Monday, September 13, 2010

The ship were no stronger than a nutshell and as leaky as an unstanched wench.

During Act I, Scene ii of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, we initially meet Prospero and his daughter Miranda. Prospero is immediately identified as manipulative through his words and dictation that he chooses to use around certain people. He tells Miranda after she confides in him she is upset by the storm the ship has been through to, "Have comfort. The direful spectacle of the wrack, which touched the very virtue of compassion in thee, I have with such provision in mine art so safely ordered that there is no soul— No, not so much perdition as an hair betid to any creature in the vessel—Which thou heard’st cry, which thou sawst sink." Here Prospero admits to contriving the lie of the storm through his words, to his daughter. He is sympathetic out of preotection and fatherly love to Miranda, yet when he speaks to Ariel after she asks him about taking a year off her sentence, he becomes angry and calls her names. She is in his service as a slave, so when she asks for compassion and an early release he yells at her reminding her of the condition she was in when he saved her, saying, she had "...Groans of ever angry bears. It was a torment did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts to lay upon the damned, which Sycorax could not again undo. It was mine art, when I arrived and heard thee, that made gape the pine and let thee out." He uses elaborate and descriptive language to manipulate how Ariel feels about him and her service with him, so she'll stop asking about the year he promised to her. Prospero is very conscious of the way he speaks and particular words he uses to reform the ways people think about him, and the situations surrounding him. He has such a way with words as to convince all that he knows all, and is the one person to have the utmost respect for.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Various loveliness.

This is what I did this weekend. I went to my friend's brithday party, and ran around barefoot for the better part of an hour. The theme was The Amazing Race, and as you can see, we were the Orange team. And we had Sean on our team... for those of you who know Sean.... yeah. His expression sums it all up. In the end though, we came in third. Go Orange team!

This is just here for the heck of it. And it makes me laugh everytime I see it, and I felt the need to share that joy with the world. For those of you totally not cool kids, this was backstage during last year's musical, Anything Goes.