Status Updates From Complete Works

4/5 The Merchant of Venice

All's Well That Ends Well - finished 24/01/2026 - ☆☆☆½

Richard II 3/5

4 historical plays, one long story - I am looking forward to a bit of change

King Henry V

Richard II

Agamben's modal ontology in action. Richard while acknowledging that he fills an office and plays an actor's role (two ways to get at the issue) nevertheless insists on a royal substance, sacral monarchism--whereas his successful antagonist realizes that this substance distributes socially, even if not democratically. The text requires some stark historical elisions to make it work, of course.

Começando “The comedy of errors”

Love's Labour's Lost

Conceptually very interesting--the thought experiment here has a fabular setup, a 'war against our own affections,' immediately impugned by the appearance of those who render the Navarrese oath always already perjured. The oath's faustian object, 'to know what I am forbid to know,' does not turn tragic, as the anagnorisis resolves the problem of 'wooing but the sign' but little else.

The Comedy of Errors

Something of a critique of Occam's Razor or an example of the Quine-Duhem thesis in practicum, whereby twins from abroad substitute in variously for local twins, none the wiser. The simple explanations for the errors that result are either that the locale is sorcerous or that the exogenous ones are insane, preventing via false consciousness correct apprehension of events.

Classics confirmed.