The daffodils Jack sent me :)

 I just celebrated a most wonderful birthday on Tuesday, thanks to my amazing family, friends, co-workers, and Jack.  Birthdays are still sad for me, and it’s those days that I miss my Gram the most. Every year she would call me at an ungodly, early hour and before I could say anything she would start singing Happy Birthday and then proceed to tell me how I was catching up to her in age (she was perpetually 29) and how she never expected to see me graduate high school (she was around to see me graduate college and graduate school, thankfully).  I know that birthdays are supposed to be happy times, but these past few years have been tough for me.

That’s why I am so thankful to have such amazing people in my life.  I got to work and found a giant sign attached to my desk and was promptly made to wear a tiara for the day.  Silly, perhaps, but it was nice to be remembered.  And throughout the day friends and family called, texted, emailed, and sent funny (and wonderfully irreverent) happy wishes for my birthday, keeping me smiling and lifting my mood. 

Folger Theatre

Jack has been a true sweetheart this past week, too.  He sent me Daffodils at work for my birthday with a beautiful note (see above), and got us tickets to see Hamlet at the Folger Elizabethan Theatre in May.  Hamlet is one of my two favorite Early Modern plays, and we’re seeing it at the Folger.  I’m aware that that means pretty much nothing to those of you who aren’t Early Modern scholars or enthusiasts, but to me that’s outstanding.  It’s the best I could ask for outside of seeing it at the Globe performed by the RSC. And Daffodils (not roses) are my absolute favorite flower.  I’ve mentioned before that just having them around lifts my mood and spirits.  They’re nature’s highlighter.

Hamlet, Daffodils, and Jack… three of my favorite things.  I’m a very lucky girl. 

So I’m 33.

I remember when my parents were 33.  I was 10.

I was going to post a list of all of the meanings of the number 33, and the significance of that age, and the numerology, and the strangeness that surrounds it, but I think I’ll save that for another post.  Right now I’m just going to enjoy what I have around me. 

Thank you, everyone, for making my birthday something very special…

Christmas took a lot out of me this year, and even though I tend to hate the holiday season the holidays themselves rarely end up being a colossal disappointment.  I’m pretty convinced that the reason for my holiday disgust has everything to do with the insane consumerism of the last three months of the year (Remember when it was only two?  One?  Yeah, this year there were Christmas decorations out next to the Halloween pumpkins. Not cool… and hey!  You missed an entire holiday in there!). 

For various reasons this year I was unable to pour myself in to the delight of my wrapping extravaganza and decorate holiday gifts with wire ribbon, candy, and ornaments.  This actually disappoints me.  I love wrapping.  I loathe shopping, but I love, love, love the wrapping and giving parts!  And just when I thought that was something to be momentarily sad about, I was given three very special gifts this year that mean a lot to me.  There are three kinds of gift givers–those that just go throw down a card or cash and grab whatever they see without much thought about the gift or recipient, and those that take great care in knowing the person they want to give a gift to, who they are, what they like, and what is meaningful to them, and then there are those individuals who fall somewhere in between.  I was lucky enough to have people in my life this season who took great pains (or at least seemed to) to give me something I would love dearly.

My parents gave me, among other things, a Magellan, which might not be the most fuzzy gift in the world, but it is something I had been wanting and needing, but never explicitly mentioned.  It has come in quite useful since the holiday, and it will continue to be so.  I just wish that Magoo (as I have named it) had the option like the TomTom to change the voice yelling at you to “Go straight, then a diagonal right.”  What does that even mean!?  I found out, I assure you. 

@DjLunchbox surprised me with something that shall remain on my desk until the polymers in the binding disintegrate.  Many of you know by now that I am a rabid Sandman fan, and that Neil Gaiman remains my favorite contemporary author (he shared that space in the past, but we all remember what happened there).  I opened my door to find The Quotable Sandman, a quarto sized book with favorite and famous quotes from the series and art from the various issues.  It’s magnificent and quite possibly prophetic…

And the BF shocked me with a stunning display of astuteness and thoughtfulness with the first digitized edition of Shakespeare’s First Folio.  It’s Shakespeare.  It’s the First Folio… scanned…. and searchable…. on my computer… in Early Modern English… Even the water stains and printer errors and front-matter are there!  I was overwhelmed, honestly.  I wish I could upload a screenshot to show you just how amazing it is!  As Othello said, it was “too much joy.  It stops me here…”  I spent hours going through play after play, and essays, and just absorbing the fact that I can hops skip and jump around in the First Folio now whenever I want, as often as I want, without need for special clearance or permission, or fear of breathing on the parchment! 

All three of these gifts might seem commonplace to you, but to me they mean the world, and each for a different reason.  So be aware that even though you may not have found anything special about the gift you gave someone, that gift might have made that person’s year.

I hope your holidays were joyous.  And I promise, we’ll be getting back to our regularly scheduled programming here (and also some new programming… muhahahaha!  Watch for it!) before you know it.

Al Pacino as Richard III in his documentary Looking For Richard

Aside from writing some of my favorite villains in literary history, Shakespeare also wrote some of the most impressive verbal strings of curses I have ever read.  One of the most memorable, and my personal favorite, is this exchange between Gloucester (soon to be Richard III) and Queen Margaret (whose position as Queen had recently been usurped during the War of the Roses by Richard’s family).  Historically, she shouldn’t be in this play at all, but her presence adds quite a bit of prescient anxiety and an outside voice to remind those involved what can, and she hopes, will, happen to them too.  Every scene she appears in includes a venomous warning to those around, but I’ve included here only my favorite.  What do you think?

Richard III, Act 1 Scene 3

QUEEN MARGARET

What, were you snarling all before I came,

Ready to catch each other by the throat,

And turn you all your hatred now on me?
Did York’s dread curse prevail so much with heaven
That Henry’s death, my lovely Edward’s death,
Their kingdom’s loss, my woeful banishment,
Should all but answer for that peevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?
Why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!
Though not by war, by surfeit die your king,
As ours by murder, to make him a king!
Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,

For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales,
Die in his youth by like untimely violence!
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!
Long mayest thou live to wail thy children’s death,
And see another, as I see thee now,
Deck’d in thy rights, as thou art stall’d in mine!
Long die thy happy days before thy death;
And, after many length’ned hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s Queen!
Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by,
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son
Was stabb’d with bloody daggers. God, I pray him,
That none of you may live his natural age,
But by some unlook’d accident cut off!
 

GLOUCESTER

Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither’d hag.
 

QUEEN MARGARET

And leave out thee? Stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.
If heaven have any grievous plague in store
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation
On thee, the troubler of the poor world’s peace!
The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be while some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog,
Thou that wast seal’d in thy nativity
The slave of nature and the son of hell,
Thou slander of thy heavy mother’s womb,
Thou loathed issue of thy father’s loins,
Thou rag of honour, thou detested-
 

GLOUCESTER

Margaret!
 

QUEEN MARGARET

Richard!

Let me know what you think of our good Queen Margaret.  Too venomous?  Did she go too far?  What if you heard someone saying the (albeit rough) translation of some of those lines to you today?