I am writing in responce to Marie Muirhead Escher’s comments on my article on remembering Dr. Pope. I am so pleased she enjoyed it. I think I know what what Libby would say to the speculation that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, wrote Shakespeare’s plays. First there would be that heavy breathing sound […]
A Parcel of Patterns
Many years ago I read Jill Paton Walsh’s book, A Parcel of Patterns. It is based on a true story. In 1666, in Eyam, a village in England that had long been free of the plague, a tailor received a parcel of patterns from London. Within a week he was dead of the plague. Over […]
Growing up now, about time.
An Animal Control officer once explained to me why I should not get a wolf-dog hybrid as a pet. Dogs are adolescent. Because they are dependents, they never fully mature. Wolves, being feral, and not domestic, become adults, and as such are unpredictable. A wolf-hybrid can be raised with a family its whole life, but […]
Jumanji II: What is Wrong with This Movie?
The concept of Jumanji is hugely fun – kids get sucked into a video game. The first one was just that, with the additional joy of the actors who played the avatars channeling the kids, and all the gender jesting. Small caveat: the story began with two girls and two boys, but when they got […]
The New Garden
Last year, the garden was a place devastation and heart-break. But this didn’t matter as much as it might have, because I spent most of July in Avignon, France, where my play was being shown at the theater festival. After an experience like that, it’s hard to get very upset over the loss of your […]
Revelation
I have started work mapping Shakespeare’s earliest play, Henry VI, pt 1. This is the next step in my work on proving Shakespeare did not write Cymbeline. The framing of Cymbeline is such a hodge-podge. The most egregious problem is that there are more plot points in the 5th act than in all the other […]
Cymbeline Simplified!
I finished the rewrite of Cymbeline Simplified! or, The Queen’s Cookies today. I had a reading of the play last month (thank you, everyone who came!) with an absolutely splendid cast. First lesson: that many bodies on the stage all at once creates a buzz all on its own. And the fact that every single […]
Brushing Season
I did not go to the gym today. Instead, I took my battery-operated chainsaw onto a neighbor’s property and cut down some dead trees, loaded them in the trailer, brought them back and cut them up for firewood. I’m sore and tired, and I have enough wood to see us through the coming storm. Very […]