Parenting Strategies in Elizabethan Drama and Its Sources

This was inspired by an email conversation among several colleagues about final paper topics for Shakespeare and His Contexts (the "feckless mice" course).

Parenting rule number one: Do not feed your children to your dinner guests
PR number two: Do not feed their children to your dinner guests
PR number three: Do not have sexual relations with any mysterious, beautiful stranger your child's age. It will turn out to be your child in disguise.
PR number four: Do not leave your children under a rock/on the top of a mountain. This will result in the ultimate violation of rules 1-3 in the distant future.
PR number five: Do not divide your kingdom among your descendants. Most of your children are greedy dirtbags. The only one who really loves you will end up dead if you do this.
PR number six: Do not lock your children up in towers. They didn't do it.
PR number seven: Conversely, do not allow your children to sneak out the bedroom window every night. They are up to no good with your sworn enemy.
PR number eight: Never, under any circumstances, brag that your children are better/prettier/stronger than (insert name of local deity here). It will just end badly.

In fact, perhaps it's just best to dispense with this "having children" nonsense altogether. It just leads to too much disruption of your tidy plans for world domination. Become a nun and lock yourself in a convent.

Oh wait. That leads to the same sorts of troubles, doesn't it. Maybe you should just bite off your own tongue and allow yourself to be tortured to death during a play for the royal palace to expose the murder of your sister.

Schadenfreude, darling, Schadenfreude

Oh, no. No no no no no. They didn't.





Well, yes, actually. They did.

When Bad Things Happen to Good Shakespeare Classes

Reason number one why Dr. Glenn should not refer to characters in a play as "feckless mice" in my presence? The following will immediately appear in my notes and set Mark, who sits next to me, laughing so uproariously he almost snorts a Ricola out his nose.



Really, Glenn? You didn't see this coming?

A Brief Note of Explanation

I have not forgotten this blog exists. I am not dead. I am in grad school full time (again). I am still teaching two classes per semester. I have seven more pages on Schiller, Rousseau, and Chateaubriand to pound out before Monday.

I have a death wish, apparently.

If I can make it through the weekend, I'm due for a nice, long post. But how sad is it that my idea of weekend fun includes a movie about John Keats? And this paper's not even about that!

Sometimes a Manual Transmission is Just a Manual Transmission

Today whilst at work I found out that apparently I've been driving around without car insurance for two weeks! Because my fucking insurance company canceled my policy. Ok, it's not their fault. I love my car insurance company, usually. But they didn't get my check. You know, the one I wrote and mailed the first week of August. Which is apparently on holiday in the Caribbean somewhere, because it sure as hell didn't get to Trenton.

Of course the first thing the insurance company says to me is, "In the meantime, don't drive the car." Oh sure, I'll just climb aboard my MAGIC CARPET and LEVITATE the fuck home. Seriously. I pointed out that I needed this fixed sort of now, because I don't even have an office to sleep in, I'd have to sleep in the hallway, which was pretty embarrassing, and anyway I had to go to Trenton (unlike my check) for a class in literary theory, and while I'm sure I'd be delighted to skip two and a half hours discussing Freud, College B would probably be less so. So they accepted a check by phone. Which should clear....tomorrow. So call us then, to see if you have an active insurance policy again and can drive your car.

Sure. In the meantime, I'll just be STUCK IN PENNSYLVANIA LIVING OUT OF MY CAR. Since that's apparently all it's good for right now. Other than being a relatively soundproof place for me to vent my frustrations safely at Very Catholic College A.

Short version of rest of evening, paid beaucoup bucks (again), emailed College B, drove car home VERY CAREFULLY, exchanged car for mom's car, drove to campus, parked IN CHICAGO because mom's car doesn't have a graduate parking permit and can't park anywhere useful, got to class as they were taking a fifteen minute break.

I came very close to breaking my own first rule tonight.

This FireCat Reserved for Private Party

You may have noticed that this blog disappeared for a few weeks. No, there was not a glitch in the Matrix. I was being taught a lesson, or so I was informed.

Without going into the details that would give undeserved attention and detract from my ultimate point (there will be one, I promise; in six years together, Scully, have I ever been wrong?) I was being moderately cyberstalked. I knew who the person was. I have never met her personally, but we have had quite a bit of interaction in the past several years on several related internet forums. Apparently this person maintains a grudge against several people who frequent these forums because she feels that her privacy was invaded, and she felt I was as good a target as any to take one for the team, so she began posting my blog address all over the god-knows-where of creation. Her intent was to violate my privacy, so that I might presumably know what it felt like to be her (though how she thought she was going to violate my privacy by encouraging traffic to a professional writer's already public blog, I'll never know--I might as well thank her for the free advertising).

However, she miscalculated one thing: the only way she can violate my privacy is if I allow it to be violated. I have nothing to hide on this blog. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I have written about the things that shame me, but I have done so knowing that I am writing in public. I have made the utmost effort in my writings not to violate the privacy of others--my parents and siblings, my students, my beloved husband, my best friend (whose life occasionally literally depends on the collective silence of those who know him) and the many others held dear to me. (You know who you are, because mostly you're the ones who noticed when my blog went missing!)

Regardless of the point she was trying to make, wherein she to this day earnestly believes she has taught me and others a lesson (really? really-really?), she fails again to absorb the larger lesson being offered: everything offers a chance for forgiveness and growth. But you have to be willing to put down your grudges to take the blessing. You'll need both hands free to accept its grace.

What the Puck?

I can't even begin to describe the number of levels on which this is wrong, nor the amount of wrongness those levels contain.

They're damn tasty, though.