#shakespeare stuff

[wisteria-lodge]

MALVOLIO: By my life, this is my lady’s hand: these be her very C’s, her U’s, and her T’s, and thus makes she her great P’s. SIR ANDREW: Her C’s, her U’s, and her T’s. Why that?

I hate how clever this joke is.

So Malvolio is reading what he thinks is a love letter from his boss, Olivia, and he thinks he recognizes his her handwriting, her "hand." (Sir Andrew is spying from the bushes.)

But, the fact that he specifically calls out her 'C' 'U' 'n 'T' draws attention to what he is really thinking about.

but BUT, if you look at it phonetically (said out loud in a play) then the line becomes "seize, use, and tease."

Which makes it a handjob joke. "My lady's [literal] hand, these are her very seize, her use, and her tease, and thus she makes her great peace. [orgasm]. And that's what Malvolio in the midst of his big power fantasy is REALLY thinking about.

and then Sir Andrew draws attention to this joke, making it sound like he's never had sex, which of course he hasn't, because his thing is that he's very alone (very probably because he doesn't realize that he's gay.)

that's a three tier pun that's also got character development.

dammit shakespeare

[brechtian]

reorganized my books and these are my favorite shelves :) shelf categories in order are: classic plays & theatre-related nonfiction, modern(ish) plays, classic lit, nonfiction/essays, and 20-21st century literary fiction and poetry

[moderndayathena]

This is so, so, so good!

[hamletthedane]

cw transphobia

obviously this is an extremely bizarre tweet that got ratioed to hell and back, but it’s also hilarious that of all the authors in the entire English literary canon, she somehow landed on Shakespeare as the epitome of cisnormative writing.

like ma’am shakespeare’s characters go on stage and announce their gender to the audience within the first few lines in nearly every play. Including…you know….the very play you reference???

[personinthepalace]

Happy Twelfth Night!

Ooh Twelfth Night the play?

[petrichor-moss-and-lightning]

on reckless, self-destructive devotion and the sharp edges of longing that look almost like teeth

Phoebe Bridgers, “Moon Song” // unknown // Margaret Atwood, “Speeches for Dr. Frankenstein” // quadruple dog art by @mxmorggo on Instagram // Hozier, “Take Me to Church” // STELLAR, “Reflections” // AJJ, “I Wanna Be Your Dog 2” // Mitski, “I’m Your Man” // William Shakespeare, Midsummer’s Night Dream // Tumblr user @ojibwa // Trista Mateer, from “How I Asked You to Stay,” Honeybee.

[wisteria-lodge]

this scene, GOD this scene is the most scene ever

link to the production, if anyone wants to watch the whole thing

Know thou first,

I loved the maid I married; never man

Sigh’d truer breath; but that I see thee here,

Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart

Than when I first my wedded mistress saw

Bestride my threshold.

{Coriolanus act IV Scene V}

[wisteria-lodge]

~ Hamlet, 3.4.182

(damn. shakespeare gets it)

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[drdt-oclock]

of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

it seems to me most strange that men should fear,

seeing that death, a necessary end,

will come when it will come.

[topxmenfan]

One of my favorite things about classic literature is how I’m reminded that humans have always been this unhinged

[rrcenic]

“for never was a story of more woe than this of juliet and her romeo” WRONG dead poets society 1989

[casscainmainly]

The Evolution of Cassandra Cain's Dialogue

Since Batgirl #1 is out and thriving, I thought it'd be fun to dive into the history of Cass' dialogue throughout different writers/runs. This is not comprehensive - I'll miss some writers, but I'll be covering her generally most known runs in mainline continuity (so no DCeased, Shadow of the Batgirl, etc.). Not a linguist by any means, so linguists on here feel free to chime in! (I'll also give opinions on which interpretations I personally prefer at the end).

Without further ado, we'll start at the beginning:

Kelley Puckett - Batgirl (2000)

Pre-issue 4, Cass speaks minimally in one-word sentences and doesn't have internal narration. Post-issue 4 (when a metahuman changes Cass' brain), she develops an internal monologue and begins to speak longer sentences. I'm splitting Puckett's Cass dialogue into 3 stages: early, middle, and late.

Early (#4 - #12): Cass speaks short, fragmented sentences. Each word has an ellipses between them (panel 1 above, from #7).

Middle (#13 - #24): Cass continues to speak incomplete sentences (often missing a subject or pronouns), but without ellipses (panel 2, from #13).

Late (#25 onwards): Cass begins to speak complete, simple sentences, punctuated by a few ellipses (panel 3, from #33). She continues to speak grammatically (though slowly) throughout the final part of Puckett's run.

Dylan Horrocks - Batgirl (2000)

Horrocks writes very similarly to late-Puckett, with Cass speaking in full, simple sentences, punctuated by the occasional ellipses. Horrocks introduces two new elements to her dialogue:

Cass stutters, sometimes repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of a sentence (panel 1 above, from #39). This is mostly used in the earlier parts of Horrocks' run.

She quotes reality TV (panel 2, from #51).

Maybe because of the reality TV, Cass also speaks more colloquially here than in Puckett's run, using phrases like "come 'n' get it" (from #57).

Andersen Gabrych - Batgirl (2000)

Gabrych's run focuses heavily on Cass' dialogue. Panel 1 above, from #58, suggests her narration boxes are another form of dialogue - Cass is speaking into a recorder. Several features of Gabrych's Cass dialogue are:

Ellipses: Even more than his predecessors, Gabrych scatters ellipses throughout Cass' speech (panel 1).

Fillers: Cass extensively uses filler words such as 'uh', 'um', and 'like' (panel 1, panel 2 from #61).

Longer sentences: Cass is more talkative and speaks longer sentences (panel 1, which is basically more words per panel than Puckett and Horrocks combined).

Wordplay: Cass often ponders definitions and word structures (panel 1, 2).

Adam Beechen - Batgirl (2008)

After evil Cass (that dialogue is not worth discussing), Beechen gets another chance with Cass in this miniseries. More than any other writer, Beechen differentiates Cass' internal monologue from her dialogue - her narration boxes are much wordier than her speech.

Her dialogue is a more loquacious version of late-Puckett or Horrocks: full sentences interspersed with ellipses (panel 1, from #1). The ellipses drop off towards the end of the series.

Her narration boxes use a variety of sentence structures and vocabulary. They read more or less as fluent English (panel 2, from #4).

Scott Snyder - Gates of Gotham (2011)

Snyder's Cass somewhat resembles mid-Puckett, using short sentences without ellipses (panel 1, from #2). She speaks a fair amount, but is more taciturn here than in any previous run. This is partially due to her not having narration boxes.

A unique feature of Snyder's Cass is preferring formal to informal speech. Though she uses contractions (panel 1), she goes large stretches without them (panel 2, from #3). She also omits the subject of a sentence only once in 5 issues, whereas native speakers (like Dick) drop the subject all the time ('have you ever been to Paris?' vs. 'ever been to Paris?'; Snyder's Cass would always say the former instead of the latter).

Sidenote: Batman & Robin: Eternal (2015)

Quick note about B&R:E: Cass is reintroduced into canon after being erased by the New 52, which means she's back to having very limited language ability. The series is scripted by multiple people, so it's hard to analyse. Suffice it to say she speaks in monosyllabic words, at most a short, incomplete sentence, but is mostly silent.

James Tynion IV - Detective Comics (2016)

Because Cass' language ability has been reset, Tynion develops her speech along the lines of Batgirl (2000).

Early Tynion has Cass speaking single word sentences (panel 1, from #938). Very similar to pre-metahuman touch Cass in BG (2000).

During the League of Shadows arc, Cass begins to speak a few words at a time, often separated by an ellipsis (panel 2, from #956).

Afterwards, Cass' friendship with Basil Karlo blossoms, leading to this run's most distinctive language feature - Cass improves her speech via studying and quoting Shakespeare (panel 3, from #958). Her improvement is reflected in the rest of the run through speaking longer and more frequent sentences.

Bryan Hill - Batman & The Outsiders (2019)

Like other writers, Hill's Cass generally uses short, simple sentences. She frequently drops the subject or pronoun in a sentence (panel 1, from #1). Hill doesn't use ellipses to separate the sentences, opting for periods most of the time.

Cass sometimes omits other words from her sentences too, dropping articles like 'a' and 'the' (panel 2, from #4), prepositions like 'to', and verbs like 'is' (panel 3, from #9). This peters out in the second half of the run.

Becky Cloonan and Michael W. Conrad - Batgirls (2022)

Similar to mid-Puckett, Batgirls has Cass speak mostly in short, 1-2 word sentences (panel 1, from #2). Cloonan and Conrad occasionally use ellipses as well, though mostly for emphasis/natural hesitation rather than indicating a unique speech pattern (panel 2, from #7).

Cass also has a habit of repeating/echoing a phrase Stephanie says (panel 3, from #16). This might be more of a friendship thing than a speech thing, though.

Alyssa Wong - Spirit World (2023)

Wong's Cass uses short sentences sometimes interrupted by ellipses, like late-Puckett and Horrocks (panel 1, from #1). Generally, if the sentence is three words or less, there won't be an ellipsis (panel 2, from #5).

Kelly Thompson - Birds of Prey (2023)

Thompson's Cass draws on a lot of previous iterations, but is somewhat unique as a whole. Some elements of BoP Cass include:

She speaks in sentences of varying lengths, but rarely with more than one clause (panel 1, from #1). Thompson is more strict about not using commas with Cass than most other writers.

Cass is a little more talkative (panel 2, from #5). Her sentences are fairly lengthy compared to most other runs, and she doesn't always opt for the shortest way to say things ('where is it?' instead of 'do you know where it is?'). Thompson also doesn't use ellipses, which adds to the sentences feeling longer/more complete.

BoP is ongoing so Thompson may add more to her speech.

Sidenote: Ram V - Detective Comics (2023)

Putting this in a sidenote since there's not much to say, but Ram V takes after mid-Puckett, with Cass using shorter, incomplete sentences. Cass almost always omits the subject of a sentence; her dialogue is as short as possible while retaining clarity.

Thoughts

Because Cass' language disability is a core part of her character, but learning to speak is also a core part of her character, I prefer writers who emphasize her unique speech patterns without reducing her range of expression. My favourites are:

Gabrych - by far the person who put the most effort into his dialogue, Gabrych-Cass has such a vibrant, distinctive style of speaking. The narration boxes, Cass' wordplay, and the use of fillers and ellipses all combine for a speech style that highlights her disability without reducing her to it.

Puckett/Horrocks - combining because they are really very similar. Puckett and Horrocks both use ellipses to great effect, and is a great style to emulate for Cass in an earlier stage of life. Horrocks' use of reality TV is severely underutilised. Puckett, of course, is the gold standard for typical Cass dialogue - if Gabrych's style is a little too much, Puckett and Horrocks are the way to go.

Tynion - mostly because of the Shakespeare thing. It's such a beautiful and clever way of showing her progress, and the amount of symbolism you could do with Cass quoting Shakespeare is unmatched.

I don't super enjoy the more talkative Casses (Beechen, Thompson to an extent), though I kind of like Snyder's take because there's a sense of Cass being very careful with her speech there. If you're writing Cass for a fanfic or something, I would avoid Hill's Outsiders; the run is great, but Cass' ungrammatical speech is unusual and doesn't jibe with the rest of her depictions. Ram V and Wong are relatively good depictions to draw from though.

Of course these are my opinions! I may have gotten some things wrong/overgeneralised stuff, so take all this with a grain of salt. All you need to know is you should read Batgirl (2000) :).

[wisteria-lodge]

You can absolutely argue that Gertrude killed Ophelia if you want to. People love to talk about Gertrude's incredibly (suspiciously) detailed description of Ophelia's death. Which goes into a lot of detail about how Ophelia absolutely did not die immediately. According to Gertrude's testimony.

Ophelia was picking flowers for a flower crown (Gertrude lists the flowers, and additionally doesn't mention the "grosser name" that shepherds give the long purples/dead man's fingers. She's almost certainly eliding a name that evokes dicks, which could absolutely support some of the 'linking Ophelia and/or Gertrude to illicit sex' reads.)

Ophelia falls in the river.

Ophelia floats in the river "mermaid like" for a while, long enough to sing "snatches of old tunes."

Ophelia's clothes become muddy and waterlogged, and drag her beneath the water until she drowns.

So okay. If Gertrude was there, at the VERY least, she could have probably saved Ophelia, and didn't.

This is the literary criticism hill I have chosen to die on.

There has been a half-complete version of post on my Dreamwidth journal under a “Private” filter (my eyes only) here since 9 December, 2018, just waiting for me to get the energy and mental focus to write an essay outlining all the textual evidence in Act 4, scene 1 (Ophelia’s “madness” scene). But at this point, I don’t think the required energy for that will ever come – at least, not for the long essay format.   So I’m just going to post my conspiracy theory Thesis Statement here:

Ophelia did not commit suicide – she was murdered. By Queen Gertrude (probably).

And I can’t help but wonder how this play would be taught and performed if this interpretation were the standard one Here’s a bit of a presentation by Shakespearean actor and scholar, Ben Crystal, on his interpretation of the “To be, or not to be?” soliloquy, and how he no longer thinks Hamlet was suicidal at that point in the play, either (though he was, earlier on): Ben Crystal talks about Original Pronunciation, 20 July 2017 (it’s at a point about 40 minutes in to the whole thing). So what if suicide is not a recurring theme of the play? How does that change things?

[paxcallow]

deserved. he's been through a lot

[mizgnomer]

David Tennant and Cush Jumbo

Photographed at the Donmar rehearsal rooms by Alex Lake for the Observer in November 2023

with some photos thanks to the David Tennant Asylum