Hither and yon

"The bread didn’t have a flashcard. It was just bread."    

Gods, this is worthy of a pomo Satyricon.  "Euterpes is the name for the foie gras with white chocolate..."  What, no atomized dormice?

With many thanks to sovay .

Oh Rhys Ifans, no!

"Just to see the kind of decay and increasing isolation and loneliness that
this man who was the creator of these huge universes populated by these
extraordinary characters - it was like a sense of what a huge weight on
one man's shoulders," Ifans says. "I found it extraordinary that one man
could've produced such an immense body of work. Just the weight of that
and all of his kind of virility and optimism and how the Elizabethan
court and society gradually quashed that. And really the pain."

[...]

"The theater was essentially the Internet," he says. "That's why these
places were burned, razed to the ground time and time again. They were
dangerous. They were rabble-rousing, mob-gathering mouthpieces, and I
think that's what the film does well. It reminds us of the power of the
stage at that time."

Let's see:  there was that tragicomic Foley malfunction at the Globe in 1613, and ... and ... 

Even in the Essex Rebellion, when the conspirators booked what they hoped would be a rabble-rousing performance of Richard II, it fizzled.  Augustine Phillips of the Chamberlain's Men was brought before the Privy Council and questioned; he just told the inquisitors that the company did an old play for the money:  40 extra shillings.  No consequences.

Bridgekeeper:  Right.  Off you go then.

"Virility and optimism"?  Please.

Here's what Gabriel Harvey (who elsewhere praised Shakespeare) had to say about that preening malcontent, his patron Oxford:

Vanity above all: villainy next her, stateliness Empress
No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:
No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.
For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,
In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.
His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy [physiognomy] smirking,
With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.
Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,
Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a diveling.
A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,
French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.
Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,
Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,
In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man.

And on a lighter note:

Dude.

I'm in TV Tropes under Badass Longcoat.

I may never see that castle-in-Spain review in the TLS, but my legend is assured.

Nine