DDR: Four Shakespearean Period Pieces by Margreta de Grazia

Another book I've been holding for a few years...and another that I started reading and then 🐔.

But now I'm ready for love. Oh, baby, I'm ready for lo-ove.

248 pages.

🚦

Day 1 (DDRD 2,875), September 14, 2025

Read to page 7. (But this was in addition to finishing off Twelfth Night this morning, so not a support day at all.)

Interesting stuff:

Especially 

To me, this suggests...or supports, I suppose,  as I've had this thought before, that most of Western Civilization is derived from the Catholic Church. Love or hate it, I think you have to admit that we owe it.

Day 2 (DDRD 2,876), September 15, 2025

Read to page 37.

In discussing Shakespeare's intentional use of anachronism, de Grazia notes that "Garments might indicate a character's gender, ethnicity, nationality, rank, age, occupation, and order of being (supernatural, allegorical), but not his or her historical period." (29) If she's right...and I think she is...then Shake-speare would not only not object to clothing his characters in contemporary clothing (as seems to happen quite frequently), he would insist upon it. Costumes were not meant to indicate historical verisimilitude, but to reveal the character's station, rank, disposition, etc. That's some hot shit, ennit?

Thus "anachronisms "...are not errors in the order of time but rather modernisms, updatings attuned to the present of the play's enactment." (38)

Day 3 (DDRD 2,877), September 16, 2025

Read to page 67.

A questionable assumption: "Plays are keyed to the "now" of their composition and always open to updating any subsequent staging. The dramatist's commitment is to his present audience rather than to any earlier historical context." (44)

That seems to open the door wide for all kinds of fuckery...something along the lines of a singer changing the name of a city in his lyrics to match the city he is performing in. I've always hated that kind of obsequiousness.

Day 4 (DDRD 2,878), September 17, 2025

Read to page 100.

Public Domain

Professor Edward Dowden (1843 to 1913) said of Shake-speare, "...the spirit of Protestantism — of Protestantism considered a portion of a great movement of humanity, — animates and breathes through his writing." (98) Not that I am anybody, but this strikes me as funny because when I read Shake-speare I'm always surprised at how Catholic he seems to me. There's purgatory and people crossing themselves and confession and monks...Catholic stuffs EVERYwhere.

I think I've decided that I need some more Shake-speare of the Oxfordian variety. To that end...

They're due to arrive Saturday. Coincidentally,  I should be finishing Four Shakespearean Perod Pieces on Saturday.

Day 5 (DDRD 2,879), September 18, 2025

Read to page 130.

Day 6 (DDRD 2,880), September 19, 2025

Read to page 158.

Interesting statemnt from someone who seems to be a Stratfordian: "...Shakespeare was a man of his times, even slightly behind them...." (137) Agreed! At least 14 years behind them. (Shakespeare born 1564, de Vere born 1550.)

Day 7 (DDRD 2,881), September 20, 2025

Read to page 248, The End. Interesting, but not illuminating. I was expecting something more transfigurational.