One of the best plays I've ever read/been in. This review is going to be remarkably short, because I think experiencing Oscar Wilde is really not someOne of the best plays I've ever read/been in. This review is going to be remarkably short, because I think experiencing Oscar Wilde is really not something to be done except by actually doing so. The joke of it is ruined otherwise. I will say the play is fast, witty, extremely bright, and incredibly perverse. It is possible to actually make people roll in the aisles on this one. I've read in several sources that even George Bernard Shaw did when he saw this for the first time. The muffins scene is among the most perfect in English comedies. ...more
My high school English teacher called this "the perfect play." He meant that in terms of it being performed. He would use it with new groups of drama My high school English teacher called this "the perfect play." He meant that in terms of it being performed. He would use it with new groups of drama students, because there was absolutely no possible way for them to screw it up. And now, close on 10 years later, I can't yet prove him wrong. I've been in this play twice (Hermia), I've seen it performed countless times by good groups of actors, mediocre ones, and one cast that was mostly pretty bad, I've seen it done in traditional Shakespearean costumes, modern day, Edwardian, 1950s, and one time a psychadelic 60s show, and I've still not yet had a bad evening at the theatre with it yet.
The text speaks for itself, I think. The first conversation is the perfect thing to draw in adults and giggly twelve year olds alike. Repressive fathers, good boys and mean boys, the pathetic boy-crazy friend with a weird obsessions... etc.
Even in the hands of average actors, I think the text just catches people up into it. You can almost act this one on instinct. You can do it with half remembered intonations and gestures from sitcoms, and people will laugh. For some characters, the direction for what to do is implied in the lines. Bottom, for instance, while he's trying to ensure that he plays every part in the play so no one interferes with his spotlight- the mousy sounds, the roaring, the pompous hero, the woman. Anyone who likes a bit of attention can get into that- as I say, the thing sort of just pulls you along with it. The last time I was in it, one of my best friends played Helena, and we were tearing each others hair out by the middle of the first rehearsal like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I still really enjoy Bottom and Titania and the play within a play at the end, and I still think Act III, Scene II confusion can be one of the funniest sequences in Shakespeare (topped only by the Twelfth Night girl on girl/duel bits and a couple of scenes from Much Ado).
After all that, I should probably also tell you that I'm incredibly biased: this was the first Shakespeare play that I ever read, and it was through reading this that I became close to some of the girls who are still my best friends, and its responsible for leading me to the rest of the Shakespeare plays that I came to love. Yeah, probably should've said that first, but whatever. I think if anything it strengthens my case, so oh well....more
It says 1998, but I've read this/seen it/been in it so many times. The movie Kenneth Branagh made was my favorite in high school. (Yes, I grew up and It says 1998, but I've read this/seen it/been in it so many times. The movie Kenneth Branagh made was my favorite in high school. (Yes, I grew up and got over that, but I still think it's beautiful to look at, and no one in the world can convince me that Emma Thompson isn't fantastic in it.) It's my favorite of the comedies, by far. I mean, how could you not like something whose only conclusion, after all the poetry and the beauty and the crazy fights and drama is that "Man is a giddy thing"?...more
2022 read: one line baby feeding audiobook review-
I thought at lot about and wrote papers about feminist stuff on my last read in college and as you s2022 read: one line baby feeding audiobook review-
I thought at lot about and wrote papers about feminist stuff on my last read in college and as you see pushed through what I thought was some dullness to do that- audiobooking with Juliet Stevenson solved that- and this time instead of feminism I thought mostly about how this book is about poor decisions and people believing to various degrees they are entitled to avoid the consequences of those decisions or not believing so and how that reveals the core of their character. ***
2006 read: I would not have read this if it were not for a class I took last spring. I will admit that. It had always intimidated me. Large size and dense, winding prose will tend to do that to one.
However. It did have some things to say. The problem, of course, is that most of the subject matter it tackles- marriages, love, children, the various problems of country life are things that people can read about in many forms, and they don't need to come to such a Serious book to do it. Especially one that adds in highly unnecessary tangents on the subjects of politics and industry written into whatever chapter Eliot happened to be working on at the time (or so it seemed). The light touch of Austen is just a hand wandering down a bookshelf away, after all. But I really must say, taking it for a book about just those things would definitely be missing a whole lot of the point. It's astoundingly accomplished and witty and her knowledge on a wide range of subjects is truly impressive.
My issue with this book is that it can be quite dry, for all it's interesting ideas. And even with all it's intelligence and sharpness.... it's very hard to connect with or care about any of the characters. If you do, it's generally not the characters you're supposed to connect to, or not for the right reasons. I connected with the heroine, but only because some of her delusions happened to match up with my own in my teenage years. But that's superficial and doesn't matter. The only person I felt that I genuinely understood and wanted good things to happen to was Mary, and she didn't have anywhere near enough screen time, so that was irritating.
Anyway, it's wonderful, it's just... quite a chore, and I can't give any more stars to a novel that was so difficult to get through....more
It's Jane Eyre. It's beautiful. It's inspiring. It's intimate and lovely. I read it in middle school, and missed so much. I re-read it last year for aIt's Jane Eyre. It's beautiful. It's inspiring. It's intimate and lovely. I read it in middle school, and missed so much. I re-read it last year for a 19th Century Literature class, and realized that I was not wrong in my love for this book. Still one of the best gothic romances ever written. Sighs and swoons are entirely appropriate....more
This book is better than Jane Eyre, guys. This is where Charlotte Bronte shows her real brilliance. I hovered between giving this two stars and four fThis book is better than Jane Eyre, guys. This is where Charlotte Bronte shows her real brilliance. I hovered between giving this two stars and four for about half the book because I really wasn't sure what was going on beneath the surface. But then I figured out that I was stupid and didn't see half of the things that Charlotte Bronte had done. She's brilliant. Her narrator is completely unreliable. She's a tease. She withholds. She doesn't tell us the lines we wish most to hear. She deals with feelings that should have fulsome paragaphs in oblique, obscuring half sentences. Fulsome paragraphs are written on subjects that one would not think of as half so important to a ladies' novel. The nature of God, the debate between Protestantism and Catholicism, Truth and Lies, the worst faults of humankind. These are all dealt with. She's also able to switch focuses, from far away observation, as if she is telling a fairy tale, to a prose that is close and intimately involved. Existentialist thoughts wind through here, religious rebellion against the existence of God, liberation of women.. a lot of things that a woman in 1853 probably shouldn't have been writing about.
Lucy Snowe, the main character and narrator, has her faults. You will want to wring her neck. Not only for what she teases us with, but what she says. Her always forebearing attitude, her martyrdom. The sense of how impressed with herself she is at times, all her protestations to the contrary. Secretly holding herself rather above the company, to steal a line from another famous female. But let's also remember that Jane Eyre isn't all that likeable for most of the book either. Lucy is as difficult to like.
The end is fascinating. To give away just a little bit of the book, she does not get the ending that one expects from Romantic books. The ending is a question mark. The reader can make of it what they will. She has no illusions, but we can have ours. Her happiness is completely different: solitary, alone, quiet... it provides a fascinating read though a feminist lens. I'd say the end has a bit of a message like 'A Room of One's Own,' but decades earlier, and with an appropriate veil. Interesting to note, the same male enabler is necessary, but it meets with a different end here. Happiness is not what one thinks it is.
I really do have to warn that this novel is about repression and oppression and it reads like it too. The breaks out of this endless cycle are few and far between. It can be difficult to trudge through, as difficult as it is for Lucy to make it through. I made it by figuring out how Charlotte Bronte was playing with the reader, though. Pay attention to details. She will mention them and perhaps explain them chapters later, but not connect them for us. Victorian conventions are satirized gently and taken to task. I believe Charlotte Bronte is somewhat taking herself to task for believing the ridiculous things that women were encouraged to indulge in.
... and I've just noticed that I wrote this review sounding rather like a silly victorian writer. Oops....more
Without a doubt the best book I have read this year. I write that without hesitation and with a beaming smile on my face. Incredible. Enthralling. AmaWithout a doubt the best book I have read this year. I write that without hesitation and with a beaming smile on my face. Incredible. Enthralling. Amazing. The book was over 800 pages long and it did not seem long enough. When I finished the book, I immediately turned out the light and tried to drift off to sleep, because I knew nothing else I did that night was going to top the feeling I got after blowing through the last 100 pages like a madwoman. I want to start it over again, immediately.
The book is like reading Dickens, with the dialogue of Jane Austen, and the best writing of every classic fantasy I've read. All at once. Clarke manages to pay her homage while being entirely original herself. And the pages just keep turning and turning. You almost don't notice as 200 pages go by in less than two hours. This is a book to devour. Again, and again, and again. For those who have never been interested in the fantasy genre before, do not be put off. It's not even about the fantasy, though of course it is a major presence and the plot focuses around it. History geeks: There are three delightful, hilarious appearances by Wellington, George III and Lord Byron, as well as various Cabinet ministers of the time period.
The prose is wonderful, dead-on. Clarke has the ability to shift seamlessly from witty, sarcastic, detached prose and dialogue in the style of Jane Austen or Oscar Wilde:
"These ladies and gentlemen, visitors to the city of Venice, were excessively pleased with the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. They thought the facades of the houses very magnificent- they could not praise them highly enough. But the sad decay which buildings, bridges and church all displayed seemed to charm them even more. They were Englishmen and, to them, the decline of other nations was the most natural thing in the world. They belonged to a race so blessed with so sensitive an appreciation of its own talents (and so doubtful an opinion of any body else's) that they would not have been at all surprised to learn that the Venetians themselves had been entirely ignorant of the merits of their own city- until Englishmen had come to tell them it was delightful."
... and then shift into lines that would do any fantasy author proud: "Spring returned to England. Birds followed ploughs. Stones were warmed by the sun. Rains and winds grew softer, and were fragranced by the scents of the earth and growing things. Woods were tinged with a colour so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a colour at all. It was more the /idea/ of a colour- as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green thoughts."
Those quotes don't do it justice, they were just ones my eyes came across when I randomly opened pages. The writing is just beyond fantastic, to say the least.
That, on top of an intriguing, well developed, /incredibly/ well researched portrait of England at the time of the Napoleonic wars? It manages to cover all the major areas that British literature is known for, all at once, in one book, and do them all justice. Clarke is also able to touch on a lot of serious issues that were present in England at the time: (racial relations, the problems of a hereditary ruling class..) She makes you aware of them as a background, but doesn't push them in your face. It's just another way she's able to make her evocation of the time period that much more perfect.
... I should perhaps have written this review with a greater distance from finishing the novel. But I think I'm justified in doing it now, if only to give an idea of the kind of amazing feeling that the book gives you from reading it and finishing it.
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