max theodore > Recent Status Updates

he's trying his damndest to make every play about falstaff, including midsummer night's dream

on CoE: "Like many of Shakespeare's comedies, The Comedy of Errors begins with an inflexible law and the human dilemma caused by the law's impersonal enforcement."

"...the threat of death frames all Shakespearean comedy. No character we meet in the course of a play will die, but outside, just beyond the boundary of the stage, death lurks and threatens. Comedy exists... poised between darkness and darkness."

on titus: "Later Shakespearean tragedies, though they contain key moments of unspeakable bodily violation... often tend to translate and internalize such physical degredations into metaphors, rendering them metaphysical... But Titus Andronicus is in a way the radical--the root--of Shakespearean tragedy, the dreamscape or nightmare world laid out for all to see, not disguised by a retreat into metaphor."

on much ado: "It is worth noting that in other Shakespearean comedies of this period the heroine does become a man, at least for a little while. Portia, Rosalind, and Viola all cross-dress, assuming male costumes and names in order to perform some act of rescue, release, or revenge. But Beatrice has this opinion only in the wishful form of a condition contrary to fact."

also, calling b&b "impervious sophisticates"

on taming: "When in the Induction the cross-dressed page tells Sly, 'I am your wife in all obedience' (Ind. 2.104), the question of wifely obedience is already put in play--especially when the first thing this 'wife' does is disobey her 'husband's' peremptory command, 'Madam, undress you and come now to bed' (113)."

forgot to post any quotes from each chapter so: two gents essay reads the play as "deliberately superficial" and an easily-available psychodrama where valentine and proteus kinda represent various facets of a person. i like when writers drag this one

was she still homophobic at this point? because this is the most homo shit i’ve ever read

crazy thing to say but this framing device happened in don quixote

"the age-old battle of the Western world against evil" you can't be saying that white baby

"And the women--ah, the women were glorious [...] For the first time in history, perhaps, they were as strong and interesting as men."

"Yet fascinating new phrases like 'they brainwashed you' and 'it's so Freudian' and 'I can't relate to it' were on everyone's lips."

his pov is so. special

DEVIL’S LAKE MENTIONEDDDDD

thinking "half of them don't even have professions" about her classmates. who are eleven. because she is eleven. love her so bad

"Without a notebook there was nothing to do but listen to Miss Harris. Having never done this before, Harriet was totally lost."

voice of many, many generations

"he's so dull that i already forgot his name so i'm calling him The Boy With The Purple Socks" is the evolutionary ancestor of dear dumb diary's That Ugly Kid Whose Name I Forgot

"According to Stanislavsky you have to feel like an onion. Do you feel like an onion?"

“I think you girls have something to learn. I think you have to find out you’re girls.”

indubitably lesbian book

“Writers don’t care what they eat. They just care what you think of them.”

did everyone really just leave their house doors unlocked in the 60s. wish that were still true so i could break in and sit in someone’s dumbwaiter

this is an ancestor of dear dumb diary and i do mean that. everyone in this book is so mean

“Jamie Gibbs was Harriet’s best friend besides Sport. She had a chemistry set and planned one day to blow up the world.”

this book really profoundly gets kids

i’m inconsolably sad and i need this

i’m going to kill ben for the les mis reference here i really am

rand is so awesome bc in his attempts to help others he is so self-loathing that it circles back around to self-centered. love him

i keep thinking “this would be really fun if i were a 1590s englishman” but honestly maybe it was exhausting then too

lestat most divorced a man has ever been

armand is making me actually fucking insane. armand and claudia sole characters in this book who are equally interesting as they are on screen

i thought louis and lestat were gay but it’s actually insane how explicitly in love louis and armand are. they’re saying it on the page. louis has had four instances of being like “i loved him so deeply i acted for him i was jealous to see women kiss him” and armand straight up says I Want You. it really is never loumandover

the amc casting directors read about armand’s “large, beautiful eyes” and were like yeah we got the guy

LMFAO THEY ALL DYE THEIR HAIR BLACK? I HATE THEATER KIDS!!!

“It seemed to me then that Armand, with his hypnotic power, aimed in some way for the maximum truth in presentation of himself”

okay louis.