27 November 2011 at 2.41 pm (Comps)
Tags: Are these the kinds of comps notes I ought to be making ?, Gammer Gurton's Needle
Sometimes, when you’re not feeling well, and you open the facsimile edition of an early play and see the off-setting, it makes you want to weep a little:
And then you’re very thankful that you forgot to return your desk copy of John Gassner’s edition of Medieval and Tudor Drama last year…
27 November 2011 ~ Hamilton
(You’re also thankful, once again, that you have the sort of friends who give you little book stands to assist you in your typing-reading-bibliophotography.)
9 November 2011 at 8.52 pm (Comps)
Tags: Are these the kinds of comps notes I ought to be making ?, But charactery is supposed to be light-hearted..., Sir Thomas Overbury doesn't seem to think much of women
are actually not that far off from some internet comments I’ve read. Eek!
A Good Woman
– her chiefest virtue is a good husband, for she is he. (200)
A Very Woman
– is Soloman’s cruel creature and a man’s walking consumption. (201-201)
A Whore
Her body is the tilted lees of pleasure dasht over with a little decking to hold colour. Taste her, she’s dead and false upon the palate. (227-229)
A Very Whore
is a woman. (229)
A Maquerela, in Plain English a Bawd
Her teeth are fallen out … she’s not ripe till she be rotten. (241)
These chambermaids
are the lotteries: you may draw twenty ere one worth anything. (243)
A Fair and Happy Milkmaid
She dares go alone and unfold sheep i’th’night, and fears no manner of ill because she means none. (255-256)
A Virtuous Widow
is the palm tree that thrives not after the supplanting of her husband. For her childrens’ sake she first marries, for she married that she might have children, and for their sake she marries no more. She is like the purest gold, only employed for princes’ medals: she never receives but one man’s impression. (270-271)
The most disturbing description, for me, is the milkmaid, but only because it uses the tired “act chaste and you’ll be chaste” (so if you get raped it’s your own fault, somehow) argument. Guhhh.
9 November 2011 ~Hamilton
Works Cited
Overbury, Sir Thomas (and others). Characters. Ed. Donald Beecher. Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 2003.
