Review: "Cry Murder! In A Small Voice"
Sep. 10th, 2022 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
NOTES:
- For all that the language is rigidly Shakespearean, the sentence structure is at times quite contemporary. The writer’s impulse towards fragments isn’t jarring, but it is somewhat at odds with how prose was written when English was active in this way. I think this can be a fairly productive friction, though.
- Isn’t it kind of weird that Shakespeare isn’t more interested in the Romance? It’s a glut of well-cathected material he hardly fucks with at all. Mari and I talked about this, and Shakespeare-specialist Molly K weighed in, but we couldn’t come to firm conclusions. Mari wondered whether these themes weren’t popular with Shakespeare’s mixed and partly lower-class audiences, and that’s certainly possible. But you could also argue that these more ‘home grown’ stories ought to have been more their jam than Shakespeare’s Latinate shit? Heng does stress there are high and low Romance traditions that run simultaneously. Yet perhaps these streams are too divergent, and it would have been difficult to appeal to groundlings and noble patrons with the same Romance offering? Contemporary Spenser never, I think, aims at broad popular appeal. It’d be interesting to track what happened with the romance in terms of its popular currency between the high medieval and Mallory—in a macro-timescale relevant incidents tend to look ‘close’, but 50 or 100 years is certainly long enough for a ‘reading public’ to forget a lot.
- A third of the way through the book, you understand that De Vere did the deed because he is Around, rich, a poet (who sucks), and because he doesn’t want a particular scene acted (in the manner of a guilty Claudius). The problem isn’t ‘who’, it’s that Ben doesn’t know how to nail Oxford. And granted, given the historical framework they’re operating in and De Vere’s position, how could you? We also know Oxford wasn't held accountable for any such crime.
Mari says “the fact that de Vere is a shit poet and his plays are unactable is a proper argument in my thesis”. Oxfordians have not adequately reckoned with the fact that the Earl cannot write good.
- Does anyone know anything about this Moorfields labyrinth charm? I believe Christian devotional labyrinths on cathedral floors are more typically continental, but England does have a kind of analogous maze tradition that I think Tiffany Angus worked on a bit.
- Poor Calder, burning the puppets.
- “In a sort of Ebreu Spanish”: it’s Ladino, Ben. Also you can use consonants to spell Hebrew, they are free.
- My only substantive issue with this book is that because the author is so focused on the prose, neither she nor the reader have much energy to give to the plot. This fantastically-executed project is excellent at the project it sets itself, but I would have liked to see more investment from it in this aspect of the story.
Words I wanted to look up while reading:
merdurinous: Consisting of excrement and urine
Qualmish: 1a : feeling qualms : nauseated. b : overly scrupulous : squeamish. 2 : of, relating to, or producing qualms
Tireman: In the Elizabethan theatre the man in charge of the wardrobe, which was kept in the tiring-house, or dressing-room. He also saw to the provision of stools […].
Pelion: Pelion or Pelium is a mountain at the southeastern part of Thessaly in northern Greece, forming a hook-like peninsula between the Pagasetic Gulf and the Aegean Sea.
Tun: a large beer or wine cask (or an associated verb or measure).
Who knew that dreaded Atropos was puppet master: Atropos, in Greek mythology, one of the three Fates, the others being Clotho and Lachesis. Atropos's name (meaning “unalterable” or “inflexible”) indicates her function, that of rendering the decisions of her sisters irreversible or immutable.
Gorboduc: Gorboduc, play by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville that takes as its subject Gorboduc, a mythical king of ancient Britain. First performed in 1561. (Sounds like a Pokemon.)
Sneck: a latch on a door or window, to close or fasten (a door or window) with a latch.
Hesperus and prey: In Greek mythology, Hesperus is the Evening Star, the planet Venus in the evening. He is one of the Astra Planeta. A son of the dawn goddess Eos. (I can’t find much about ‘and prey’.)
Flapdragoned: 1. a game in which the players snatch raisins out of burning brandy and swallow them blazing. 2. to swallow whole as a flapdragon; to devour. (Variant on snapdragon, then.)
Gunstone: cannonball
Cade-lamb: An orphaned lamb which has been reared on a bottle. This is also known as a poddy lamb, cade lamb or pet lamb.
Cynosure: a person or thing that is the centre of attention or admiration.
Puckfist: 1. rare. a puffball fungus ; 2. archaic. a person who boasts ; 3. obsolete. a miser.
Sufflaminandus erat: “that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped: Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius”
Spondaic: of or concerning spondees. (of a hexameter) having a spondee as its fifth foot. A spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables in modern meters. The word comes from the Greek σπονδή, spondḗ, 'libation'.
Gill: A gill or ghyll is a ravine or narrow valley in the North of England and other parts of the United Kingdom. The word originates from the Old Norse gil.
quartpot: A tin pot holding a quart of liquid, used for measurement or drinking.
Stoup: a flagon or beaker for drink.
Ingle: a domestic fire or fireplace, an inglenook.
Chopines: A chopine is a type of women's platform shoe that was popular in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Chopines were originally used as a patten, clog, or overshoe to protect the shoes and dress from mud and street soil. Chopines were popularly worn in Venice by both courtesans and patrician women from c. 1400 to 1700.
Whitsun giant: Whitsun (also Whitsunday or Whit Sunday) is the name used in Britain,and throughout the world among Catholics, Anglicans and Methodists, for the Christian High Holy Day of Pentecost. It is the seventh Sunday after Easter, which commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ's disciples (as described in Acts 2). In England it took on some characteristics of Beltane, which originated from the pagan celebration of Summer's Day, the beginning of the summer half-year, in Europe. (I’m guessing the ‘giant’ is some kind of Wicker Man affair.)
Ingeminate: repeat or reiterate (a word or statement), typically for emphasis.
Chancred: a sexually transmitted disease (STD) that results in sores on your genitals.
Some Great Lines:
- It glowed in the unwilling day, November’s daylong dusk
- to wed the devil: aghast, yet sensible of elevation
- ‘Glovery’ is a particularly cutting way to insult Will.