Thursday 27 August 2009

Ish culcher, innit?

While we were away we visited a little book shop in Hastings called 'Bookmans Halt'. I found a translation of 3 of Aristophanes plays: The Wasps, The poet And The Women and The Frogs. The author had produced a long and quite detailed forward explaining the circumstances surrounding the writing of the plays, rules relating to Greek comedies and competitions, costumes, stages, various kinds of actors etc. Some of it was intensely dull and some really very interesting, enabling a 'minds eye' stance when reading.

So far I've just got through a couple of acts of The Wasps. It's a play full of political comment, featuring an elderly father with an addiction for acting as a juror and his son, who is trying to keep him at home. While it's a little odd, it *feels* like an ancient Greek version of 'one foot in the grave', and I can just imagine Victor Meldrew expressing his desire to place his voting marble in the urn while condemning the defendant.

Culture was seldom so... common.

Oh, BTW I am convinced running the bookshop is what Snape really did when he finished filming for Harry Potter (and not being killed by Voldemort). The guy running it looks so much like an older version of Alan Rickman's character.

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