We Few, We Happy Few
I had a red letter day yesterday.
It technically started with Wendy and Karen playing Go Fish at midnight. After they left I was able to assemble and bake a rhubarb custard pie. I was really happy with how it turned out. I think what helped the crust be "so light" was that I didn't over blend it when I mixed the liquid with the flour/shortening; plus, I didn't refrigerate it as long as normal. Then I went to bed.
I intended to leave at 9:30 to be able to casually (read legally) drive to Glenwood, IA to hear Amy's husband, Tim, preach. I was off by 23 minutes, but still arrived on time (the ol' time/distance value of speed). After church we had a delicious meal (of note was a marinated carrot dish that Amy made) at Tim and Amy's. Then we played bean bags, whilst Ben discussed his dream of a creator coffee collective house.
After some laying about, I went to Shakespeare on the Green to "mark territory" for the group while they gathered the picnic fixings (again Amy came through with a really great peanut sauce). This gave me an hour to read In Praise of Shadows and take an actual nap. Everyone arrived (A pleasant surprise was the arrival of Scott, Tanya, Jessica, and Katie.) and the play soon started.
I really enjoyed the performance of Henry V and was surprisingly touched by two things: first the tragedy of the boys who watched the luggage being killed by the fleeing French and second, that Henry had to ask the French herald whether he had won the day or not.
Because I had no timeline to get back home, I was able to drive the speed limit while thinking about the fine time had by all.
[UPDATE: The peanut sauce is now linked to the recipe.]
posted by Daniel @ 12:50 PM
12 comments
12 Comments:
good title, daniel. i'm in the process of posting the most requested recipes from yesterday, including the peanut sauce and marinated carrots, if you would like to link to or copy them.
it was a good day. thanks for coming.
Thank you for hosting, and the recipe.
Also I have a bid in for my very own Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook on eBay.
I absolutely love that line (your title), and adore that play, which I scrutinized for my Shakespeare paper this past semester.
Did you find likewise troubling Henry's fiat for all the prisoners to be killed? Or his unsparingly dysphemistic speech regarding France’s fate, should the country oppose him? Or his motives for going to war in the first place?
Or did the performance gloss over those moments?
I think Lawrence Danson, a critic of the play, most hilariously and aptly captures the misfortune for those simply wanting to extol Henry 's kingship. He writes, concerning the execution of the prisoners, "I can try to understand the desperateness of the situation that gave rise to the order . . . but still I wish he hadn’t done it."
Doesn't that kill you? When I read that, I just lost it. Perhaps the funniest thing was that he wasn't intending to be funny, or more likely, even aware how delightfully droll that sounded.
I hope I write a line that good some day.
Another favorite line:
"There is some soul of goodness in things evil, / Would men observingly distill it out".
That last one was from I Henry IV, I guess.
Still nice.
The shameful act surrounding the boys kinda put a pall over the following scenes till the wooing of Katherine for me. The way Henry disgustingly threw the herald toward the ground when telling him what those he represented had done brought the apposite gravity for me.
Henry's ignorance of the day's result struck me because it almost didn't matter; he was going to war and fighting and that was the goal, not to actually win as well. When Henry asked the outcome, it seemed to be only tangential to his feelings toward the battle.
The performance tried to highlight the speech to France at the gate, but the reasons for war weren't exactly a manifestation of Augustine. Henry's anguish at discovering the fate of the boys seemed to give his subsequent actions carte blanche.
You will write a line that good someday.
I miss Shakespeare on the Green. That was one of my favorite parts of Nebraska summers.
...Although, good grief. I live in Minneapolis. I'm sure they can come up with something.
Still. No Lincoln crowd to go with. Sniff.
But I'm not sure it was ever clear whether or not it was after hearing of the boys' fate that Henry gave the order to kill the prisoners. I think the text leaves that in question.
And so your reaction to Henry's wooing of Katherine was a positive one? It didn't strike you as sinuously cunning or affected?
(Secretly, I fell for it, too, at least emotionally speaking.)
(I know: I'd never make it as a feminist.)
Yes, I fell for his wooing, but also it was hard to think about the war/battle at that point because it was just a few people in a room talking about love.
And the actor didn't play it as cunning; he made a big deal about how "fair" she was, so I thought he was saying what he could to get into her corset. Whether he meant it long term, he still provided an impassioned plea to love him.
That "to get into her corset" killed me.
marinated carrots recipe is up. congratulations on your finding of the book. let me know how some of the recipes turn out, especially if a crust recipe is wonderfully simple and works well.
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