Suburbs of My Discontent

	Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
	Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
	Will hum about mine ears,and sometime voices
	That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
	Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
	The clouds methought would open and show riches
	Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
	I cried to dream again. (3.2.134-42) Ah, a weekend away with good friends! As I sipped champagne at The Four Seasons in Philly, I couldn't help but think of Caliban's poetic materialism.

Suburbs of Our Discontent

The Lord of Misrule is a great invention . . . Too bad it's just for Christmas.

Suburbs of My Discontent

This weekend was a quick trick to Washington D.C., my hometown. On Father's Day, en route to the National Gallery, I found myself in front of the Department of Transportation, where my father used to work.

I say this every time I teach Hamlet: Claudius is not only a cruel dude for killing Hamlet's father; he's a cruel dude because he lectures Hamlet to just get over his father's death already.

Here's the Washington Post article I wrote about my father's death a few years ago. Shakespeare on Father's Day once again rings true for me.

Suburbs of My Discontent

According to this article, the guinea pig was embraced by upper-class households during the Renaissance.

I attempted to embrace, quite literally, our new guinea pig over the weekend, and he responded by plunging his horrid little teeth into my finger. Later, while waiting at the ER, my antibiotics in my throbbing hand, I began to embrace other theories about the Renaissance guinea pig like this one. Like, people may have enjoyed killing them too.

Suburbs of My Discontent

Oh, Cressida! Why art thou so insecure?

The Actors' Shakespeare Project did a brilliant production of Troilus and Cressida this season, which I was fortunate to see yesterday. The last time I encountered this play was in grad school (!), and I remember thinking that Cressida was lame and kind of slutty.

But I found myself more charitable towards her this time (because age make us more charitable towards everyone?). I loved her painfully honest concern that admitting her affection for Troilus will make him lose interest:

Cressida: Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart: -
Prince Troilus, I have lov'd you night and day, 
For many weary months. 
Troilus: Why was my Cressid then so hard to win? 
Cressida: Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord, 
With the first glance that ever Pardon me; 
If I confess much, you will play the tyrant. 
I love you now ; but not, till now, so much 
But I might master it. In faith, I lie; 
My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown 
Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools! 
Why have I blabb'd? Who shall be true to us, 
When we are so unsecret to ourselves? 
But, though I lov'd you well, I woo'd you not; 
And yet, good faith, I wish'd myself a man; 
Or that we women had men's privilege 
Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue; 
For, in this rapture, I shall surely speak 
The thing I shall repent. See, see ! your silence, 
Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws 
My very soul of counsel: Stop my mouth. 


What do we make, then, of Cressida's quick change of heart with the Greek man she's forced to marry? In her hasty hook-up with Diomedes, just moments after she's made Troilus swear up and down to stay loyal, Cressida's actions are a poetic statement about the fragility of all human bonds, the futility of words, and the inherent craziness of all humans in matters of love and war. 


Standing O!