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nineveh_ukMeme from antisoppist.
1. Leave a comment to this post.
2. I will give you a letter. (Edited to point out, only if you ask for one, you can comment without having to do this yourself)
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows
Apparentlyantisoppist is a secret sadist. I got the letter O.
I can't even make a Story of O joke here as I haven't read it, though I've seen the episode of Frasier in which Ros dresses as her at a party*.
1. Mary Olivier I can't actually remember much about Mary Olivier, the eponymous heroine of May Sinclair's novel, because I read it as an undergraduate and haven't got round to buying my own copy. It's about an intelligent and imaginative upper middle class Victorian woman who gets stuck in the role of caring for the rest of the family. I vaguely remember her eventually publishing things, and a lover, but was principally stuck by her being incredibly angry that no-one had warned her about period pain.
2. Mary O'Neil I haven't yet got round to reviewing a Christmas present Persephone-published novel, Constance Maud's 1911 No Surrender about the women's suffrage movements. It's fantastic, not least in the fact that aristocratic Mary O'Neil is the sidekick and facilitator, whilst the heroine is millworker Jenny Clegg. That said, Mary is an interesting character herself. Fashionably 'Irish' (i.e. Anglo-Irish, but passionate and emotional, a theme of its own in contemporary literature.), she's a young woman in search of a cause, which she finds when she is taken to visit the mills owned by the Lancashire hosts she is visiting with her mother (who is, of course, hoping for a suitable marriage for her) and meets the suffragette/ist millworkers. Though Mary's social position is superior to Jenny's, she is equally trapped by male expectations of her role in life, and the novel's drumbeat that for women (and working class men) the question of suffrage is fundamentally economic and the scene in which she is force-fed in prison is the emotional climax of the book.
3. Ollivander If it is one of the frustrations of the Harry Potter novel that Rowling doesn't go further into so many of the intriguing little details she lets drop along the way as she tells the story, it is also one of the strengths. Possibly this viewpoint is supported by the fact that I first read the books during the Great Gulf between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, and when I had temp jobs with internet access. Ollivander of the silvery eyes and not so subtle admiration for Voldemort's abilities, if not his personality, is one of those details. Look, at least I can say more about him than I can about the Otways in Emma
4. Orsino and 5. Olivia I assume the absence of 'plays' in the meme instructions is an accidental rather than deliberate omission. If it is deliberate, then tough. I am delighted to learn that the Globe's Twelfth Night is to return this summer with Mark Rylance reprising Olivia [ed. I was, until I just now looked at the website and the whole thing is sold out, damn]. Twelfth Night was the first Shakespeare I read, aged 14 for GCSE, and like my entire class I adored it**, though I think we liked Viola and Malvolio at the time more than Olivia and Orsino. Olivia's still not my favourite character, but Rylance convinced me that she wasn't simly irritating. I don't remember the name of the actor who played Orsino, but he managed to be sympathetic and sincere, and deeply confused. I am a great fan of Toby Stephens (though, like Kate Clanchy speaking of Sir Galahad, I am a greater fan of his dad), but his version of Orsino in Trevor Nunn's film is a man in need of a good slap.
*And in which David Hyde Pierce puts in his bid for a US adapation of the Wimsey novels.
**And not, unlike some, because it was an excuse to go round saying "How will this fadge?"
antisoppist.1. Leave a comment to this post.
2. I will give you a letter. (Edited to point out, only if you ask for one, you can comment without having to do this yourself)
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows
Apparently
antisoppist is a secret sadist. I got the letter O.I can't even make a Story of O joke here as I haven't read it, though I've seen the episode of Frasier in which Ros dresses as her at a party*.
1. Mary Olivier I can't actually remember much about Mary Olivier, the eponymous heroine of May Sinclair's novel, because I read it as an undergraduate and haven't got round to buying my own copy. It's about an intelligent and imaginative upper middle class Victorian woman who gets stuck in the role of caring for the rest of the family. I vaguely remember her eventually publishing things, and a lover, but was principally stuck by her being incredibly angry that no-one had warned her about period pain.
2. Mary O'Neil I haven't yet got round to reviewing a Christmas present Persephone-published novel, Constance Maud's 1911 No Surrender about the women's suffrage movements. It's fantastic, not least in the fact that aristocratic Mary O'Neil is the sidekick and facilitator, whilst the heroine is millworker Jenny Clegg. That said, Mary is an interesting character herself. Fashionably 'Irish' (i.e. Anglo-Irish, but passionate and emotional, a theme of its own in contemporary literature.), she's a young woman in search of a cause, which she finds when she is taken to visit the mills owned by the Lancashire hosts she is visiting with her mother (who is, of course, hoping for a suitable marriage for her) and meets the suffragette/ist millworkers. Though Mary's social position is superior to Jenny's, she is equally trapped by male expectations of her role in life, and the novel's drumbeat that for women (and working class men) the question of suffrage is fundamentally economic and the scene in which she is force-fed in prison is the emotional climax of the book.
3. Ollivander If it is one of the frustrations of the Harry Potter novel that Rowling doesn't go further into so many of the intriguing little details she lets drop along the way as she tells the story, it is also one of the strengths. Possibly this viewpoint is supported by the fact that I first read the books during the Great Gulf between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, and when I had temp jobs with internet access. Ollivander of the silvery eyes and not so subtle admiration for Voldemort's abilities, if not his personality, is one of those details. Look, at least I can say more about him than I can about the Otways in Emma
4. Orsino and 5. Olivia I assume the absence of 'plays' in the meme instructions is an accidental rather than deliberate omission. If it is deliberate, then tough. I am delighted to learn that the Globe's Twelfth Night is to return this summer with Mark Rylance reprising Olivia [ed. I was, until I just now looked at the website and the whole thing is sold out, damn]. Twelfth Night was the first Shakespeare I read, aged 14 for GCSE, and like my entire class I adored it**, though I think we liked Viola and Malvolio at the time more than Olivia and Orsino. Olivia's still not my favourite character, but Rylance convinced me that she wasn't simly irritating. I don't remember the name of the actor who played Orsino, but he managed to be sympathetic and sincere, and deeply confused. I am a great fan of Toby Stephens (though, like Kate Clanchy speaking of Sir Galahad, I am a greater fan of his dad), but his version of Orsino in Trevor Nunn's film is a man in need of a good slap.
*And in which David Hyde Pierce puts in his bid for a US adapation of the Wimsey novels.
**And not, unlike some, because it was an excuse to go round saying "How will this fadge?"
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-12 07:53 pm (UTC)Also, can I have a letter?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 08:15 am (UTC)Your letter is A.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-12 08:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 08:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-12 09:10 pm (UTC)I'm still trying to figure out what was wrong with Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night. They somehow managed to make what is arguably Shakespeare's most charming play...not fun, at all. I do remember Feste working rather well, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 08:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 07:28 pm (UTC)I am excited for Twelfth Night next month at the RSC, though. I'm seeing it out of the three What Country Friends Is This? productions only because that was the day on which I happen to be in town, but it's such a wonderful play. (Am mildly excited for Jonathan Slinger's Malvolio, although I'm beginning to feel like his contract requires him to be in 30 shows a year, because he's over-cast IMO.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-12 10:35 pm (UTC)May I have a letter, please?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 08:21 am (UTC)Your letter is R.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-12 11:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 08:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 05:59 am (UTC)My family likes Henry V because it's an excuse to go around saying "Shall we shog?"
I'm enormously impressed that you found so many Os. I'm still trying to scratch together enough suitable Cs - I could do it using just Jane Austen characters, but that that would get a bit tedious, and I could do it using just Charlses, but one of them would have to be Charlie brown, about whom I have nothing to say.
Mybe Toby Stephens *wanted* to play Orsino as an arse? It does rather leap off the page at you as an obvious interpretation. And just because it's a comedy doesn't mean it has to be *fun* (er, I realise I may have been rather over-exposed to German theatre, which loves to problematise texts, but it does sound from what you and madamedarque say that Trevor Nunn might have wanted to stress the more uncomfortable aspects in his production).
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 08:39 am (UTC)I don't mind Orsino being played as an arse, and I'm all for problematic Twelfth Nights. But Nunn's version isn't problematising the text (or bringing out the problems already on the surface), it's just turgid, the symbolic darkening autumn isn't a meditation on the dark side of comedy, or Viola's real peril, or Olivia's entrapment, it's just gloomy and dull and the film plods along without energy. The Sir Toby plot is better, because it is given more energy, and indeed pathos and complexity, by Mel Smith, and Nigel Hawthorne is good as Malvolio, but as a whole the film has nothing to say except "look, I'm a comedy, but I'm sad".
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-14 05:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 07:40 pm (UTC)Couldn't agree more. I don't mind darker interpretations of comedies, but Nunn's Twelfth Night was terribly plodding and lacked dramatic momentum. And I think Twelfth Night is a charming play, and while I don't necessarily go to the theater to be charmed, I don't think that any TN should be quite so humorless.
It wasn't terrible, but I just found it uninspiring--the choice to change the setting to something resembling 19th century Central Europe didn't bring any new textual insights, most of the actors were either woefully miscast (*coughHBCcough*) or directed strangely (Toby Stephens, Imelda Staunton), and the whole thing was weirdly joyless--they even cut out the best part of Viola's ring soliloquy!
Points for Ben Kingsley's singing, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-14 05:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 07:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 08:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 09:31 am (UTC)Looking at the programmes box (I have been moving furniture and it happens to be on the floor) I saw an RSC Twelfth Night in 1988 with Harriet Walter as Viola and Donald Sumpter as a rather cadaverous and bald Orsino.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-13 10:07 am (UTC)A cadaverous and bald Orsino sounds rather odd. Though I expect Harriet Walter was a more convincing Viola than Felicity Kendal in the BBC version we watched at school!