The Mirror in my Mind

Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role

There will be a list. Nobody should be surprised by this at all.

Jon Slinger in anything. ANYTHING AT ALL.

David Tennant as Richard II - His Henry VI made me wibble, and I loved him as both Berowne and Hamlet. And then there's Ten. Who has more in common with Richard II than he really should. And, really, who wouldn't want to hear Tennant do that final speech? (Note: I don't think he could do what Slinger did with the role. I frankly don't think anybody else could pull that off. But Tennant would be an equally fantastic Richard, if quite different.)

Tilda Swinton as Margaret of Anjou - Can you picture this? I can, and it is magical.

Kate Winslet as Desdemona - And, no, I am not just saying this because of my enormous crush on her. I do think she'd strike the right balance of innocence and sensuality (we get some hints of this in the way she played Marianne Dashwood) that I just haven't seen in any of the filmed productions so far.

Jeremy Northam as Iago - One of my problems with Kenneth Branagh's Iago was that he overdid the evil; part of what makes Iago so scary is how little he actually does to destroy the lives of everyone around him, and Branagh's style of acting just doesn't convey that for me at all. Northam is incredibly charming, and would probably, now I think about it, also make a fantastic Richard III. And, yes, I am also deeply amused by the irony of the same actor playing Thomas More and Richard III.

Sophie Okonedo as Cleopatra - Her Duchess of Malfi was just brilliant and I think she'd make a sublime Cleopatra. Also, further yay for Cleopatras of colour because there are simply not enough of them.

James Purefoy as Antony - WHO DID NOT SEE THIS COMING. The way he played Antony in Rome fits so well with the way I read Shakespeare's version -- impulsive and brilliant and so completely unaware that he could at any moment fail. Super massive bonus points for Simon Woods reprising Octavius.

( Full List of Questions )

You know a book is good when you're secretly reading it behind the cash register and your boss (who has already warned you not to read books on the job) is halfway into the store before you realise she's there.

The book: Mélusine by Sarah Monette (not in any way related to the foundress of Lusignan, but still a fantastic read so far)

And I suppose it proves my innate nerdiness that every few chapters, I sit back and think 'My God, I need to write a paper about this book.'

::facepalm::

Oh, and in other news, I sent the complete and final draft of 'Masquerade' (c. 5,900 words) to Boston by overnight mail first thing yesterday morning. It is in the hands of the gods and the editors. May they have mercy on my poor little story.

I'm actually quite happy with how it turned out. No less than two people commented on adelynne's posting of it on her LJ, with some very good criticisms that I certainly wouldn't have noticed, given how familiar I am with these characters by now. And people seem to like my writing style! This makes me so idiotically happy, if only because I've had so many run-ins with people who hate it in the past.

R&G opens tonight. It just rained rather hard about fifteen minutes ago, and all I can do is hope it will not do so again anytime soon. Please? I don't want to have to die on muddy ground.

Veronica Mars season premiere in two days!

Squee!

Feeling *so* much better.

I just spent the past three hours wandering the city with my camera. I woke up today and realised that it was the third heartbreakingly gorgeous day in a row, and as this is East Anglia, it'll probably start pouring within the next twenty-four hours, so...

Carpe diem and all that crap. ;)

There were at least some remnants of the carpets of violets I'd seen before I left for India, but some of it had been replaced by cornflowers. Still very very pretty. Wandered along the Church Rate Walk and Malting Lane, took photographs of random houses and ivy-grown walls and a few abandoned Métro tickets that I found amusing for some reason. King's was where I'd seen the carpet of flowers, so I went there next, strolled through the College and past all the Japanese tourists, and ended up wandering into the market.

Dialogue between Rational and Irrational Halves of my brain as follows.

Irrational: Ooooh, book!
Rational: Ahem? Money?
Irrational: But it's got full-colour photographs of the Titanic. It's research!
Rational: I repeat. Ahem? Money?
Irrational: Well, you see, if I buy this book, I'll have more research material. If I have more research material, I'll write more. If I write more, I'll finish the novel. If I finish the novel, I have a far greater chance of publishing the novel. And if I publish the novel, there might be money.
Rational: And who in their right mind would read what you write?
Irrational: I'm more comprehensible than Joyce!
Rational: ...
Irrational: Oh, fine, that says nothing. But still...
Rational: Your logic does not resemble our earth logic.
Irrational: It took you this long to figure that out?

Needless to say, I bought the book. And it's so pretty...

Also picked up books on Dandyism, the Whitechapel Murders, and a primer for Medieval French. Yes. I'm eclectic.

Did my requisite sneaking through Trinity and took yet more photographs. Must do this again sometime.

Only cloud was the lack of a teleportation device. If I had a teleportation device, I could have snatched my boyfriend out of what was probably a very decent mid-morning sleep and made him go punting with me. With demi-sec and sandwiches and probably very obnoxious PDA. Because it's spring in Cambridge and that's what people do. Maybe next spring.

My cold feels so much better. And there are birds singing outside my window. Today was a very nice day.

How many copies of Christopher Marlowe can one girl possibly own?

Let's see.

1. Falling-apart paperback edition featuring the four major plays.

2. Bizarre hardcover edition from 1929, language supposedly not modernised.

3. Doctor Faustus paperback edition with nice appendices.

4. Edward the Second paperback edition, also with nice appendices.

Grace à the lovely rosamund, there will soon be an 1896 Complete Works added to this list. And I am very seriously eyeing a copy of the edition I looked at today in Rare Books, from 1887, with a fascinating essay by Havelock Ellis. Only reason I chose the 1896 over it as a birthday present was because it only has the four major plays and none of the poetry.

So this puts me at six. Not including criticism/fiction/biography/etc.

However, this is *nothing* compared to my Shakespeare collection. I have no idea how many different copies of different plays I own; I lost count years ago. Also...let's see...at least four copies of Pride and Prejudice, three of Jane Eyre, at least five instances of Oscar Wilde floating around somewhere...so I suppose the final verdict is that I randomly collect multiple copies of books. Just because.

And you needn't say it. I'm weird. ;)

ETA (3:30 AM): If we want to count nonfiction/criticism/etc, here's the extended list. Plus, I just put in an order for the 1887 Symonds/Havelock book. So...

7. The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe

8. Anthony Burgess - A Dead Man in Deptford

Whereas you’ve pointed out that much “great literature” bears many affinities with what nowadays gets called “genre fiction.”

Right. Shakespeare was a genre writer, down the line, never wrote outside his genre. He was not an innovator. Because it’s really quite a recent idea, that the best books have no genre. You know, if they’re literary fiction, then they have to be genre-free. It’s a very, very new idea. And most of the books we study as academics are firmly within one genre or another. Not to compare myself to Shakespeare. But I think you’d have to be a fool as a writer not to apprentice yourself to the very best in your field.

To read the rest of the article, go here.

Take *that*, Creative Writing programme!

::flounces off to pick up seminar readings::

Read a very interesting article today.

http://web.ionsys.com/~remedy/Quitting%20The%20Paint%20Factory.htm

"Increasingly, it seems to me, our world is dividing into two kinds of things: those that aid work, or at least represent a path to it, and those that don't Things in the first category are good and noble; things in the second aren't. Thus, for example, education is good (as long as we don't have to listen to any of that "end in itself" nonsense) because it will pre­sumably lead to work. Thus playing the piano or swimming the 100-yard backstroke are good things for a fifteen-year-old to do not because they might give her some pleasure but because rumor has it that Princeton is interested in students who can play Chopin or swim quickly on their backs (and a degree from Princeton, as any fool knows, can be readily converted to work)."

Perhaps the article exaggerates. But, sitting on the far side of the fence as I am, I can't help but wonder.

I started learning the piano because my cousin was learning and I was curious, kept it up while I enjoyed it and stopped when I no longer had time. I started voice lessons because I enjoyed singing. I did theatre because I thought it was fun. I read because it was what I loved to do, and I decided to study literature for the same reason. Not because it looked good, but because I love books and writing. These things--unremarkable and simply motivated as they were--didn't get me into Princeton.

Yet they got me into Cambridge.

I wonder what this says about either school. Perhaps that one lives in the past and the other in the present. But if this is what the present has to offer, I have to admit my instinct is to retreat into the past and stay there. It's cowardly of me. But while I am a workaholic, I'm a different breed. I like my comforts, but if having them meant giving up my books, it wouldn't happen.

I must admit it surprises me in retrospect that my parents didn't have fits about this. Though they're certainly making up for it by terrifying my brother and sister about university...it's sad, really. Very sad.

On a happier note, learning more about Catherine de Courtenay. She's actually showing bits of personality from the book I was reading today, which is fairly impressive considering it's a family genealogy and people don't normally show much personality. Sadly, there are only five pages specifically dealing with her...