Shakespeare is Shakespeare is Shakespeare

On the last day of its run this summer, I saw Othello at Shakespeare on the Common. The characters wore 1940s garb for no apparent reason, the backdrop was a metallic slab reminiscent of the Aggro Crag, and I'm pretty sure an understudy was on Iago duty, which is a shame since Iago is pretty much the only reason to like Othello. Instead of the devious, evil, unrepentant villain I love, the actor came off as, well, what he was: a nervous guy who didn't quite remember all his lines and had to keep reminding himself to speak loud enough to be heard across the Common. Still, Shakespeare is Shakespeare and free is free. 

For my own amusement, I made a list of the words that made me go "pffft, you made that up" (until shortly after intermission when I decided I'd need a more attentive ear and a lot more paper if I really wanted to keep up):

englut                                                    

slubber

satiety                                                     

disrelish

displant                                                   

quillet

engraft                                                    

mazard

infortune                                                 

insufflate

unswear                                                 

beshrew

direful                                                    

continuate

Despite my conviction at the time that Shakespeare just threw a prefix or suffix on a word whenever he needed another syllable for his iambic pentameter, turns out most of these actually are or were real words.


I also made a list of my rediscovered favorite Othello quotations:

"I am not what I am." (I.i)
Because that's so Iago.

"Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs." (I.i)
Because, oh, that's where that saying comes from.

"Men should be what they seem; / Or those that be not, would they might seem none!" (III.iii)
What can I say? I'm a seeming-versus-reality fan.

"O! beware, my lord, of jealousy; / It is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on." (III.iii)
Again, etymology.

"Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore, / Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof; / Or, by the worth of mine eternal soul, / Thou hadst been better have been born a dog / Than answer my wak'd wrath." (III.iii)
Because angry Othello is not a man to be trifled with.

"Unkindness may do much, / And his unkindness may defeat my life / But never taint my love." (IV.ii)
Because that's so Desdemona.

"Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: / From this time forth I never will speak word." (V.ii)
Because "What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask." (Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays)

"I kissed thee ere I killed thee, no way but this, / Killing myself, to die upon a kiss." (V.ii)
Because everyone loves a little morbid romance. Right?

Literary Geekery

(It's bound to happen sometimes; I am a writer after all—and don't you say a word about all those unfinished stories that beg to differ.)


So, I read a lot. And every now and then there are sentences that stick in my head long after I've set aside the book in which I read them. This happens with a frequency that is depressingly low in proportion to the volume of words I read. Perhaps most writing is garbage. Maybe I'm reading the wrong stuff. Or maybe I read so much that I've become desensitized to words, my capability for awe lessened. But still. There continue to be a precious few sentences out there that can make me smile or chuckle or put down my book and gaze off into space, marveling at them, jealous that I didn't think of them first.


And so, I present the Persistent Sentences of the Moment:  

1) “This is love, a pretty thing on an ugly street, and why wouldn't you pick it up if it appeared in a cab?” -Daniel Handler, Adverbs

2) “The shinier the apples of attraction, Vulture, the wormier their maggots of repulsion.” -David Mitchell, “What You Do Not Know You Want”

3) “Sometimes he'd read her a bit of his [book] and sometimes she'd vice him a little versa.” -Stephen King, “Lisey and the Madman”


1) This line is great because the whole love-is-beautiful-and-makes-everything-beautiful thing has been cliché for so long even Shakespeare was making fun of it back in the day (see Sonnet 130, one of my favorites). However, the backlash against this idea—that love is shitty and tragic and doesn't make anything any easier—has also been highly overdone. Thus, I find the sentiment that Handler expresses (that fine, love doesn't make the world a more savory place, that, in fact, the griminess of the world is in part what makes love appear to be such a lovely, desirable thing), a touching, memorable take on an old notion.

2) This line is great because I have never, ever, seen anyone express the adage "all that glitters is not gold" so uniquely, so awesomely, or with so much style. And also, that word, wormier. It just gets me. It's the kind of off-beat part-of-speech usage I like to employ. Oh, how I wish this sentence were mine.

3) The Stephen King line, again, obviously, stuck in my head because of the unusual way of using the words. Vice him a little versa. Kind of corny, but so clever, so novel, so something the average writer would never even bother trying out because it's "incorrect."


In knitting news, one Blueberry Waffle Sock (or, in my case, wild berry) down, one to go:

I didn't particularly enjoy knitting in the round with four needles flopping about all the time, but I got used to it and it wasn't difficult. And if I'm suffering from a bout of Second Sock Syndrome, well I'm not the only one.