[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

The only point you've proved is that reading the plays does not guarantee total recollection of every line of every play. We'd been talking about JC and I wasn't focusing on Hamlet.

Hey, I'm just surprised you hadn't picked up on that when you seemed so familiar with Shakespeare in general and easily recognized the other more obscure allusions that were made.

After all, "country matters" seems to be one of the most familiar bits that people reference in relation to Hamlet*. Mind you, it isn't nearly as well-known as "alas poor Yorick", "to be or not to be", or even "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead!", so it probably gets glossed over in the memory

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

That's only amusing if you're talking to people who hate the idea of high culture in the first place -- and the funny thing is, Beckett himself's in that camp.

Points of contention: Beckett is anything but turbulent, musicals annoy me as much, perhaps, as Beckett annoys you, and the whole bit about defrocking high culture with guitars and synths is a joke that lived and died with 60s pop culture.

Why on earth do you assume that Beckett annoys† me? Or that only people who hate the idea of high culture make or appreciate jokes about it?

I've been making bad Shakespeare jokes all week after reading Harry Turtledove's (excellent and recommended) alternate history Shakespeare novel, Ruled Britannia.

And if that means somehow I secretly hate the idea of high culture, then I suppose I'll have to join the haters to the left. Where they are exiting. Pursued by a bear‡.

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

You yourself seem to be illustrating another of your friend's points (sans the dishonesty-in-quotes charge):

Firstly, Harmon is not a friend of mine (not that I have anything against them, just to be clear), either on or off MR. I have made only two "friends" on MR, and they are both listed in my profile.

The only interaction I have ever had with him/her/it was to quote and remark upon those portions of their post that you yourself chose to quote and remark upon in this discussion thread.

Secondly, my "Also, I think there was someone way upthread who asked about what people saw in the graphic novel adaptations?" (emphasis added) was in response to another poster who asked for details about the graphic novel adaptations after I'd been an advocate of their usefulness in my first post on this thread.

It turns out to be this poster (thank you, MR thread search tools which I was too lazy to use this morning):

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

I am curious about the graphic novels that people have mentioned. Do these have the full Shakespearan texts, or are they just abridgments. How do they do the lengthy monologues? Do they break them up into several frames?

I'm sorry you seem to feel that your particular personal viewpoint preferences were being targeted by these unrelated remarks.

But really, it looks like you're being somewhat quick to jump to conclusions and make rather accusatory statements on those bases.

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

I'd respectfully like to know that you actually heard me and weren't continuing to build a case against a point that wasn't mine -- the idea that adaptations were worthless, unhelpful, sacrilegious, etc., etc.

Well, considering that I wasn't ever building a case against your point that the plays should be read as well as experienced through performance/retelling/other media (I did paraphrase your stated reading-the-plays-is-much-more-important preference as being "primarily experienced", rather than "solely"), it might be a bit tricky to assure you that I wasn't "continuing" to build something that I never built in the first place which you have chosen to ascribe to me on shaky foundations.

But yes, you can consider your repeatedly stated opinion heard.

Now if you'll excuse me, I haven't eaten since noon and I'm going to go nuke a mixture of green beans and corn in the microwave and watch my vegetables glow (vaster than empires and more slow, perhaps, if they happen to mutate from it).

* I've read at least three things in the past two months alone which did it: Connie Willis' Ado, Harry Turtledove's Ruled Britannia, and Jo Walton's Ha'penny. There may have been more.

† Possibly Henry II, perhaps. But I'm not Henry the II, I'm not.

Context is for the weak, as scans_daily likes it:

1. Thomas à Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was pretty much murdered on the plausible-deniability orders of Henry II, whose claim was that some knights overzealously acted on his rhetorical remark asking if no one would rid him of this turbulent priest.
   
   Samuel, a Beckett, is a playwright who is presumably no relation to Thomas.
   
   I leave it as an exercise to the reader to take this priest and this playwright and make a "defrocking" joke that hates the idea of high culture. With guitars and synths.
   
   Make a lovely Canterbury Tale, it would.
2. The Alan Parsons Project did an album based on Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. They also did one based on Edgar Allan Poe.
   
   Presumably in the parody alternaverse where they did one based on Beckett's work instead, the hit single from that would be "I Wouldn't Want to Wait For You".
3. This is what Terry Pratchett calls "a pune, or a play on words".

‡ That bear must be getting pretty tired by now.