I’m linking here to poet John Siddique’s Youtube channel — he has posted a great interpretation below of the “Full Fathom Five” section of William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” (The oft-quoted lines actually comprise the second half of “Ariel’s Song” in Act I., Scene II.)
The softer reading here gives the poem a more muted feel, and the shooting location is terrific. (Man, that shoreline would be perfect for Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” wouldn’t it?)
United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30
(For Emily) 🙂
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
And moan th’ expense of many a vanish’d sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.
Roadshow Films.
… not to praise him.
(Facebook friends, Roanokers, countrymen … lend me some money.)
Warner Bros. Pictures.
This comes from BBC Entertainment News — Andrew Scott (maybe best known to American audiences as James Moriarty from “Sherlock”) performing Hamlet’s famous soliloquy.
This is me reading Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s stylized translation of “La Vita Nuova,” by Dante Alighieri.
To every heart which the sweet pain doth move,
And unto which these words may now be brought
For true interpretation and kind thought,
Be greeting in our Lord’s name, which is Love.
Of those long hours wherein the stars, above,
Wake and keep watch, the third was almost nought,
When Love was shown me with such terrors fraught
As may not carelessly be spoken of.
He seemed like one who is full of joy, and had
My heart within his hand, and on his arm
My lady, with a mantle round her, slept;
Whom (having wakened her) anon he made
To eat that heart; she ate, as fearing harm.
Then he went out; and as he went, he wept.
DC Comics’ “Sgt. Rock” was far harder stuff than the “G.I Joe” comics and toys that are more often associated with the 1980’s. They were the darkest and most violent comic books I read when I was a young kid, except maybe for the various “Conan” books. Hasbro relaunched “G.I. Joe” in 1982 concurrently with its toy line, and it was a famously kid-safe (and lucrative) franchise. “Sgt. Rock,” in contrast, consisted of brutal stories that focused on the horrors of war — it was really more of a cultural holdover from the comics of the prior two decades. (The title began as “Our Army at War” in 1959.)
I loved these comics — especially the larger “annuals” with lengthier stories. Nothing was better than “Sgt. Rock” and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. What occasionally puzzled me as a second-grader was that none of the other boys I knew seemed to be reading them — although a lot of other kids certainly hopped on the “G. I. Joe” bandwagon.
The last one pictured below, from 1981, was my favorite. If memory serves, it was the first one I ever owned.
Roanoke, Virginia, April 2018.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 