Larry Storch

            I translated the third verse of "Arthur, où t'as mis le corps?" (Arthur, Where'd You Put the Corpse?) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished memorizing "On n'est pas des grenouille" (We Are Not Amphibians) by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords but no one had posted them. I'll start working them out tomorrow.

            I weighed 90.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            Before 9:00 I logged onto the Zoom meeting for my Shakespeare lecture with the plan to try this time to type my lecture notes with the hope that it will save me time. I had my pen and notebook handy just in case that didn't work out. 

            Continuing with 1 Henry 4. 

            Professor Lopez says he's been reading our emails and they are less detailed this week because Henry IV is quite different from The Comedy of Errors. There is bit of an expectation problem when reading history plays. How to read any Shakespeare play requires a way of thinking of Shakespeare. Most are reading for information and have persistent questions about access to information that Shakespeare or his audience would have and thinking that would help us understand what sources he was working from and to what extent he altered details. 

           Would his audience know the history behind his play? How much information is necessary? How much theatrical practice allows the audience to be clear? How much would cause confusion? Are we supposed to understand what people are saying? What attitude must we have? Is he writing to his audience or with some other purpose? 

            To get Shakespeare's relationship between his plot and his sources, they are based on extant stories. He took what was already being told in some form and redramatized it. He liked to work with what was already around. 

           The language on a granular level shows relations between characters in complexity and what they mean. What social relations are lost by the fiction? The relationship between genre and experience, how is genre a determining factor, etc. For example Bibilical allusions. 

            To get the total picture and one's own interpretation one will have to read the play twenty times. We are not expected to do that in this course. This is only an introduction to Shakespeare. To get all of Shakespeare one must read it twenty times or more. Does Professor Lopez have command? No, even though he's read it more one hundred times it exceeds his grasp. He has tools and can do it quicker but it's a life project just for this play alone. There is always more to learn. There are resources, plot summaries and books about the play to orient you but if unsettled you are like everyone. 

            One can read Henry IV without needing historical information. It's about a civil war; a prince transforming to a king; his relationship to Falstaff; Hotspur and his wife; and rebels carving England. But the play is not a history book and one wouldn't read it for historical information. The play is a work of art with formal character to teach you how to read it. 

            Tips to read less for information. Read as an interactive form. Read to get the formal effects and to get the play artistically. Shakespeare's audience would have known Henry IV better than you but you are better educated. Universal literacy is a modern fact and most of his audience couldn't read. There was an elite group in his time that was educated earlier and better, but iIlliteracy was high. We are already ahead because we can read. They were not stupid but don't think he wrote for history buffs. He knew better than them because of research. 

           The events of this play took place in 1399, 200 years before he wrote about them. Do we know what happened in 1821 in Canada? We can look it up but 200 years is a long time. He did not assume currency. He has to rely for theatrical effects on what he gives in performance. It could be in excess of understanding. 

            In the beginning the king shows up and talks. He delivers four awesome lines that are cool but confusing. They are shaken and they are worried. They are trying to find peace so there must be war. "Broils" means "conflicts" and maybe his audience gets that word. They need peace for new wars. There is a deliberately archaic reference to strands far remote. We are in civil war but need go to end it so we can have a new war. He talks for 33 lines, gradually giving a sense of what's happening. He wants to go to the holy land to chase pagans in the place where Christ was "nailed for our advantage." Crusades were often penance. It is a confusing start. We want peace for war is an unsettled thing to say at the start of a play. In 1.1.27 we see that this is not new, as he's been talking a year or more about this.

            Carving out a space for the play takes twenty lines. He looks for an advisor and asks Westmorland. He learns that in Wales Mortimer has been taken. It is hard to figure out. Mortimer is one of his military commanders. When leaders talk of alliances it's hard keep up. One must read the footnotes. Mortimer went willingly to Glendwr. Hotspur took prisoners. The exposition of the play is complicated in a mimetic way. They are paralyzed in actions and looking to the future while hacking through the present. 

            The first four lines are about finding time to fight war. In 1.2 Shakespeare makes a typically drastic change of tone. Enter the Prince with Falstaff. Falstaff is an ambiguous but decayed knight who has sacrificed status with his behaviour. He's large and his visual impression must be distinct but looking socially ambiguous. In a life of pleasure why care about the time of day? 

           The first scene is about finding time, and the second is about knowing the time or having no relationship with time. We are structurally lifted out of pressure of knowing the story. But above information is formal experience. He's using the similar material of time to suggest something about the conceptual architecture of the play. What is he telling about time being important for some but not for others? He's introduced the time note and it's floating around. He rings the time note in the next scene in another way. The language of time. What happens with the sound of time as we progress? 

           The first scene takes little time but has lots of info. The second scene is expansive but with less content. Banter and wit shows they are reveling in wasting time. They are thieves seeking sensual pleasure. They set up a robbery and Poins sets the plot in motion. Tonight he's here and tomorrow they'll have money. This precise planning in time is a comic version of the king's talk of time. Temporal coordinates. History and military in the first scene, comic dissolute action in the second. 

            Hal must move between two worlds. The difference between the worlds are important in the play. The establishment of the story and the king wishing Hotspur was his son. The other scene putting both sets in time and employing them differently. Shakespeare is not content with this. After that Hal is alone and says to himself or the audience that the sun is an image of nobility. He is the son and must act like the son of a king to become the Sun. He says I'm hanging out for now because it's good for my rep to have something smothering to rise above. This is contradictory and complex and there is something unpleasant about it. The contrasts between Hal and Falstaff and the king. 

           Hal looks great at first because he's gonna commit a robbery for fun, making the most of his time by wasting it. But the king is also wasting time because he can't use it the way he wants. We are supposed to like Falstaff and his festive principle. Hal says it's temporary because I'm really like my dad but that's a disappointing comparison. We like Hal less for this. We like him at first because he's fun but he takes it away. He bides his time in a calculated way. He is in control and he's deceiving his friends because they are the clouds that block him from being the Sun.

            There are holidays in the calendar but if they were all holidays it would be boring. Everything in its place. There is the movement of the sun but different from no time like Falstaff. Because I'm bad I will look better later when I rise. He isolates his self image in the future differently from Henry. Within the idiom of the play Henry is humble to serve Christ and to atone but Hal is about himself and he wants to rise above everyone. Contrast dad and son. Military, festive, then identity. Hal is separate and has further separation from his dad because he is calculating and selfish. Another time note. 

            In 1.3 the king is mad about a new fight with his servants. I used to be nice, letting everyone have what they want but now I'm going to be myself. It is a similar idea to what Hal just said. I will be myself. One is supposed to judge me by what I was and what I will become. Henry wants to be the king he always was and not the king he's playing. One will see the difference soon. Shakespeare is saying kings must act in a certain way but formally he's putting in front of us different scenes that are united about time and self becoming. 

            There will be a big lecture on Wednesday Ocober 13. Follow this lecture to learn to uncover what Shakespeare is doing to expand the conceptual range and to make more reasonable relationships between the characters mostly about time and self becoming but also more than that. A concrete idea about how to coordinate the elements in artistic form. 

            I had no problem typing the lecture so I think from now on that's what I'll do. Of course making sense of my typing shorthand and expanding it will take as much time as the lecture or more. 

            I weighed 89.2 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five year old cheddar and a half a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. At Spadina and Queen there is a preacher in a baseball cap who looks like he's an alcoholic and has been homeless. He has a microphone and amplifier that is so bad that it's almost impossible to understand anything he's preaching. It's like he's praising Jesus while being smothered by a pillow. 

            When I got home I looked out my window and a cyclist rode by carrying a teddy bear the size of a real bear.

            I weighed 88.7 kilos at 18:00. I finished editing my lecture notes at 19:30 and so it took an hour and a half to edit a one hour lecture. I think that's better than if I had hand written and then transcribed it. Maybe I'll get faster. 

            I read chapter six of The Scarlet Letter, the chapter that describes Hester's daughter Pearl. She does seem to be a bit of a demon child but then because of her mother's shunning by the community she is not allowed to have any friends. It's no wonder that she throws rocks at the other kids. She is obsessed with the scarlet letter on her mother's breast and her mother also always dresses her like the letter in scarlet. 

            I made pizza on naan with Parmese sauce, a cut up slice of ham, french fries and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle. 

            In this unlikely story Camp Henderson hosts a visiting soldier named Manuel Cortez from a fictional small country in South America called The Thirteenth Federated Constitutional Republic of Greater San Miguel. On a map of Brazil it is a dot behind a mountain. He is there to learn how to bring Marine discipline back to his country's army. Sergeant Carter is selected to be his host and he starts by letting him inspect his platoon. He then tells him he can pick any one of them to be his guide during his stay. He picks Gomer because of his honest face and they become fast friends. Manuel reveals that he is only a corporal and he insists on staying in the barracks and working side by side with the men. While they are digging a ditch a woman comes through the fence calling for Manuel in Spanish. He introduces her as his very good friend Consuela whom he just met. Gomer tries to tell him he can't have civilians on the base when Carter sees her. Carter gets Manuel to tell Consuela she has to leave and she finally wiggles away angrily, gesturing and shouting in Spanish. Carter calls Gomer a knucklehead for not letting Manuel know the rules. Manuel demands that Carter apologize for calling Gomer a knucklehead. He refuses and so Manuel challenges Carter to a duel. Carter refuses to fight and so Manuel thinks he's a coward. Gomer tries to explain to Manuel that the esprit de corps of the Marine corps demands that if he fights Sergeant Carter he would have to fight him first. Manuel decides that Carter is a bad leader and needs to be replaced by a good leader, who is Gomer. He goes to tell Carter to remove his stripes. Carter blows his top just as the colonel walks in and reveals that Manuel is really a general and he's only been posing as a corporal. Manuel decides that Carter is not a coward after all and has been resisting dueling with him. He says he will take back the idea of esprit de corps to his country. 

            Consuela was played by Lisa Gallegos but not much is known about her. 

            Manuel was played by Larry Storch who learned many accents growing up in the Bronx and developed hundreds of impressions which served him well as a comedic actor. He started out as an MC in burlesque houses. In 1953 he had his own TV variety show called The Larry Storch Show. He became lifelong friends with Tony Curtis when they served on the same submarine. The idea that Cary Grant said "Judy, Judy, Judy" came from an impersonation of Grant that Storch did in his nightclub act. Later Curtis got him roles in his films such as "Who Was That Lady I Saw You With", "Forty Pounds of Trouble", "Sex and the Single Girl" and "Wild And Wonderful." He played Corporal Randolph Agarn on "F Troop." He was the voice of Phineas J Whoopee on "Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales" and "Underdog." He did the voice of Koko the Clown on "Out of the Inkwell."

October 7, 1991: I told the bank rep in charge of my building I was paying $25 less because there was no heat and hot water

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday morning I went to Finch Station where I tapped the bank machine and got a coffee before catching the bus and getting to the job site between Yonge and Bathurst at around 9:00. We moved the Speech and Stroke people to near York Mills and Yonge. There was a cute young black woman working there. 

            After work I got a ride to Sheppard Station where I went to the bank, cashed my cheques and withdrew my money. I put $575 in a money order and called Michael Quinlan to find out where the lawyer's office was. I was on hold for half an hour before getting the address and telling him that I was paying $25 less because there was no heat and hot water. I added that if the heat wasn't on by October 15, the date past which it was illegal to have it off, I'd call the appropriate ministry. 

            Nancy called to tell me she'd be sleeping at Rakina's.

Pearl

            On Tuesday morning I finally memorized the second verse of “On n'est pas des grenouilles” (We Are Not Amphibians) by Serge Gainsbourg and worked on revising my translation. I didn't have the rhyme right before because every other line for my version will have to at least sort of rhyme with “amphibians.” There's also a quote I had to find the relevance of . A verse says we are not like that idiot who said , "Que d'eau que d'eau" and it turns out to have been the mayor of a town in France that was flooded and he said to the people "There's water everywhere." Obviously this will be meaningless to anyone who doesn't live in France so I'll have to find some English equivalent. 

            I weighed 90.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            At around 8:30 I started getting ready to leave for my US lit lecture. I had time to eat a few grapes but though I made coffee I had to leave before even taking a sip. 

            Professor Morgenstern wasn't in the classroom when I got there. There were less students than the first live day. I guess because everybody now knows where the hall is so there's less of a rush. 

            When I was setting up I realized that I'd forgotten my notebook and I looked around for paper to write on, but nobody seems to use paper anymore and so I was going to have to type notes on my laptop in a live lecture and hope I could type fast enough to catch everything. 

            The professor had problems getting the slides to project on the screen. She called tech but it was after 10:10 so she started without slides. 

            So far we have read different kinds of speech: declaration, petition, narrative, essays, but now a novel. Nathaniel Hawthorne calls The Scarlet Letter a romance. In the Custom House section he writes on what is romance: 

            "A child’s shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse;— whatever has been used or played with, during the day, is now invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairyland, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other. Ghosts might enter here, without affrighting us. It would be too much in keeping with the scene to excite surprise, were we to look about us and discover a form, beloved, but gone hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of this magic moonshine, with an aspect that would make us doubt whether it had returned from afar, or had never once stirred from our fireside." 

            What to take from in the novel. There are events that don't force us to decide their nature. The A on the chest. What is it? An injury? Self inflicted? 

            Tech came and now we had slides. 

            Bring this definition to the novel. The nature of events is undecided. Is the A god's mark or is it a collective delusion? Witnesses are divided if the mark exists. Most could see it but some not. The terrain between actual and imaginary, each imbuing the other. 

            Recall that Hawthorn sets his novel in a different time than his own. It is set in the 17th Century while he is writing in the 19th Century. The novel is also not set in the 17th Century. One can read it realistically or also as allegory and that it is more about his own time. 

            Individualism opposed to collectivism as in Emerson and Thoreau. It is a revolutionary ethos. The revolution is now for Thoreau, in every decision. Every individual is a revolutionary if they do not conform. “The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. . . ” (Emerson) Emerson is asking us to hear and think about the word “virtue”—to return it to an older meaning to “virilise” it. . . virtus (classical Latin) as in. . . manliness, valour, worth, merit, ability, particular excellence of character or ability, moral excellence, goodness, this quality personified as a goddess.

            Gender has come up but it is different in Hawthorne. He appeals to feminine or feminized figurative language and motherhood is also important. Connect this to Harper's "The Slave Mother." Considering slavery keep in mind the quotation from Toni Morrison about how we can't separate slavery from US culture. 

           This novel is about love and eroticism. It contains one of US lit's great child figures. The child is important in US lit for the reason the child is important in Emerson because of presocialness. The child is just outside the social and outside conformity. There is a relationship between the 17th Century and the 19th in the composition. 

            She shows a slide of Lilian Gish as Hester Prynn. 

            Someone mentions ECA. I ask what's ECA and some people snicker. It's a romantic comedy coming of age movie starring Emma Stone. She is accused of adultery and it's sort of based on The Scarlet Letter. I didn't find out until I looked it up later that the movie is called "Easy A." 

            She shows a slide of a painting representing Hester Prynn with her baby as Madonna and child. This is strange in relation to the Puritans. Another slide of Lillian Gish in the movie with an actor representing Dinsdale in the forest. 

            In Hawthorne's Salem, Mass. he had a Puritan ancestor who was a judge in the witch trials. Some people claimed he drew on his family history but he really just researched a lot of old documents. He did enough of his own research to shame most ambitious grad students. 

           He burned much of his early work. He was never as popular as sentimental women novelists like Harriet Beacher Stowe the lot of whom he called a damn mob of scribbling women. 

           He said his occupation was between popular culture, sentiment and the transcendentalists. He was self conscious of a sense for him between popular culture and high philosophy. 

            Ann Hutchinson is referred to in the novel. She comes up at the end of the first chapter with the rose bush outside the prison said to have sprung up under Ann's footsteps. She was the foundress of a religious sect. It is said that Hester if she had not become a mother would have become a religious leader like Hutchinson. Ann was a radical Puritan and a charismatic preacher who was tried, convicted and banished in 1637. She preached of personal revelation being as authoritative as scripture. We hear what Emerson and Thoreau took from this. Connect Ann and Hester. Hester is infused with Ann. Why he chose her is because several of the Puritan theologians who opposed her described personal revelation as figuratively an illigitimate child. 

            Hawthorne critic Michael Colacurcio, in “The Context of The Scarlet Letter” says “Hawthorne has engaged Hester entirely in an overt struggle with the unruly and unsatisfied sexual emotions which the Puritans obscurely felt to lie unsublimated behind Mrs. Hutchinson’s public career, and which they clearly felt would be unleashed upon their community by a public acceptance of her doctrine. . . Hawthorne regards awakened and not conventionally invested female sexual power as a source and type of individualistic nullification of social restraint." He is saying there was already an explicit sexual threat about Ann to the Puritans. He makes the case for sexualized feminine power as resistance to social conformity different from that of Emerson and Thoreau. 

            The scaffold is like an auction block. The Scarlet Letter was published the same year as the Fugitive Slave Act that held the north and south together. In the compromise northerners were obligated to return slaves. This made northerners feel implicated as free blacks were enslaved or re-enslaved. The Scarlet Latter was not overtly about slavery. Hawthorne was not an abolitionist, nor was he pro slavery. But is it possible to write a novel in the 19th Century United States and not have it touching slavery? She is just asking. 

            Jean Fagan Yellin in “The Scarlet Letter and the Antislavery Feminists” says, "Perhaps the most complex and influential literary work that uses the antislavery women’s iconography to reject their ideology is The Scarlet Letter. . .Although Hester is not marked by an iron chain but by a piece of needlework, recurrent references to the scarlet letter as brand force the connections between the embroidered symbol and the instruments of slavery." The scarlet letter is a brand. I pointed out that women criticizing the mildness of Hester's punishment say in the novel that the letter should have been a brand on her forehead. 

            Literature is timeless. Meaning is context bound but context is boundless. There is always more context in The Scarlet Letter, not just inside the text but also out. "Opening as if by her own free will." I said it's ironic because it is by her free will and so to say "as if" creates tension. 

            She's more free for being radically unfree. Radical freedom that can't be restrained 

            The first description of the A. She submits and defies in how she makes the A as an artist. The A could stand for “Adultery" but also "Artist". Making the A is her speech act. The Puritans were anti ornamentation. To be aesthetically minded is already sinful. A Puritan motto was "the altar of god needs no polishing." Bareness is all. The Scarlet Letter is a meditation on signification of meaning. The A is supposed to be unambiguous and shameful. But it is generative and fertile and can mean lots of things such as "Able." 

            We took a five minute break. 

            Dimsdale's appeal to Hester. Her response with Chilingworth watching. There are three scaffold moments marking the novel. Dimsdale the minister reads his speech again. His self division. Dimsdale is the father of Hester's child but in asking her to be his conscience and betray him he seeks refuge in her faithfulness. The minister's delivery speaks to everyone but what meaning do they get? Simultaneously the baby maybe recognizes the voice of her dad. Hester says no to church and state. Maybe Chilingworth speaks in the crowd and is the one she recognized. Hester says my child has a heavenly father and Dinsdale is relieved. The child has no father without Hester speaking. 

    Pearl is illegitimate and wild with no father. Paternity was for most of history a legal fiction. Now there are DNA tests but for most of time nobody knew for certain who the father of a child was. In the law of slavery the child follows the condition of the mother and so if the mother is a slave her child is a slave. Masters did not claim their children with slave mothers. Women giving birth in Puritan times were forced to name the father during childbirth. 

            The general point is that it's really a psychological and insistent text. He's interested in psychology and has influenced other authors mapping interiors. 

            Chilingworth vs Dimsdale. "He must needs be mine" is coded homoeroticism. 

            For Emerson how does self reliance work in relation with others. There is a dark, corrupt spiritual affinity. The conclusion could have been written by Freud. 

            Pearl's name is the antithesis of sin. She is inseparable from the letter itself. Hester dresses her daughter like the letter. Pearl makes her own scarlet letter out of seaweed. Pearl is an allegory for ideas and the freedom of a broken law but also realistically childlike. She is not the Victorian's sentimental child. She is more like the Freudian child before the letter. The child is fascinated by adult sexuality and trying to read adult behaviour. In the Elf Child chapter they want to take Pearl away from Hester. 

            I said it feels like a slap in the face to Puritanism that Pearl acts like pagan. It is like a Greek myth for her to say her origin was that she was plucked from a rose bush. Plus roses are red like the letter. Hester and Ann say no to the law. Pearl disappears into symbolism and allegory. 

            The scene in the woods is outside the social realm and outside the clutch of the church. In the chapter The Pastor and the Parishioner the wilderness is a space of romance influenced by Shakespeare's green world. In the Flood of Sunshine chapter Hawthorne is allegorizing that outside is inside. She is on the edge of hegemonic culture in a kind of freedom fantasy of the Indian standing for nature. 

            I said Hester could be a metaphor for the colonies with the Puritans representing English rule. The professor added that in that case the A could be America. 

            Hester tells Dimsdale about Chilingworth and it is like she is married to both. In chapter 17 Chilingworth is a greater sinner Dimsdale thinks. Dimsdale's definition of sin may be Hawthorne's. We are married says Chilingworth. 

            After the lecture I told the professor about a Last Week Tonight show from one and a half years ago that was on the subject of public shaming. It featured an interview with Monica Lewinsky and in the title the A in "shaming" was like the A of The Scarlet Letter. 

            I rode to Yonge and Bloor before heading home. When I got to my building the cops were doing something in and out of Popeyes. My neighbour Benji was standing outside and told me that he thinks the truck driver who was delivering food forgot to lock the door when he left and someone got in. 

            I took my broken mailbox key to Home Hardware and was told that they can copy broken keys but only one person there could do it and he wouldn't be there until Thursday.

            In the afternoon I posted my blogs and edited my lecture notes. I think typing them in class worked out okay and saved me time. I just had problems with my laptop freezing sometimes. I might try to type my Shakespeare lecture tomorrow to see if it gives me more time to read and work on my assignments. 

            I weighed 89.6 kilos at 18:45. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle. 

            In this story Gomer and Lou Ann are on a date when they meet Bunny waiting for Carter. He's kept her waiting on the street for half an hour. Gomer invites her to join them for coffee.Bunny is impressed and charmed by what a gentleman Gomer is towards Lou Ann. Carter finds Bunny in the cafe and is pissed off she's not outside. He wants to be alone with Bunny but she keeps inviting Gomer and Lou Ann to join them as they go to the movies and take a drive. Later Carter loses Gomer and takes Bunny to the Jade Club but Gomer and Lou Ann show up there as well. While Gomer and Lou Ann are dancing Carter and Bunny have a big fight and break up. Lou Ann has the idea that she will talk with Carter and Gomer will talk with Bunny, but it backfires because Carter becomes interested in Lou Ann and Bunny in Gomer. Lou Ann says the solution is for her to go out on a date with Carter and Gomer go out with Bunny and both go to the Jade Club. Lou Ann says all they have to do is be themselves and that's true. Carter finds Lou Ann boring and too expectant of gentlemanly behaviour while Bunny finds it not as much fun to be handled so delicately. Carter and Bunny get back together. I finished editing my notes at around 22:00.

October 6, 1991: Elaine called me and we argued about politics for four hours

Thirty years ago today

            Sunday blended together with Saturday in a general mass of boredom. 

            I got my place cleaned up. 

            I read some old newspapers. 

            I was on the finishing touches of my new collage. 

            Elaine called me back and we must have argued or four hours about politics. We talked about getting together for a movie in a week or two.

Margaret Teele

            On Monday morning my sprained shoulder was more flexible when I tried to do the downward part of a push-up and could almost bring my chest to the floor. It was also stronger when I tried putting more weight on my arm. 

            I translated the third verse of "Arthur, où t'as mis le corps?" (Arthur, Where'd You Put the Corpse?) by Boris Vian: "But the antique dealer / before we had him murdered / had taken the Bigophone / We're hiding outside of town / with the cops snooping round / It feels bad in our bones." 

            I posted my email assignment. 

            I worked again on memorizing the second verse of "On n'est pas des grenouille" (We Are Not Amphibians) by Serge Gainsbourg but I was distracted by the fact that it was raining and my living room window frame was not only still leaking from the repairs my landlord insisted he did but a new leak had started. The leaks were side by side but too far apart to be caught by the bucket so I had to put a salad bowl beside it. I was also distracted by worrying about an assignment that's due on October 15 which I have yet to begin because there is so much reading to do. So with these things on my mind I still wasn't able to memorize the second verse without losing some of the first and vice versa. 

            I weighed 91.7 kilos before breakfast and that's definitely overweight for me. 

            Before 9:00 I logged on for my Shakespeare lecture and the first one on Henry IV Part 1.

            Professor Lopez says the email assignments are going well. 

            He will probably have essay topics for us by the end of this week but no later than October 13.

            Shakespeare began his career in two ways. One was with small scale plays about mistaken identity such as The Comedy of Errors. They dealt with quotidian concerns like family relationships. Other plays were romances like Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Taming of the Shrew with timelines that unfolded over a couple of days. These differed from the trend, as most of the plays of the time were geographically expansive and larger than life like those written by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kidd. They were either big sprawling histories on such themes as the conquest of Asia or spectacular stories from mythology. Shakespeare also wrote those. 

            In "Henry VI" Hal's son was an infant when he became king and through him his handlers ruled England. 

            Richard III had an outsize identity. 

            One of Shakespeare's large scale plays was Titus Andronicas. It was larger than life, unlike The Comedy of Errors. 

            Henry IV part 1 came in the middle of Shakespeare's career and it was a return to the kind of plays he wrote early on. He was pursuing a multi part long term historical project. Henry IV usurped Richard II. He wrote Richard II between 1596 and 1597. 

            After usurping Richard, Henry Bolingbroke became Henry IV. The play Henry IV part 1 begins with Henry trying mop up all the little rebellions after his usurpation and at the end it's almost done. Henry IV part 2 begins much the same with Hal still irresponsible. The same story is redone in a different key and with a different tonal quality. Henry IV Part 2 is a difficult, fascinating, mysterious and historically unnecessary play. It is more valuable for character development than history. In "Henry V" Hal is king and conquers France. Richard II was deposed in 1399. 

            These plays are a large sequence and a compliment to Shakespeare's earlier sequence. They are of sprawling historical and geographical scope. The stories are approached in a new way with weeds of characters. The most interesting thing in Shakespeare is detail and there is far more detail in Henry IV than in The Comedy of Errors. It's a large play in character and in variety of action consisting of large blocks complicated with interwoven texture. 

            In the movement from 2.1 to 2.4 the sheriff is looking for the thieves. Falstaff hides behind a screen and falls asleep.His clothing is searched and a list of his expenses is found consisting of food and wine but mostly wine. Even Hal is amazed at how much wine Falstaff consumes. 

            The next scene has Hotspur again and we are introduced to Mortimer who had been spoken of earlier. He had been supposedly captured but is now in league with the Welsh rebels. In a comical moment Hotspur has forgotten the map of England with which to plan the rebellion. The leader does not have it but Glyndŵr, an antagonistic newcomer has it and the comedy of the moment is more fully realized in the theatre. There is tension between the two. As strong as this rebel force is they still don't quite know what they are doing. 

           The document of Falstaff's expenses juxtaposed with the subject dividing map creates disproportionate divisions and causes tension. Shakespeare is carrying material that changes form from one scene to another. There is an echo between the two types of scenes and how they play in action. These kinds of tonal shifts happen throughout the play. 

           Hotspur and Glyndŵr are trivialized. They are not even speaking the same language, showing that the rebel force is divided. The rebels, like Falstaff and Hal can be seen as greedy thieves. There is separation and attraction between two levels. This is a classically Shakespearian structure. 

            M. H. Abrams says that literary criticism is the art of pointing out the obvious. 

            Professor Lopez says he has been modelling close reading with his observations. He has read this play 250 times. 

            There is huge moment at 2.4.360-465 when Falstaff is preparing Hal to meet with his father and they stage a play within a play as Falstaff poses as Hal's father so he can practice his answers. But Falstaff only wants to ask questions about Falstaff so it doesn't work. So they switch roles and Falstaff plays Hal while Hal assumes the role of the king. Two characters are acting within a play to negotiate their identities and the social relations that arise from them. The performance allows for metaphors that both illuminate and complicate the plot. Hal speaks ironically as his own father. Falstaff as Hal is speaking the truth of his personality. He knows what Hal is about. The festive principle of Falstaff is what Hal wants and he'll have to repress more than overcome it. This mutual performance is very Shakespearean. The performance act allows for the representation of different versions of one's own identity. Identity is performative as one is taken or mistaken or acting as someone else or oneself. Representations of the self through another access the truth of identity. How this little theatre within a play ends is famous. Falstaff as Hal tells Hal as Henry that he cannot get rid of Falstaff because sweet Falstaff is essential to Hal's identity. Banish anyone but Falstaff because Falstaff is all the world. Hal responds "I do and I will" banish him but is he speaking as his father or himself? Has he dropped the theatre for cruel independence? Is this a signal to Falstaff? Is it an analysis of their relationship? It is impossible to know. 

            In The Comedy of Errors the mistaken identity of Antipholus of Ephesus reveals his dark side. People are willing to believe he would cheat despite his good reputation. Maybe the town is turning on an upstart. 

            It is not a stretch for Falstaff to play Hal's father. Henry would rather his son be Hotspur. 

            Hal is always playing himself. He talks to himself and the audience about performing as the prince. Later his father tells him that he must play the role of the king. The king says he has a controlled identity. 

            The pressure of mistaken identity reveals character. 

            Falstaff keeps the focus on himself to declare that he is indispensable. He is casual towards honour but desperate to be vital to Hal. Hal insists on becoming independent from both his father and Falstaff but remains in contact. He wants to be inside but detached. A knock on the door puts the time limit on their little play, pushing the performance to end. Falstaff wants to finish it and know his fate but can't. Would it have clarified Hal's statement? As at the end of any Shakespeare play there is no resolution of the tensions that rise up independent of the story. In the relationship between performance and reality Shakespeare refuses to give a solution. He frames the events but he is indifferent to those events. 

            We took a ten minute break. 

            There is no historical basis for Hal being a lout because his youth is undocumented. But the idea was a folk tradition that was perpetuated by oral stories and plays. Shakespeare drew from the anonymously written play from the 1580s "The Famous Victories of Henry V" and turned it into three longer plays. The attraction of the myth of Hal as a rogue lies in the tension between metamorphosis and destiny. He changed because he was destined to be the hereditary king. But in this time the destiny of the heir is contingent. 

            Henry IV the usurper killed Richard II the hereditary monarch. As Richard had no children he chose Mortimer as his heir. Hotspur helped Henry come to power but did not feel appreciated afterwards. In 1.3.137 Hotspur wants to overthrow Henry IV while his kingship is still new and uncertain. 

            Hal's future is in question and the myth of Hal might be an indirect dramatization of that uncertainty. He does not act like a prince or a future king. His wild non historical behaviour might be a metaphor for the effects of usurpation. Hal has no respect for the past and embodies chaos. Hal's behaviour allows us to think in supernatural speculation of the usurpation as cursed. In 3.2.4-11 Henry asks Hal if his behaviour is his punishment. 

            Henry IV is cagey and never says what he means. He outmanoeuvres and never admits to his crime, even to Hal. He speaks of his faults as being minor. Genetic scourge. Hell. This language commensurate to greater crimes. Thinking about crimes without talking about them. His child punishing him is a genetic retribution for a genetic crime. 

            English monarchs from 1399 going back to 1133. Richard II was the grandson of Edward III, who was the son of Edward II, who was the son of Edward I, who was the son of Henry III, who was the son of John, who was the brother of Richard I, who was the son of Henry II. 

            Henry IV disrupted the line and his crime was ironic. The curse was "your children will punish you" and so in the play Hal's wildness serves the purpose of a metaphor for the curse. But Henry VII could trace his lineage back to Edward II and so this reconnecting the line leading to Henry VIII, Edward VI, half sister Mary and then Elizabeth I. Henry IV establishes legitimacy and gives rise to Shakespeare's modern England. 

            Hal's destiny is a settled question since the audience knows what will happen to him. Dramatizing Hal's metamorphosis draws a line from usurpation to stability. The undeserving ribald son of an undeserving usurper but Henry IV has hints of legitimacy. Richard II was not a great king and Henry brought stability. Hints of the deservingness of Prince Hal in 2.4.4-19 when Hal is in the tavern with Poins ordering wine. He boasts about being one of the guys. He's one of the people and knows commoners by name. He's a Corinthian or a good fellow at the bar. He's a good boy. He's acquired the language. This is an old idea that a good leader must have a common touch. He's performing but he may really be on the level of a commoner. 

            The play traces the metamorphosis of Hal to see the beginning of the new dynasty. The play dramatizes destiny and metamorphosis. Henry IV part 1 traces Hal's plot. Dad is facing a rebellion. It ends with the rebels on the run and Hal and his father go after Mortimer the Earl of March. Hal and the king are separate until the end when together they wipe out the threat. It's a generic arc of destiny. Hal will become a real king in the conventions of comedy. The resolution is no less complicated than that of The Comedy of Errors. There is unfinished business. In 4.1.91-110 Vernon reports to the rebels that Hal has joined the king. Hotspur is not worried about Hal but Hal is described as appearing like a princely warrior on his horse. Hal, like a butterfly metamorphoses because he had it in him all along. He expresses this on his horse. The rebellion ends in stability. The separation of father and son ends in togetherness. 

            On the blank page the professor tries to type something but something additional pops up. He says there is nothing more obnoxious than a computer that tries to anticipate what one wants. 

            The rebellion interferes with Henry IV's crusade in the holy land to atone for usurpation. He fantasizes about Hotspur being his real son switched at birth. The rebels infight. In a tragic family drama Worcester is treacherous and sacrifices his nephew Hotspur. Henry IV gives Worcester terms but does not trust him. 

            Two marriages: Hotspur and Kate. She refuses to speak his language of war but he insists; Mortimer and Glyndŵr's daughter. She is Welsh and does not speak English while he speaks no Welsh. A linguistic idiomatic survey of England. Rebels and aristocrats. Political language. The tavern people. Falstaff and his friends. There are specific modes of speech. In 4.2 Falstaff's conscripts are the lowest of the low. He sees them as powder fodder. In 2.1 the carriers at the inn are tangential to the plot. They are all integral. Henry IV is amazing in how it coordinates all of these elements. 

            After the lecture I posted my 1990s blog but when I tried to go onto Facebook it seemed to be down. I checked online and saw that Facebook was down all over the place. 

            I weighed 90.9 kilos before lunch. When I had canned peaches with yogourt I didn't add honey. I think maybe I can get used to that and it might help get my weight down. 

            Facebook was still down at 16:00 so I took an early bike ride. On my way out I tried to check my mail and the key broke in the mailbox. I was able to get the piece out but I don't know if I can get it copied at the Hardware store when it's in two pieces. If I go to a locksmith I probably can. It was drizzling very slightly but steadily and by the time I got to Dovercourt and Bloor I decided that if I went any further even that mist was going to start getting me wet so I headed home. 

            I weighed 90.1 kilos at 16:45 and felt less alarmed about my weight. 

            I posted my blog at around 17:00 but Facebook was still down. 

            Facebook came back up at 18:30 and so I posted my blogs. 

            I continued to type my lecture notes. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle. 

            This story sees the return of Friendly Freddy who sells Gomer a friendship ring for $12 which he gives to Lou Ann for their first anniversary of knowing one another. But then Freddy's boss tells Freddy that he accidentally sold Gomer the real sample ring that's worth $500. Freddy is afraid of being bumped off because he can't repay the $500. He tells Gomer the ring he sold him is only worth $2 and so he wants to give him the real one in exchange but Gomer says it doesn't matter what it's worth and that it's bad luck to remove a friendship ring. Freddy tries to get Sergeant Carter to help him but Carter just gets him to give him five $2 rings to make up for the difference in worth. Freddy takes his girl Stella out to the Jade Club on what he thinks may be his last night alive. He sees Gomer there with Lou Ann and tries a desperate plan. He dances with Lou Ann and hints that Gomer has other girlfriends. Then he gets Stella to come up to Gomer in front of Lou Ann and thank him with a kiss for a ring that's identical to Lou Ann's. Stella pays the cigarette girl to pass by Gomer and say, "See you tomorrow night Gomer." Lou Ann is angry and trying to take off the ring as Freddy anticipates getting it back. Suddenly a tough looking man in a suit grabs Freddy and says "Let's go." Freddy thinks it's the end but Freddy sees his boss in handcuffs in the back of a police car. The man who grabbed Freddy is a cop telling Freddy he's coming to testify against his boss. Just then Gomer is leaving the club and still trying to convince Lou Ann he is innocent. He gets Freddy to confess the truth and then everything is fine again.

            Stella was played by Margaret Teele, who had many supporting guest parts on various TV shows. She played one of the Slaymates in Matt Helm and the Silencers. She retired from acting to raise her family. She's the mother of songwriter Jenna Drey. 

            The cigarette girl was played by Timothy Blake who directed "Life Happens." She is a former Screen Actors Guild vice president, SAG Foundation recording secretary, she co-chaired the SAG AFTRA Film Society and was the executive officer of SAG pension and health plans for thirty years.

October 5, 1991: I boiled lasagne noodles and had them with a sauce made from tomato soup and canned clams

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday morning I worked on an office job. We moved the Black Coalition For AIDS Prevention from the Village by the Grange to Parliament and Carleton. 

            I was broke and started using up all the neglected food at my place. I made a conglomeration of boiled lasagne noodles with a sauce of tomato soup and canned clams.

            I called Elaine and left a message with her mother.

"The Sun himself a fair hot wench" - Shakespeare

           On Sunday morning I was trying to translate the second verse of "Arthur, où t'as mis le corps?" (Arthur, Where'd You Put the Corpse?) by Boris Vian, but I got stuck on the word "bigophone." It turns out to be a somewhat comical wind instrument invented in France but then some people in France refer to the telephone as a "bigophone." In the song it was an antique dealer who was murdered but beforehand he hid the bigophone, so maybe the bigophone is an antique in this story. I was trying to decide whether to name a different instrument to get the rhyme I needed. I'll try to figure it out tomorrow. 

            I worked on memorizing the second verse of "On n'est pas des grenouille" (We Are Not Amphibians) by Serge Gainsbourg but whenever I nailed it down I lost my grip on parts of the first verse. I'll probably have it in my head tomorrow. 

            I weighed 90.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I finished cleaning my fryer basket and started washing the storage tray that goes under the stove. I got most of the dirt off but I'll spend some time finishing it up on Friday before I finally get all the pots and pans that I've cleaned over the summer off the table, in the tray and out of my way. 

            I weighed 90.9 kilos before lunch. That's getting close to too much. I had saltines and five year old cheese with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon it was raining a bit so I didn't take a bike ride. Instead I did some exercises while listening to the first few scenes of a production of Henry IV Part 1 on YouTube. I weighed 90.5 kilos at 18:15. 

            I wrote my email assignment to post tomorrow morning: 

            In Henry IV Part I, 1.2 Prince Henry and Falstaff's glorification of the night and the Moon as the force that precides over their roguish lifestyle is bookended by two images of the Sun. First there is Falstaff's declaration that he would care about daytime if the male sun god were transgendered into a hot female sex trade worker. But in 1.2.8 when he speaks of the "sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta" he is in this moment disguising the sun in drag to make it more attractive in such a way as to lure him from nocturnal gravity. This disguising of a celestial entity is echoed in life when Prince Henry and Falstaff are tempted to enter into a plan of a future robbery in which they will be disguised. Then Poins and Prince Henry plot to disguise their disguises and rob Falstaff. This scene ends with another image of the sun in disguise, as Prince Henry declares himself not of the night but rather an imitator of the Sun covered over by toxic clouds. His planned betrayal of Falstaff becomes also an imagined hope to betray the night. 

            I read Act 1 Scene 3 (1.3) of Henry IV Part 1. Hotspur is plotting to overthrow the king and install his brother Mortimer, who he sees to be the rightful heir. I read 2.1 which sets up the merchants about to be robbed. 

            I read chapter 3 of The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne is told by the officials to declare publicly the name of her baby's father but she refuses and so she is returned to prison. 

            I read 2.2 of Henry IV. Falstaff and his confederates without Prince Henry and Poins rob the travellers while the Prince and Poins watch from hiding. 

            I read chapter 4 of The Scarlet Letter. An older white man, half in Indigenous garb, comes as a physician to treat Hester Prynn and her baby. He turns out to be Hester's ex-husband but not the father of her baby. He gives herbal treatments that he learned from living for three years with the First Nation people to calm her and the baby down. He asks her to tell him the name of the father of the baby but she refuses. He says confidently that he will find him. He asks her not to reveal who he is. 

            I read 2.3 of Henry IV Part 1. Prince Henry and Poins in disguise rob Falstaff and his men of the money they just stole and then ride off. 

            I made pizza on naan with Parmese sauce, ham, french fries and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle. 

            In this story Gomer gets a lot of male because he is always sending away for free samples and entering contests. One day a seven metre boat is delivered because he won a jingle contest. He plans on sending it back to the company because he can't afford to maintain and keep it. Sergeant Carter however has visions of the women that such a vessel would attract and offers to become Gomer's partner. But right away expenses mount for Carter. He hitches the boat to his car and it tears the bumper off. He gets three tickets while hauling the boat to the water. At the pier he has to buy a license, life jackets and lots of other legally required items. After Carter learns that one has to pay tax on prizes in the United States, finally it's all too expensive and Carter agrees to sell. Gomer puts up a sign on a post in the boat. A lieutenant agrees to buy it and Gomer and Carter deliver it to the water. But Carter wants to have one ride on the boat before giving it up. They get in and Carter says to pull up the "for sale" sign but when Gomer does so it tears a hole in the floor of the boat and they sink.