This Week's Reading

1. Romeo and Juliet - Henrik Ibsen (heh. Just kidding.)

I first read the play in 9th grade, after years of wanting to read it because it was Romeo and Juliet, and I was a huge romantic until the age of 15 or so. Unfortunately, given that this was my first experience reading a Shakespeare play in its entirety, the language proved a minor impediment to my enjoyment. In my later teens, when I was of an age to better appreciate Early Modern English, I also happened to be of the opinion that the story was overwrought and Shakespeare had produced far better work. In senior year of college, however, I read Stephen Greenblatt's marvelous introduction to the play in The Norton Shakespeare, and decided to give it another go -- which I am now doing, a year later. And? It absolutely lives up to Greenblatt's hype. So much of the language is just pure poetry -- Juliet's soliloquy at the beginning of 3.2 is probably the best example of this ("Take him and cut him out in little stars, / And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night" [lines 22-24]), but the lovers' dialogue, too, is typically extravagant. Even the cynical Mercutio gets in on the act with his Queen Mab monologue. And the fatiguingly familiar story somehow seems so much more complex now than it did to my 14-year-old self. So, yeah. Romeo and Juliet is deservedly ubiquitous.

What's more, Greenblatt's introductions also motivated me to check out his much-acclaimed (by my English profs, at least, but presumably by better-known critics as well) Shakespeare bio, Will in the World. I read it in two days and intend to buy my own copy, just to have it on hand. I seem to be developing something of an intellectual crush on Stephen Greenblatt.

2. Gaudy Night - Dorothy L. Sayers

Hey! Something else I originally read at too early an age! In this case, at the age of 18, the summer before starting college. I read a good bio of Sayers a couple of weeks ago and was reminded of my earlier goes at the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries; I had only read a handful of them, mostly those co-starring Harriet Vane, of which Gaudy Night is the final.

The Sayers bio emphasized her guiding belief in the importance of dedication to one's work and the pursuit of one's calling (both topics of great interest to myself), and noted Gaudy Night's own concern with these themes. And while it's so obvious now (as is the fact that Harriet Vane is essentially Sayers herself), I really don't recall noticing it during my first reading. This, I think, is where the difference between being an 18-year-old high school grad, and an almost-23-year-old college grad attempting to make a future for herself, really makes itself known. Additionally, the literary and historical allusions make more sense now, but that's more a difference of education than of life experience.


Am also currently reading C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain, Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and Umberto Eco's History of Beauty, but they've all rather fallen to the wayside for the moment. Perhaps once one of the other two works is finished.