 'In a post-apocalyptic Liverpool, a man returns seeking revenge for his wife's murder - and everyone speaks perfect Jacobean English'. Christopher Eccleston as Vindice; Eddie Izzard also features.

[rachelmanija]

Oh yes, I LOVE the movie.

[landofnowhere]

Ooooh, nice icon!

[choco_frosh]

I got to see The Revenger's Tragedy live in Somerville a few years ago! That particular production had the conceit that the everybody involved was part of a slowly-failing circus ("The Judge" was the stage name of their strong man, the Duchess was the bearded lady, etc. etc.) so it was actually VERY memorable...

Also, I continue to be struck by how much Hamlet, The Revenger's Tragedy, and The Spanish Tragedy feel like Shakespeare, Kyd and Middleton all mutually decided to write plays based on a single prompt, which in turn was determined by rolling a set of Drama Dice:

"Okay, genre ... Revenge Tragedy!"
"A plague on't! I HATE revenge tragedies!"
"Aaannnd ... Elements ... Let's see... Okay: Dialogue with ghost and/or skull. Foreign Royalty/Nobility. Play-within-a-play."
"Yes! I love those!"
"No 'Gratuitous blood and guts'?"
"I assumed that was just understood."

[landofnowhere]

Cool! There was a covid-era online production of the Revenger's Tragedy that I watched in October 2020, which was not bad for a production done entirely over Zoom, but mainly I remember the severed head scene (done with a paper bag). (I went back to look for it, but the Youtube channel has been deleated.)

(And yes, one of the things the Shakespearean Genres class did do was compare those three tragedy. I should and see if The Spanish Tragedy is suitable for readaloud sometime!)

[carbonel]

I quite liked Children of Dune, but I strongly recommend stopping there unless you're really into the series.

[landofnowhere]

I generally enjoyed it! But also have stopped there.