Two Down, Tons to Go

Finished Macbeth yesterday, Romeo & Juliet this morning. 

Also finished Paul Violi's Selected Accidents, Pointless Anecdotes yesterday. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read about a tollbooth collector having a violent seizure.

How's everyone else doing out there?

-Kevin

Finished A Midsummer Night's Dream and Richard III. Now on to Antony and Cleopatra.

Anybody here?

-Seth

Seth's Book List

Well folks, here is my list of books that I own. I realize I could have put this in some kind of alphabetic order or chronological order from publication date, but for the 21st century with this little thing called the search bar, just wandering around the room and writing down my books was the only practical way to go. Look forward to seeing everyone else's lists!

SETH'S BOOKS (Click) 

One Down!

Finished Julius Caesar last night! I had this old Macmillan Classics pocket edition from 1916. Someone drew a crude caricature of Charlie Chaplin on the back flap, labeling it "Chas Chaplin."

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

-Brutus, Act IV. Scene 3, 218-222

Don Quixote

Anyone know which is the best translation of Quixote?

January project : SHAKESPEARE

COMEDIES:

All’s Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Cymbeline
Love’s Labours Lost
Measure for Measure
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merchant of Venice
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Troilus and Cressida
Twelfth Night
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Winter’s Tale

HISTORIES:

Henry IV
Henry V
Henry VI
Henry VIII
King John
Richard II
Richard III

TRAGEDIES:

Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Hamlet
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet
Timon of Athens
Titus Andronicus

...and of course THE SONNETS


recommended: Helen Vendler's The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets

Dante, Inferno V.82-142 (Paolo e Francesca)

Even as doves when summoned by desire,
borne forward by their will, move through the air
with wings uplifted, still, to their sweet nest,

those spirits left the ranks where Dido suffers,
approaching us through the malignant air;
so powerful had been my loving cry.

"O living being, gracious and benign,
who through the darkened air have come to visit
our souls that stained the world with blood, if He

who rules the universe were friend to us,
then we should pray to Him to give you peace,
for you have pitied our atrocious state.

Whatever pleases you to hear and speak
will please us, too, to hear and speak with you,
now while the wind is silent, in this place.

The land where I was born lies on that shore
to which the Po together with the waters
that follow it descends to final rest.

Love, that can quickly seize the gentle heart,
took hold of him because of the fair body
taken from me— how that was done still wounds me.

Love, that releases no beloved from loving,
took hold of me so strongly that through his beauty
that, as you see, it has not left me yet.

Love led the two of us unto one death.
Caina waits for him who took our life."
These words were borne across from them to us.

When I had listened to those injured souls,
I bent my head and held it low until
the poet asked of me: "What are you thinking?"

When I replied, my words began: "Alas,
how many gentle thoughts, how deep a longing,
had led them to the agonizing pass!"

Then I addressed my speech again to them,
and I began: "Francesca, your afflictions
move me to tears of sorrow and of pity.

But tell me, in the time of gentle sighs,
with what and in what way did Love allow you
to recognize your still uncertain longings?"

And she to me: "There is no greater sorrow
than thinking back upon a happy time
in misery— and this your teacher knows.

Yet if you long so much to understand
the first root of our love, then I shall tell
my tale to you as one who weeps and speaks.

One day, to pass the time away, we read
of Lancelot— how love had overcome him.
We were alone, and we suspected nothing.

And time and time again that reading led
our eyes to meet, and made our faces pale,
and yet one point alone defeated us.

When we had read how the desired smile
was kissed by one who was so true a lover,
this one, who never shall be parted from me,

while all his body trembled, kissed my mouth.
A Gallehault indeed, that book and he
who wrote it, too; that day we read no more."

And while one spirit said these words to me,
the other wept, so that— because of pity—
I fainted, as if I had met my death.

And then I fell as a dead body falls.