Profile

I've just finished a Ph.D. in English with a focus on early modern literature, which should be blatantly obvious if you read one or two of my journal entries. My favorite things to obsess about are Elizabethan drama, early modern constructions of monarchy, historiography, and of course chronicle history plays, which bring all these things together. I generally tend to sound like I have no social life whatsoever because my passion and my work are related, but that's okay, as grad school means you don't get a social life anyway (nor do you get much sleep). Nothing said here is in any way official.

I've been locking more of my posts recently, mostly for professional reasons rather than personal ones: stuff about school and things I'm working on tend to get locked. Just so you know. I'm currently working on my doctoral dissertation and those posts are filtered, too, since I know not everybody finds my witterings as interesting as I do. Assuming you're not one of the people mentioned in the paragraph after the next, if you want on, just ask. Also, I moderate the communities earlymodern, thisengland, and thegreatglobe; go check them out! They're fun, if low-traffic.

And if you're looking for the Evil Shakespeare Overlord List, it's here.

Since it seems to be the Done Thing to proclaim a policy about such things, feel free to friend me if you think my constant blitherings are interesting! I'll friend you back as long as you're not somebody I don't know who has an entirely blank journal or a creepy stalkerish sort of person. Also, userpics I have that aren't credited to someone else are my work, and if it doesn't say otherwise in the comments, you're welcome to use them as long as they don't have my picture in them or something like that (I don't know who'd want those and anyway I've scrapped most of them, so it's largely a moot point). I'd prefer if you didn't use icons made specifically for me by others, though (these are specified in the keywords). Information on resources is located here.

I am either far more or far less weird than my entries make me sound.










Quotage, as I always find people's choices of favorite quotes illuminating and my journal sidebar is big enough:

And with the shoutyng, whan the song was do
That foules maden at here flyght awey,
I wok, and othere bokes tok me to,
To reede upon, and yit I rede alwey.
I hope, ywis, to rede so som day
That I shal mete some thyng for to fare
The bet, and thus to rede I nyl nat spare.
-- Chaucer, The Parlement of Fowles

In the foregoing discussion no mention here has been made of such plays as King John, Richard II, Coriolanus, Pericles, and Timon of Athens. On the theory that the less said about them the better, saying nothing is best of all.
-- Richard Armour, clearly displaying an uncanny foreknowledge of this livejournal, Twisted Tales from Shakespeare

This music mads me: let it sound no more,
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me;
For 'tis a sign of love, and love to Richard
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.
-- Richard II 5.5.61-66

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island, cut off from other lands, but a continent, that joins to them.
-- Sir Francis Bacon, Essayes or Counsells, Civill and Morall

"Dear me! We Tooks and Brandybucks, we can't live long on the heights."
"No," said Merry. "I can't. Not yet, at any rate. But at least, Pippin, we can now see them, and honor them. It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not. I am glad I know about them, a little. But I don't know why I am talking like this. Where is that leaf?"
-- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. For my voice -- I have lost it with hallooing and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not. The truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him.
-- 2 Henry IV 1.2.185-92

The scribes on all the people shove
And bawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their life: they do not hate.
-- Wilfred Owen, "At a Calvary Near the Ancre"

But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man.
-- Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men

History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: "I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself." The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: "Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one."
-- Jorge Luis Borges, "Everything and Nothing"

And there seems to be so much strength in me now that I shall overcome all things, all suffering, so that I may say, say to myself every moment: I am! In thousands of agonies -- I am, writhing on the rack -- but I am! I may sit in prison but I, too, exist, I see the sun; and if I do not see the sun, I know that it is. And to know that the sun is -- that alone is the whole of life.
-- Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

For granted once the old way of Apollo
Sings in a man, he may then, if he's able,
Strike unafraid whatever strings he will
Upon the last and wildest of new lyres;
Nor out of his new magic, though it hymn
The shrieks of dungeoned hell, shall he create
A madness or a gloom to shut quite out
A cleaving daylight, and a last great calm
Triumphant over shipwreck and all storms.
-- E.A. Robinson, "Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford"

Je ne scais comme la réprésentation de ton image me vient si souvent devant les yeux de mon cueur, car de jour et de nuit toutes mes pensées imaginations ne sont aultres sinon pensées à toy.
-- Jean Creton, writing to Richard II, 1402

O cry created as the bow of sin
Is drawn across our trembling violin.
O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain.
O law drummed out by hearts against the still
Long winter of our intellectual will.
That what has been may never be again.
O flute that throbs with the thanksgiving breath
Of convalescents on the shores of death.
O bless the freedom that you never chose.
O trumpets that unguarded children blow
About the fortress of their inner foe.
O wear your tribulation like a rose.
-- W.H. Auden, "Song for St. Cecilia's Day"


Plantagenets are lovehatesharp pointy death love.


Tudors are scary, head-chopping love.


Stuarts are love. More so than is good for them, really.


Elizabethan poetry is love.


Richard II is talky, dysfunctional love.